The Callor estate smelled like money and pretension, which in Selvara were essentially the same thing.
Veyra Vayne stood near the large window at the far end of the receiving hall, a glass of wine she had not touched in twenty minutes held loosely in her hand, watching the city lights glitter against the harbor below. From up here Selvara looked like something out of a story. All golden stone and dark water and the distant silhouettes of ships rocking gently in the evening tide. Beautiful and sprawling and completely indifferent to the gathering happening inside it.
She preferred the view to the company. She suspected the city felt the same.
"You are doing it again."
Senna appeared at her elbow the way she always did, as though she had simply materialized from the nearest surface. She was wearing deep green tonight, her dark hair pinned elaborately, and she had the expression she always wore at these gatherings which was the expression of someone solving a problem they found mildly insulting.
"Doing what?" Veyra asked.
"The window thing. The standing alone and looking at the city like it owes you an apology."
"It does owe me an apology. So does everyone in this room."
Senna took the untouched wine from her hand and replaced it with a small plate of food Veyra had also not asked for. "Eat something. And come back to the party. Lady Morrith was asking about you."
"Lady Morrith asks about everyone. She is collecting information the way other people collect debts."
"Veyra."
"I am perfectly fine where I am."
Senna gave her a look that communicated several things simultaneously, chief among them being that she was not fooled and never had been. Fourteen years of friendship had made Senna fluent in every version of Veyra's fine. This one meant the opposite.
Across the room, without looking, Veyra was aware of Caelan Mors the way you were always aware of a bruise. Not constantly. Just when something pressed the right spot. He was laughing at something, easy and polished, surrounded by people who found him effortlessly charming because he was effortlessly charming. That had never been the problem.
She looked back at the harbor.
"Seraphine is heading this way," Senna said quietly.
Veyra straightened. Adjusted the expression on her face to the one she kept ready for exactly this situation. Smooth and pleasant and completely impenetrable.
Lady Seraphine Callor moved through her own party the way water moved downhill. Finding every crack. Occupying every low point. She was beautiful in the architectural way of things built to impress rather than welcome, and she smiled at Veyra with all her teeth.
"Veyra. I was wondering where you had hidden yourself." Her eyes moved to the window, to the harbor, back to Veyra's face. "Still looking for your dragon god to come sweeping down from the sky?"
The people nearby laughed softly. The specific laugh of people who wanted Seraphine to know they were paying attention.
Veyra smiled. "Still looking for your personality, Seraphine?"
Senna made a sound into her wine glass.
Seraphine's smile didn't move. Nothing about her moved. She was very good at this. "I only ask because I worry. It must be exhausting, believing in things that aren't real." A small pause loaded with performance. "Though I suppose it is preferable to having nothing to believe in at all."
She drifted away. The nearby laughter faded with her.
Veyra's smile stayed exactly where she had put it until Seraphine was out of sight. Then she let it go. Turned back to the window.
"She is going to do that until one of you is dead," Senna said.
"Then I intend to outlive her significantly."
She left the party an hour later, earlier than was strictly polite and later than she had wanted to leave. The night air off the harbor hit her as she stepped outside and she stopped on the steps and simply breathed it. Salt and distance and the particular freedom of being outside instead of in.
Selvara at night was a different city. Quieter. The streets that ran down toward the water were mostly empty at this hour and she walked them slowly, her shoes quiet on old stone, the city opening up around her the way it only did when there was no performance required of her.
She was not headed anywhere specific.
She was headed to the temple. She was always headed to the temple when she told herself she was not headed anywhere specific.
It sat on the highest point of the city the way it always had, the way it had before her grandmother's grandmother was born, gold stone rising against the dark sky with the particular confidence of something that had never once doubted its right to exist. No torches at this hour. No priests. Just the building itself and the city below it and the stars above it and the small shelf near the base of the entrance where people left their offerings.
Veyra reached into the small bag at her hip and took out what she had brought. A piece of amber, smooth and translucent, the color of something caught in perpetual afternoon light. She set it carefully on the shelf among the other things people had left. Flowers gone soft. A coin. Someone's handwritten prayer folded small.
She stood back and looked up at the facade of the temple. At the carved relief above the entrance, worn by centuries of weather into something softer than it had started as. The god it depicted had no face anymore. Just the suggestion of one. Just the outline of something vast looking back.
She had prayed here more times than she could count. For things she could not say to anyone else. For the impossible things and the private things and the things that had no practical solution. She had prayed here after Caelan. She had prayed here for Lirien when her sister was sick two winters ago. She had prayed here at seventeen when she had first understood that the world intended to be disappointing and she had not yet decided what to do about that.
She did not pray tonight. She just looked up at the faceless carving and felt, the way she always felt here, that something was listening.
"You are out late."
She startled badly enough that the amber would have fallen off the shelf if she had still been holding it. She spun toward the voice.
A man stood a few feet away on the temple steps. She had not heard him approach. He was tall, and still in the way of things that did not need to move to occupy space, and he was watching her with an expression she could not immediately read. Not threatening. Not intrusive. Simply present in the way of someone who had been there longer than she had noticed.
She pressed a hand to her chest. "You scared me."
"I apologize," he said. He did not sound particularly alarmed by this. His voice was the kind of voice that belonged to the night air. Like it had always been there and she had simply not noticed it until now.
She looked at him for a moment. He looked back. Neither of them said anything and somehow it was not uncomfortable.
"Do you come here often?" she asked. And then immediately wished she had said literally anything else.
Something moved at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile. The idea of one.
"More than people know," he said.