The Palace of Impossible Dreams by Jennifer Fallon Page B

wasn’t enough for me.”
    â€œThat’s really quite sick, you know, Lord Desean.”
    â€œI know. But I just can’t seem to help myself.”
    â€œAs for you,” she said, punching Declan in the arm as she turned away from Stellan, the matter apparently disposed of as far as she was concerned. “How does a man know something like how to bleach hair?”
    â€œMy mother was a whore. I lived in a brothel until I was ten.” He leaned a little closer and said with a conspiratorial smile, “I can tell you all manner of ladies’ beauty secrets.”
    Nyah’s eyes lit up. “Really?”
    â€œ ’Course, it won’t be enough to tempt your new husband, what with his sick preferences and all . . .” Declan was talking to Nyah but he was grinning from ear to ear, and looking straight at Stellan.
    Stellan glared at him, but decided not to buy into the argument. Nyah had an explanation and Declan was having a little fun at his expense. This could have gone a lot worse.
    â€œCan you pierce my ears? Mother would never let me do it.”
    â€œEars? Tides, I can show you how to pierce your nip . . . well, maybe not. But I suppose we can’t do much damage if we just do your ears.”
    â€œThen do it elsewhere,” Stellan commanded, as much to gain some time to think as from his desire to have some space to prepare dinner. “I’ll call you when the food is ready.”
    They needed no further prompting to leave. Declan seemed to understand he wanted time alone, and Nyah was now set on having her ears pierced.
    â€œDid you really grow up in a brothel?” Nyah was asking as Declan herded her outside.
    Stellan didn’t catch his answer. Declan closed the door and left him alone in Maralyce’s small mining cabin with his turnips and the spectre of a future filled with lies, deception, a sham marriage and the threat of constant discovery.
    Except for the turnips
, he decided,
nothing much has changed.

Chapter 11
    â€œI wish to speak with you,” Cydne Medura announced on the evening of their last night onboard ship. “About your future.” The Senestran coast was in sight, the weather muggy and warm and the crew busy preparing the ship for their trip through the reefs and into the sheltered harbour of Port Traeker, on tomorrow’s tide.
    Arkady looked up from the tray of surgical implements she was gingerly retrieving from the bowl of boiling water she was using to sterilise them. He’d spoken in Glaeban, something he only tended to do if he wanted to have a meaningful discussion with her. Although she’d been learning the language, Arkady’s Senestran still wasn’t good enough to hold a conversation of any substance in it. “You mean I
have
a future?”
    â€œYou must stop answering back like that,” he scolded. “Such a response when we get home will get you whipped.”
    â€œYes, master,” she replied.
    â€œAnd taking
that
tone with your betters will only make things worse.”
    â€œWell, that’s my problem, you see,” she said. “I’m not used to having
betters.
”
    He stared at her for a moment with a puzzled frown and then shook his head. “I see, you are being funny. This is your Glaeban sense of humour, yes?”
    â€œI’m sorry, master,” Arkady said, nodding meekly. Cydne had been remarkably good to her, and she didn’t want to alienate him. It was just with Senestra so close and the future so uncertain, she was desperate.
    Now was not a good time, she reminded herself, to let her desperation manifest itself as sarcasm. She had been remarkably lucky so far. Cydne Medura treated her with cautious disdain, torn between her status as a slave and his attraction to her obvious education, something unheard of in his world, where female slaves in particular usually didn’t know how to read.
    â€œI have been thinking about