Or that you can read mine, he thought back.
“What’s wrong, Ar?” Mike asked quietly, leaning across the corner of the table toward me.
“I'm just tired.” I dropped my spoon into my porridge, slumping my elbow down by my napkin.
“Why’d you come down for breakfast then?”
“Yeah, you never eat breakfast with the people,” Morg added.
I looked down the table to watch David talking with Arthur, his eyes bright, his hands moving like he was speaking in Sign. “He said I had to—that it was my “queenly duty” to eat with my people.”
“He’s right,” Morgaine said, sitting back to sip her juice.
“I know. But I just feel so . . . I don't know.” I leaned on my other hand. “Ever since his coronation last week, I just feel so under the weather.”
“Are you sick?” Mike asked, pressing a hand to my brow.
I shrugged, sitting back in my chair, looking up quickly when I heard my name.
“Are you okay?” David asked aloud, but his voice came through with a strong warning—holding the weight of everything we’d discussed this past week about my duties as queen.
I smiled, laying the napkin gently across my lap. “I feel very well, thank you. Amazing what Chef’s porridge can do for a little fatigue.”
“Very well.” David nodded once in that kingly manner of his, and went back to his chat with Arthur.
Beside me, Mike’s eyes shrunk from the roundness of confusion to tiny slits under a frown. He leaned in and whispered, “Since when do you perk up for the sake of appearances?”
“Since David’s been giving me a few lessons in royal etiquette.”
Mike and Morg exchanged glances, and Emily, so bright and fresh at this hour of the morning, offered a gentle smile. I looked away. Her special immortal “connection” with David that allowed her to sense his feelings didn’t give her right to think she knew what was going on with me. But from the corner of my eye then, I noticed her and David looking at each other; David's gaze was quick, and Emily’s response—looking into her plate—made my spine straighten.
David? I thought.
What?
Are you holding a private conversation with her?
Who?
Emily!
“Yes, Uncle. Now that the castle is vacant, I was hoping to head out there this week,” he said, ignoring me.
“We have over two hundred prisoners in those cells, Your Majesty,” Walter said. “You will need more than the five men you’ve got to go through their files and determine their right for parole.”
“I’ve been through most of the cases myself already,” he said. “In fact, I sentenced at least a quarter of them, and my uncle the rest. It should take five men only three days to complete the task.”
David?
He kept his eyes on Walter, giving vague details about the members in his ‘clean-out-the-prison’ team.
David, I huffed, slamming my palm onto the table.
Yes.
Yes, what? I shot the thought at him with enough force to almost burst a blood vessel.
Yes. She asked me a question. I answered, he thought.
What question? I asked, cursing the day I ever found out that David could still read Emily’s mind, despite her being a vampire.
It’s not relevant.
My breakfast suddenly hit my gut like an iron hammer. Why?
Because.
David, you can’t have private conversations with Emily and expect me not to wonder what it’s about. What if I did that with Mike—or Jason? I waited, getting madder by the second.
She just asked if everything between you and I was okay, he finally responded.
And . . . why would she ask that?
She thinks I’m being cruel. He smiled across at me. That I forced you to come to breakfast.
What makes her think that?
He laughed to himself—his secret smile stealing my heart. Because she knows you. Knows you’d never get out of bed this early without a fight.
I shrugged. Can she read your thoughts now, too?
No.
Are you going to tell her I can?
He turned his head and replied to Arthur’s question. I half expected to have to wait for his answer, but it came through while he was talking, a skill I had not yet mastered.
I sighed, picking up my spoon to eat the porridge again. He was right. It could be dangerous for anyone to be aware that he and I had any more power than they already knew about. In this society, I was starting to understand why everyone kept their secrets. It seemed less lonely, though, knowing I wasn’t the only one who didn't know who to trust. And I was glad David didn’t even trust Emily with the secret of his new powers. She was already two steps too deep into David’s circle of trust. Arm’s-length was the best place to keep her.
“What is with you, Ar?” Mike caught the bitterness in my turned lip, reaching across to take Emily’s hand, despite that she hadn't actually seen me look at her that way.
“Nothing.” I picked up my spoon again and gracelessly shovelled the slop into my gob, stealing myself a moment inside my own head.
The morning light moved across the glossy floorboards of the Great Hall in giant rectangles, spilling over the table and the vampires like they were nuisances in its path, warming one side of the room, giving halos to the heads closest to the giant windows. I turned my gaze to the painting behind me—the giant oil depiction of Lilith mounting the fireplace—and gave her a weak smile, wondering if she’d hated keeping up with appearances as much as I did. She didn’t smile back—not any more than she usually did and, even then, it was fake—a waning smile frozen in time, as if she’d sat for that portrait on a day that had broken her heart. Now, it sat gloriously overlooking the Great Hall and all its occupants, but I got the feeling she just wanted to be covered over and stored in a dark room—away from it all.
A bright flicker of white light flashed across her nose for a second, blinding me as I turned back to face the front. I put my hand up to shield my eyes, frowning at Jase until I saw his smile, saw his gaze flick to the silver culprit, floating a few inches into the air above the table, shining the glare in my direction.
What are you doing?
David looked up. What do you mean?
I wasn't talking to you.
His head turned slowly to look at Jason. “Brother,” he said in a tone so sharp the spoon fell onto the tabletop with a clunk.
Only a few people in their immediate vicinity noticed, but respectfully averted their eyes and attention until David drew his murderous gaze back from Jason. But the sheepish smile Jason flicked my way then made me smile, and now I couldn't quite drop it. It might have been an unofficial, albeit firm, ruling that he and I couldn't be friends, but that didn't mean he was gone. He was still here for me, and I felt that, even if I wasn’t allowed to.