As the Crow Falls | ✔

Chapter Twenty-Three

It wasn't possible. Dinah had lapsed two generations before.

Niccola let the curtain fall over the portrait and stumbled back. She ran into Isaiah, who'd moved up behind her without her noticing.

"You seem ill," he said with a concern that was half affected, half genuine.

Niccola's head snapped around. From up the hallway came footsteps; he was warning her to pull herself together before whoever it was arrived. Niccola clenched his hand as it slipped into her own. It steadied her as she straightened her defensive stance and masked her horror and confusion behind a polite smile. It was hard. She wished for a real mask like the ball had required: a physical barrier to cover her face and rule out the risk of not fooling Isaiah's parents.

Meribah Cantor strode down the hallway with all the air of a queen in her own palace. She was a sturdy woman, broad but only a little round, and she moved with both the grace of royalty and a distinctly Calisian self-importance. She wore a Calisian headscarf, too. Her complexion was dark, and so it was not until she drew within ten paces that Niccola could make out her expression in the dim lamplight. Meribah's face was set in a smile that reached all the way to her eyes.

"Niccola, was it?" she said. "Welcome to our home."

The words were less warm than Meribah's smile, and she paired them with a welcome gesture meant for someone many steps below her station. Heat swallowed Niccola's anxiety. Isaiah had told his parents she was a crow-keep, but no crow-keep would be so patronized in Varna. Let alone one supposedly dating the royal heir. Niccola returned the greeting with one meant for someone only slightly above her station: the kind of greeting any partner of Isaiah's would use with his parents.

Something twitched in Meribah's expression. Before Niccola could decipher it, Meribah turned to Isaiah with a rekindled smile. "Why don't you bring her to the dining hall, dear? The settings have been laid."

Isaiah nodded stiffly and said nothing. As Meribah glided away again, Niccola noticed for the first time that her son stood as tense as if he'd been threatened. The line of his jaw was cut sharp in the low lighting, clenched so tightly, it must have hurt. Only when his mother was gone did he drag his attention from the hallway.

"Speak after," he said. "She will not take kindly if we show up any later than immediately."

Before Niccola could speak, he pulled her towards the dining hall where she suddenly had no desire to be. Now that she'd identified who was behind her sister's disappearance, this dinner was little more than an act. So was her masquerade as a commoner, and as Isaiah's partner, and all the other masks she wore in order to further this investigation. Isaiah had long since confirmed that all records of Dinah in the palace had been destroyed decades ago. He had no reason to curry favor with his parents except to maintain access to the palace treasury, but even that paled now in comparison to Dinah's threat. If he was so sure his parents would respond poorly to this no matter how it was disclosed to them, he needed to take more drastic action himself.

That, or she needed to. Only her promise to him kept Niccola's mouth shut on the topic of her heritage. She wanted her gown. She wanted her sister's shoes. She wanted her hair done up in Varna's royal style. She wanted to stride into this dinner looking every inch a demi-queen, and then she wanted to stand toe to toe with Meribah and demand the respect she deserved and the action a necromantic threat did. If Isaiah would not demand it himself, someone had to.

Those thoughts beat back the cold of the palace, so that by the time they reached the dining hall, Niccola's attention felt sharp as whetted steel. Meribah sat at the head of a long table, her husband at her side. The remaining two chairs stood at the opposite end. It was the second slight in as many minutes. Isaiah moved to that butt end of the table like he knew the chairs were there. Niccola followed only because she was genuinely hungry. If this was how all generations of Calisian royalty responded to those they didn't care for, she could see how someone like Dinah might have broken away in rebellion. It was an insidious thought, but a tenacious one.