Kushiel's Mercy

her?”
    Sidonie kissed my throat. “Formal.”
    I ran a lock of her hair through my fingers. “She wants me to speak to a Priest of Elua.”
    She nodded. “I told you I’d been working to gain the support of the priesthood while you were gone. If they’re convinced that what’s between us is genuine, it will make it harder for her to oppose it.”
    “And I’m to convince them? Seems I’m expected to do a good deal of convincing these days.” I traced the line of her brows, so similar to my own. “What of you?”
    “Oh, I’ve already done my part, at least with the priesthood.” Sidonie turned her head to kiss my palm, then smiled at me. “They’re sure of me. Now it falls to you to convince them that this isn’t part of an evil scheme to gain the throne by seducing me and winning my heart.” She took my hand in hers, kissing the tips of my fingers.
    The pulse of desire quickened in me. “Anyone fool enough to think that doesn’t know you very well,” I said, my voice sounding rough in my ears.
    “True.” Sidonie glanced up at me, then slid my index finger into her mouth and sucked on it, just long enough to turn desire’s pulse into a throbbing, thundering drumbeat. Her black eyes sparkled with wicked amusement. “But, then, most people don’t.”
    I made a wordless sound, stooped, and scooped her into my arms. Sidonie laughed softly, looping her arms around my neck as I carried her toward the bedchamber, kissing her.
    “I thought you were ravenous,” she teased.
    I nudged the bedchamber door open. “It can wait.”

Two
    So began our life of uneasy stalemate at Court.
    Sidonie and I neither hid nor flaunted our relationship. Everyone knew, of course. But since Ysandre had chosen, at least for the time, to treat it as though it didn’t exist, it wasn’t discussed openly, at least not in earshot of anyone who might report to the Queen.
    It was discussed a great deal in private. It was discussed with glee by young nobles engaged in the Game of Courtship, many of whom were surprisingly supportive, reveling in a tale of tragic romance. They were too young to remember the Skaldi invasion, which had happened before I was born. Melisande Shahrizai was only a name, a story. She’d been in exile for over twenty years, first in the Temple of Asherat in La Serenissima, and then vanishing to Elua-knows-where.
    But there were plenty of others old enough to remember, and many of them discussed it with mistrust and suspicion. Not all of them. For every D’Angeline who regarded me as the potentially traitorous spawn of Melisande Shahrizai and Benedicte de la Courcel— who had only escaped being convicted of treason by virtue of dying before he could be tried—there was another who regarded me as the foster-son of Phèdre nó Delaunay and Joscelin Verreuil, undeniably heroes of the realm.
    Phèdre did meet with Ysandre. She had been the Queen’s confidante for a long time, and she could be damnably persuasive. Not this time.
    “She claims I’m too close to the matter to be an objective judge when it comes to Imriel,”
    she said, frustrated.
    “She has a point, love,” Joscelin observed. He put up his hands in a peaceable gesture when Phèdre raised her brows at him. “You and I and everyone under this roof know that you’re right. But in Ysandre’s mind, you’d defend Imri under any circumstances.”
    “She’s scared.” I toyed with one of the quince tarts that Eugènie had made in honor of my visit, the second visit that week. “For ten years, she’s had people like Barquiel L’Envers telling her that she was nursing a serpent in the bosom of House Courcel. Now it looks as though I’ve proved them right.”
    “Sinking your fangs deep into her heir’s tender breast,” Ti-Philippe commented.
    I flushed. “In a manner of speaking.”
    He eyed me with amusement. “Or not.”
    “Well, she’ll have to listen to the priesthood if they choose to speak on your behalf,”
    Phèdre mused. “That was a shrewd thought on Sidonie’s part.”
    “What do you plan on telling them?” Joscelin asked.
    I shook my head. “I’ve no idea.”
    I had indeed received a request from Brother Thomas Jubert, the senior member of the Great Temple of Elua here in the City, summoning me to an audience in two days’ time. I had agreed to it readily. At the time I’d not felt apprehensive, but as the meeting approached that began to change. If the priesthood did choose to give us their blessing, well