Page 82 of The Concubine King
“But he’s the one who promoted and dismissed you.”
“He made the decisions, that doesn’t mean he came to tell me directly.”
“But—but you said you were impartial between him and Yorith.How can you be impartial to someone who almost ruined your life?”
Poyut threw her hands up with a sigh.“I don’t know what to tell you, Ethyr.I don’t hold a grudge against him for it.Not for that.I didn’t do my job, and he was doing his.I can’t fault him for that.”
“Oh…” Ethyr clasped his hands together, looking down at them.“The advisor,” he remembered, turning on Poyut again.“You didn’t tell me I was able to choose the person.Why would you lie about that?”
“That’s what Klara told me.”Poyut frowned.“Who told you you could choose?”
He crossed his arms and looked to the side, trying not to pout because he knew she wouldn’t like it.“Lyrian.”
“Lyrian?”she repeated harshly.“When did you talk to him?”
“This morning.Didn’t the guards tell you?”
“No,” she said, then darker, “No.They didn’t.”She looked down at the tray.“Please eat something, that’s all I’m asking.We can talk about everything else later.”
Ethyr bit his lip, watching Poyut walk down the hall.He didn’t know who to trust anymore.Everyone here knew exactly what to say to any resistance without a second of thought.He’d never been very good at lying, or knowing when someone was lying to him.But that was just it—he wasn’t sure any of them were.He was starting to realize that lying wasn’t necessary to manipulate others.How could all these people live like this?
He brought the tray into his room and ate a few spoonfuls of soup before leaving it to get back into bed.It was hard to have an appetite.
His eyes opened to darkness.He flung himself upright.
“Who’s there?!”
The words echoed in an empty room.He searched the moon-shadowed corners, but no figures were lurking in the dark.The door was closed.He almost lay back down when a silhouette caught his eye.Someone was on the balcony.
He threw himself so violently from the bed that he got caught in the covers and almost fell on his face.He stumbled in the clinging fabric, turning to see if the person had advanced on him in the muss, but they hadn’t moved.They leaned leisurely against the railing as though they were in their own quarters and not trespassing at all.
“If I scream, guards will be here in seconds!”he called across the room.
The person turned their face and the movement drew Ethyr’s attention to the braid shifting across their tunic.They turned back to the sky.
“Kiaro?”Ethyr hesitated.The god did not move.He inched closer to the balcony, following Kiaro’s gaze to the full moon.Dark clouds drifted by, occasionally obscuring it.
“For a long time, the moon was the only light I could feel against my skin.”He spoke so softly Ethyr almost didn’t hear the words, though hearing didn’t provide any comprehension.
He forced himself to take a step out onto the balcony.“What are you doing here?”
Kiaro lifted his elbows from the railing, planting his palms there instead.He still didn’t look at Ethyr, staring at the banister as though it might have the answer.
“Are you going to kill me?”
Kiaro’s head rose, then turned sharply to look at him, and Ethyr felt the force of his eyes like a shove.He stepped back.
“What?”Kiaro whispered, barely above a breath.
Ethyr swallowed.“For killing Yorith.”
Kiaro stared at him like he’d uncovered his deepest personal secret.Then his lips pressed together and his eyes hardened.“No,” he said, turning away.“Do you have any idea the number of High Priests that have come and gone in our lifetimes?Another dead is nothing to us.”
“But he didn’t just die,” Ethyr whispered.“He was murdered.”
“He’s dead either way.”
The flippant way he spoke of it, like it was something inconsequential to be shrugged off, gave Ethyr a tightness in his chest and shoulders.When Kiaro said nothing else, nor offered an explanation for his presence, Ethyr crept up beside him.The guards below were gone now.Poyut seemingly trusted him enough not to run away again.
