Why don’t you ask? I only like the way she dances.”

After directing the soldiers he would take with him to prepare themselves for the journey, Janek retreated to his rooms. He slipped inside the door and closed it softly behind him. Despite the limp, a lifetime of habit kept his steps silent. Lorel, seated beside the door to the balcony, didn’t notice him enter. He paused for a moment to watch her work.

One of her costumes was piled on the empty chair beside her. It was his favorite—a pale blue silk that hugged her every curve. The hem was beginning to fray and she’d clearly been working to repair it. But, for the moment, that had been set aside, and instead one his old shirts was spread across her lap.

Last week, he’d torn the sleeve when he’d stopped to help a farmer whose cart had overturned on the road. He’d forgotten about it. The shirt must have gotten shoved into a corner or kicked beneath the bed. He wasn’t generally so careless, but he’d fully intended to consign that particular well-worn shirt to the rag pile.

What had possessed Lorel to mend it?

He stayed in place, neither moving closer to announce his presence nor opening his mouth to ask the question. She bit her lip and leaned forward into a patch of sunlight that sparked her red hair to fire. Her hair was the most remarkable color. In the darkness, it mellowed to a deep, rich brown. Here in the full light of day, the long strands glowed like molten copper.

He stared, caught as he always was by her beauty. A pretty face didn’t sway him as it had when he’d been a younger man. Nowadays, he was inclined to view beauty as either a tool or a weapon, not something to be admired. Lorel was different. With her pale skin and dark luminous eyes, she was unfashionable by every Ghadrian standard of beauty, yet she was undeniably beautiful.

And that was when she was at rest. When she moved… When she moved, she was like nothing he’d ever seen before.

At home, he had his choice of women—the kind who were drawn to power. He’d always had a talent for reading people, and his years spent at enemy courts as Asil’s ambassador had only enhanced that skill. He’d grown accustomed to the fear Ghadrian women were never able to completely hide from him, to the revulsion they didn’t always bother to hide. He walked with a limp and was thick-bodied with the heavy muscles of a common laborer. He was covered with scars and had a broken, hooked nose. At court, Serat, with his slender physique and even features, was regarded with lust. Janek was regarded with wary, grudging respect.

Lorel actually wanted him. Oh, he knew there were other agendas at play. She was poor, and she’d lost her livelihood due to Serat’s heavy-handedness. He represented the empire, which she surely despised. But her desire was real.