‘Of course,’ she added before I could regroup my wits and send them back into battle, ‘you don’t appear to be that frightened of him at all, from what I’ve heard.’ It was an uncharacteristically unsubtle request for more information, that question – an optimistic invitation to tell her exactly what my relationship to Creon Hytherion encompassed. Would a woman like her really be that transparent? I felt like she was spinning the conversation around me, a clever thread here, an innocent question there, and I wouldn’t notice where she was truly going until she started tightening the net around
...more
