Mahiya’s bright eyes smiled at him. “You go to speak to the ladies-in-waiting?”
He took so long in replying her smiled faded, her expression intent. And he knew that he would touch her again should she give the slightest encouragement, his body hungry not just for sensation, but for the mystery and—when her guard dropped—the inexplicable sweetness that was Mahiya.
18
Mahiya watched after Jason’s black-winged form as he rose up into the sky, the tiny hairs on her arms still standing up in reaction at the look she’d caught in his eyes. The primal response wasn’t fed by alarm or fear, but a passion that was no simple physical craving. Jason fascinated her on many levels. He was a rough-edged carving, a beautiful man she had the sense no woman had ever come close to taming.
It would be a shame were that ever to happen. His wildness was an integral part of him—perhaps others would not deem it so, not given the cool distance with which he viewed the world, but Mahiya understood . . . she carried the same wildness within. Just because it had been imprisoned and confined and controlled didn’t mean it wasn’t there. Jason wore his nature in his skin, in the curving lines of a tattoo she wanted to trace with her fingertips . . . her lips.
It was a dangerous admission, but lying to herself served no purpose. Better she accept she had a vulnerability where the inscrutable spymaster was concerned, so she could guard against the weakness. The only problem was, Mahiya wasn’t certain she wanted to turn away from the shimmering dark of the nascent flame between them.
* * *
Jason landed behind Lisbeth where she sat on a marble bench in a small enclosed terrace garden off the palace that housed the ladies-in-waiting. Men were strictly forbidden in this area except if sent on business by Neha herself, all of the guards—angelic and vampiric—female.
The tiny woman jumped to her feet with a gasp. “Sir, I realize you are my lady’s guest, but you cannot be here.”
“Neha will not be displeased with you.” She might be with Jason, but since she hadn’t specifically barred him from talking to the ladies-in-waiting in their private quarters, he broke no rules. “I wish to speak to you about Shabnam.”
A change on her face, a quickness of thought. “We are distraught.” Her eyes watered, the deep brown turning into shimmering topaz, her beauty luminous. Lifting a delicate lace handkerchief to her face, she dabbed at the crystalline purity of her tears.
“I am sorry to cause you further sorrow.” He pitched his tone to soothe.
While he couldn’t mimic emotion anywhere near as well as Lisbeth, he was proficient at using his voice as a weapon. Once, he’d used it in song, but the songs in his heart had gone silent long ago, and he knew that one day so would his voice. A man who had nothing inside him eventually had nothing to say.
Wings of midnight blue and vivid green, a smile that saw too much, stirred things that had not been touched in an eon.
Lisbeth’s voice tangled with the unexpected images whispering through his mind. “It is all right.” Sniffing with a delicacy that did nothing to mar her beauty, she said, “You ask for help to seek Shabnam’s murderer?”
He inclined his head. “Do you know of anything that may shed light on the matter?”
A calculated hesitation before she shook her head. “I’m sure I couldn’t say.”
“She is dead.” Jason added gentle, warm notes to his voice. “What you say cannot hurt her.”
Swallowing, Lisbeth wrapped her arms around herself as if cold. “It is not done to speak ill of the dead, but . . . Shabnam was not faithful to her lover.” The words were shaped with utmost sincerity, yet Jason knew them for a lie. Still, he allowed her to continue, wanting to see how black she would paint the victim. “She was generous with her favors . . . particularly when it came to the guards—I believe she thought to ease her way into places we are not meant to go.”
An adroit accusation of spying, perhaps even treason. “Do you believe one of the guards may have become jealous?” he asked, acting obtuse on purpose.
The faintest hint of impatience flittered across her face, fracturing the thus far flawless illusion of beautiful sorrow. “I’m sure for all her airs, Shabnam was nothing but a diversion for them. But her family, they’re proud. They may have considered her actions shameful.” A demure downsweep of curling black lashes. “I’m not accusing them of anything, and I’m sure they would never . . . but you asked. And I just wanted— Oh, forget I said anything.”
“I appreciate your trust. Thank you.”
“Of course.” She could not quite keep her smug satisfaction out of her voice. “I only hope I helped.”
“Yes, very much.” Excusing himself, Jason rose into the air. It didn’t take him long to track down the rest of the ladies-in-waiting. They were creatures who did not like to go too far from their habitat, fearing another would take their place or gain some favor from which they were excluded.
Everyone but for Shabnam’s sparrow-winged friend, Tanuja, attempted to malign the victim. One even insinuated that she’d seduced Eris. However, Tanuja was adamant that Shabnam had been a faithful lover and no spy.
“She was a nice person,” Tanuja sobbed, skin of soft brown blotchy from her distress. “Too nice for this pit of vipers, and the fact that she was a favorite with Neha only made the others act uglier toward her. She used to laugh and say they were jealous witches, but now she’s dead.” A hard stare out of red-rimmed eyes. “Lisbeth may not like getting her hands dirty, but she comes from a family that doesn’t mind blood.”
* * *
The sky was the lush gray of a balmy evening when he came in to land on the balcony outside his suite. Ignoring his own doors, he knocked on Mahiya’s. She opened the left side a fraction, her wary expression changing the instant she saw him. “Oh, it’s you!” Smile reaching her eyes to light them to tawny brightness, she pulled the doors fully open.
At that instant, Jason felt something slam into him, a powerful, amorphous realization that he tried to capture, to examine, but it was so much smoke, wisping out of his hand yet leaving an imprint behind. “Why were you worried?” he asked, feeling as if he’d been marked in some immutable way.
“I—” Mahiya shook her head. “Come in first. The food is hot.”
Walking inside when she turned away, he shut the doors at his back. She didn’t startle at the act, the silverwork on the pale pink of her fitted tunic and on the ankle cuffs of her white harem-style pants catching the light from the tiny crystal chandelier above. The comb in her neatly bound hair was intricately worked silver set with diamonds, the gauzy white scarf thrown over her shoulders from her front embellished with threads of the same metallic shade at the ends. “You dress formally.”