It was a test.

What had seemed a passing fancy not long ago was now the most logical thing Eloisa could conceive of. She was unconscious on the floor in The Cloister, and the goddess had created this elaborate fantasy to test her faith. The war in Atolia, her father’s death, her wretched brother, they were nothing more than plot devices to make the illusion seem more real. It was all to make the insane circumstances that had led to her leaving the tower seem believable. And up until that moment, it had been working quite well, but now Phaeda had gone too far and Eloisa could no longer suspend her disbelief.

Eloisa could not pinpoint what it was that made a man handsome, but whatever well-hewn feature or divine symmetry made it so, Lord Caleth possessed it in excess. His handsomeness was so egregious that even staring at him felt sinful, but it was not enough to deter her gaze.

Feeling perturbed and something else she couldn’t identify, she let herself peruse his body, taking him in before the illusion crumbled around her.

His dark outfit was tailored to every contour of his body. He was as tall as she might have expected, but also lean; broader of chest and more heavily muscled than Philomen, yet not so large that he looked like an oaf.

In her fantasies of men, Eloisa had always imagined males with tanned skin such as her own, but the sovereign’s skin was polished ivory and every bit as beguiling, perhaps more so because he looked so real.

There was not a hint of frizz or a single lock out of place in his ebony curls, which fell just short of touching his broad shoulders. He had no beard, but a shadow of hair ran along his sweeping jawline, framing a set of wide, generous lips. Swooped brows rested over blue eyes that regarded Eloisa with an expression she could not ascribe a name to.

Despite the beauty of his physical form, the very first thing Eloisa had noticed was his aura. It was empyrean, the ethereal white that graced the auras of all great rulers. It framed his head, neck, and shoulders, rays flaring out like the corona of an eclipse.

“Eshandru. Jedoraja ka f’ast et?”

Eloisa found herself mesmerized by his mouth as he spoke. His lips barely moved, and she could see only a hint of teeth behind them.

“The sovereign is pleased to meet you,” Jedora said, her speech falling exceptionally flat. “He would like to know if I am treating you well.”

Eloisa had a hard time finding her voice, and when she spoke it seemed that her mouth had gone as dry as wheatgrass.

“Not particularly.”

As Jedora hesitated, Eloisa could almost feel the disdain wafting from her. She must have conveyed Eloisa’s response correctly, because after giving her translation the sovereign’s brows rose and he let out a short, but genuine-sounding laugh. Until that moment, Eloisa had not known that even laughter could be handsome, or that a sound could put heat into her body.

“Cre sru sejanesh ka shta sek halshta sorujn.”

Jedora’s lips flattened. “He says he would not have believed you if you said otherwise.”

The sovereign lifted a hand, motioning for Eloisa to join him in the center of the room.

“Drushta.”

Eloisa went to him without thought, but regained her wits along the way and stopped with an arm’s length of distance between them. She was relieved when he made no effort to close the gap, because she wasn’t sure she’d have the willpower to move away from him.

“Ketshta ka hanjeta?” he asked.

Jedora said, “Is your room to your liking?”

Eloisa thought back to her room, but all she could remember was the hearth and a vague impression of red carpeting.

“I scarcely noticed it, except that it was warm,” she told him.

Jedora translated, “Jesarnesh to Cal’en Fasha ka fresundra et.”

Eloisa looked away from Lord Caleth just in time to see Jedora’s aura color with a lie. Whatever she said, it caused Lord Caleth to frown, his aura taking on the faintest glow of disappointment.

At once uneasy and indignant, Eloisa wanted badly to correct Jedora, but she had no idea what had been said or how to communicate with the sovereign. Furthermore, she couldn’t let on that she knew Jedora was lying, because on the off chance that this wasn’t an illusion, it would open her to scrutiny she could not afford.

Lord Caleth said, “Cuell cre sentre ka yenaskshta?”

“He wanted to know what pleases you,” Jedora said.

“What pleases me?” Eloisa repeated, looking between the two of them. “That doesn’t seem to follow the course of the conversation.”

Jedora’s aura vibrated with amusement. “Are you calling the sovereign a poor conversationalist?”

No, I am calling you a liar, she wanted to say. While she tried to think of a way she might express this without revealing her abilities, Jedora went on talking with the sovereign.

“Keinkta ka vesaruntadren,” she said.

His aura flickered with skepticism. “Halka so?”

Jedora rolled her shoulders, appearing outwardly calm, but the amusement had drained from her aura.

She said, “Resurkasta Atolian ka asana. Mesurta sos.”

The sovereign’s skepticism bled into red anger, but the color did not overtake his aura. In fact, Eloisa had yet to see his aura change entirely. It was a sign that he had a steady mind. It was something she’d seen in some Maidens and a handful of the Sisters.

Eyes narrowing on Jedora, Lord Caleth said, “Mesurkasta sos ka tashna jes halsota. Shta ka cre yadrojnesh.”

Jedora lowered her eyes, her aura wilting with embarrassment. “Vayt.”

“Revasoj ka kta.”

In an odd change of roles, it was Jedora who now seemed childish as she turned to Eloisa and muttered, “I apologize for not being kind to you, and for not adequately conveying your responses.”

Though she understood none of what had been said, Eloisa realized that Lord Caleth had been able to ascertain that Jedora had been lying. She wondered how he’d done it and if he had some sort of power similar to her own.

“I accept your apology,” Eloisa replied, not sure what else to say.

The pair exchanged a few more words in their native tongue. Eloisa found it fascinating to hear them converse. The language was so different than any she had ever heard, at times hard and at times as subtle as a breath. The way they spoke the language was also different than the way she’d heard the guards speak. Whereas the speech of the guards had seemed stilted and guttural, Lord Caleth and Jedora seemed to glide over each word, letting it flow easily into the next.

She was jarred from her musings and her contemplation of the sovereign’s lips when Jedora addressed her again.

“The sovereign says that he knows it must be disconcerting to be in a new land, away from all that is familiar to you. He hopes that meeting here has put you at ease.”

Like her bedroom, Eloisa had hardly noticed anything about the room since stepping into it. Nerves, and then Lord Caleth, had completely absorbed her focus.

She glanced around at the spacious room, its stone walls coming around them in a circle. It was well-lit, but she saw none of the blue spheres that illuminated the rest of the fortress.

When she glanced back at Lord Caleth, he was smiling. Like everything else about him, his smile was muted, only the barest curve of his lips, but no less effective. His eyes slid upwards, and then back down to meet hers, and Eloisa finally caught on.

In her peripheral vision, it had seemed that the ceiling was open to the sky. In hindsight, it was a silly assumption, given that the air around them was still and free of swirling snowfall.

When she looked up, Eloisa was staring into the heavens.

A great arc stretched across a sky that was more starlight than pitch. She could see the stars by the millions, as well as the celestial dusts and gasses that seemed to connect them in a pearlescent chain. Beyond the foremost star systems, she could make out the distant spheres of white that marked far-off galaxies.

“Is this the end of it?” she murmured, half-expecting Phaeda’s face to emerge from the cosmos and dispel the illusion.

Jedora and the sovereign exchanged words, and then Jedora said, “If it is not to your liking, there is a more impressive observatory on the other side of the city. The sovereign can take you there once the weather permits a good viewing.”

Eloisa then became aware of the glass that covered the ceiling. Like the spheres that housed the glowing beetles, it was a lens. Its design was not to magnify the light, but the sky above. Around the edges, where the lens thinned, she could see the accumulations of snow.

“I like it very much,” she said. “It’s beautiful.”

Jedora translated, and Eloisa earned another smile from Lord Caleth.

“Jas oserk’a shta ka haktre?”

Jedora said, “Is it more impressive than your own observatory?”

Eloisa could only stare at him, knowing full well that she looked like an idiot. It took a full minute, and Jedora repeating the question, for her to understand what he meant.

‘I have told the sovereign that father favored you. He indulged your passions for astronomy and mathematics, and permitted you to remain unmarried so that you could devote yourself to your studies.’

Philomen had told her that, though she’d barely registered the words as they’d come after his slap. The sovereign believed that she was some sort of star reader, when in fact she knew very little about the cosmos.

She knew that in order to answer his question, and the many questions he’d have that would likely put her in a similar position, Eloisa would have to dance around the truth.

Dancing truth, as it was referred to in the tower, was expressly forbidden amongst Children and Daughters, and frowned upon among Sisters. For Maidens, who needed to interact with the outside world, it was permitted only under circumstances that would jeopardize the tower or its inhabitants.

Dancing truth was different than painting it. When an answer was painted, it was still truthful, but spoken in a manner meant to persuade a certain point of view. To dance truth was to fail to give a direct answer to a question, and with the express purpose of evading the truth.

Eloisa was no Maiden, but in a broad sense, revealing her background would not only spell the end of her engagement, but also jeopardize Atolia, and by proxy, the tower. Though the rationalization stretched the limits of what she considered appropriate, she decided that dancing truth was the only option.

She said, “I have never seen the stars with such clarity.”

Eloisa held her breath as she waited for his response, certain he would see through her deception. But his answer indicated otherwise.

Jedora said, “He says you are welcome to come here whenever it pleases you. Or anywhere within the fortress. You may think of Cal’en Fasha as your home…”

Trailing off, Jedora’s brows creased and her aura flared with frustration and indignation.

The sovereign gave a slight nod and repeated his last statement. With a grimace, Jedora translated.

“You may think of Cal’en Fasha as your home, as it will be once we are wed.”

Eloisa had no trouble grasping the significance of what he’d said. She looked at Lord Caleth, whose austere aura gave away nothing, and then at Jedora, who was fuming behind her cool façade.

“I was under the impression that marriage was not yet decided. That we would be courting,” Eloisa said.

Jedora translated her words, and then the sovereign’s response. “He says you will proceed with the courtship as planned, but as of now he sees no reason why you won’t be wed within a fortnight.”

Eloisa’s anxiety returned. Somehow, between seeing Lord Caleth and the time she’d spent talking to him, she had lost focus on why she was there. The man before her intended to court and marry her in less time than it took to write a properly cited counter-truth.

She blurted, “You see no reason? You haven’t even asked me if I wish to marry you.”

She regretted her words immediately, not because of any offense they might cause, but because she was not in a position to say no and they all knew it. To decline the marriage was to decline the military support that Atolia so desperately needed and it was to decline the loan that would aid Lusia.

If this was a test, then choosing to marry him would cause her to fail, not because she was choosing to wed—that failure would come when she laid in his bed—but because saying she would marry him would be choosing her family over her faith.

“Shta ka’s?”

“Do you want to marry him?” Jedora translated.

“Does it matter what I say?”

Part of her hoped it didn’t, because the decision would be out of her hands.

Lord Caleth nodded, his aura giving nothing away. “Vayt.”

“Yes,” Jedora said.

Family or faith.

Both the sovereign and Jedora waited in silence as Eloisa considered her response, and she felt no pressure to answer in haste. She used the time to give her circumstances proper thought, and the situation became clear to her.

If it was a test and she said yes, the worst that could happen was that she would wake in The Cloister to find that she had failed and would have to repeat her term as a Daughter.

If it wasn’t a test and she said yes, Atolia’s suffering would be greatly eased, at least for a time. If she said no, not only would the nation suffer for it, but she’d likely be sent back to Philomen, and there was no telling how he would punish her, or who he would seek to marry her off to next.

Eloisa looked up at the man standing before her, handsome and majestic in his bearing. On her own, she could not have imagined a more appealing husband, but she was not so foolish as to consider only his appearance.

Lord Caleth had lived a great many centuries. He had gained his position by killing his king, and then killing every person that had stood in the way of his ceaseless need for conquest. To him, Eloisa would just be means to an end, a way for him to acquire his next piece of land. There was darkness beneath his handsome façade, and no matter how kindly he seemed to treat her, Eloisa could never allow herself to forget that.

“Yes,” she said, looking him in the eyes. “Vayt.”