Brum relaxed. “You deal unfairly with yourself. You would look most fetching in ivory silk.”
Nina wished she could blush on command. She had to settle for a maidenly giggle and staring down at the toes of her shoes. “The fashions of the court are far more suited to Hanne’s figure.”
Nina expected Brum to wave away her talk of fashion, but instead the glint in his eye was calculating. “You are not wrong. Hanne has flourished under your tutelage. I never believed she could make much of a match, but you’ve changed all of that.”
Nina’s gut twisted. Maybe she was jealous. The idea of Hanne being paired off with some nobleman or military commander tied her stomach in knots. But what if Hanne could be happy here, happy with her family, with a husband to love her? What if she could finally find the acceptance she’d sought for so long? Besides, it wasn’t as if she and Nina were going to have a future together, since Nina had every intention of murdering her father.
“You look so fierce,” Brum said with a laugh. “Where do your thoughts carry you?”
To your prolonged humiliation and early death. “I hope she finds someone worthy of her. I only want the best for Hanne.”
“As do we both. And we shall have some new dresses cut for you as well.”
“Oh no, that isn’t necessary!”
“It is what I wish. Would you deny me?”
I would push you into the sea and do a jig as you drowned. But Nina turned her eyes up to him, wide and thrilled, a young woman flustered and overwhelmed by a great man’s attention. “Never,” she said on a breath.
Brum’s eyes strayed slowly over her face, her neck, and lower. “Fashion may favor a trimmer figure, but men do not care for fashion.”
Nina wanted to crawl right out of her skin, but she knew this game now. Brum wasn’t interested in beauty or desire. All he cared about was power. It excited him to think of her as prey, pinned by his gaze as a wolf might trap a lesser creature with its paw. It pleased him to think of offering Mila gifts she could never afford, of making her grateful.
So she would let him. Whatever it took to find Vadik Demidov, to help the Grisha, to free her country. A reckoning was coming. She was not going to forgive Brum for his crimes even as he sought to commit new ones. Whatever she might feel for Hanne, she intended to see Brum dead, and she doubted Hanne would be able to forgive her for that. The divide was too great. The Shu had a saying, one she’d always liked: Yuyeh sesh. Despise your heart. She would do what had to be done.
“You are too good to me,” she simpered. “I am not deserving.”
“Let me be the judge of that.”
“They’re beginning!” said Ylva giddily, oblivious to the overtures her husband was making mere feet from her. Or was she? Maybe she was glad to have Brum’s attention elsewhere. Or maybe she’d overlooked the man’s flaws for so long that it had become a well-worn habit.
Nina was glad for the interruption. It gave her a chance to assess the crowd in the ballroom as one by one the girls approached the fountain at the center of the room, where they were met by the crown prince. Prince Rasmus was of average height for a Fjerdan, but eerily gaunt, his face a portrait in angles, the cheekbones high and sharp. He had only just turned eighteen, but his slight build and the tentative way he moved gave him the look of someone much younger, a sapling that wasn’t quite used to the weight of its branches. His hair was long and golden.
“Is the prince ill?” Nina asked quietly.
“Every day of his life,” Brum said with contempt.
Redvin shook his grizzled head. “The Grimjers are a warrior’s line. Only Djel knows how they shat out a weakling like that.”
“Don’t say that, Redvin,” said Ylva. “He endured a terrible illness when he was a child. It was a blessing he survived.”
Brum’s expression was unforgiving. “It would have been a greater mercy if he’d perished.”
“Would you follow that boy into battle?” Redvin asked.
“We may have to,” said Brum. “When the old king passes.”
But Nina didn’t miss the look that Brum exchanged with his fellow drüskelle. Would Brum consider colluding against the prince?
Nina tried not to look too interested and kept her attention on the processional of young women. Once each girl reached the fountain, she curtsied to the royal family observing from the dais beyond, and then curtsied again to the prince. Prince Rasmus took a pewter cup from a tray held by a servant beside him, dipped it into the fountain, and offered it to the girl, who drank deeply of Djel’s waters before returning the cup, curtsying once more, then backing down the aisle the way she’d come—careful never to turn her back on the Grimjer royals—where she was greeted by family and friends.