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hoped he was right.
    She swatted his arm playfully. “Please, sir, I’m too plain to interest Roane. Look at all the beautiful women that surround him!”
    Also vapid and without strategy, no doubt. Silly chits.
    “Now you’re fishing for compliments.” He shook his head. “You’re breathtakingly gorgeous and you know it. With your grace and beauty and the strength of your magick, you shall soon command fashion here at Court. All the women will wish for a slender body with plump, kissable breasts, for hair that’s long and light, and dove-gray eyes, not to mention a countenance as cool and detached as your own.”
    “You flatterer! And what’s all this about coolness? You’ve mentioned it twice now.”
    His expression turned serious. “I only flatter so I may procure a dance with you this evening, Evangeline.”
    More like a place in her bed tonight.
    “Tadui, you’re evading my question.”
    “If I answer may I have a dance?”
    She gave him a wide smile. “You, Tadui, may have a dance regardless.” He had a hot rivalry with Roane, so dancing with him was only to her advantage. It did not hurt that she truly did enjoy his company. It was unfortunate he was not closer to the throne.
    “Very well, but I’m sure you’ve already heard the theory.”
    “Theory?”
    “They say that magick wielders often experience a countereffect of their talents. For example, one who can change the shape of objects is often far less malleable within his own character. One who can sculpt illusion from light can see the truth in people. And you, my dear, who can channel emotion and affect it within others so easily . . . well, you must see where I’m going with this.”
    Evangeline stared at him for a moment, and then gave a light laugh. “My, what an imagination you have!” She knew, of course, it was true. It was the cost she paid and she was well aware of it.
    “Ah, but it’s true! I have observed it borne out in many of the J’Edaeii. It can be quite vexing at times, but the value of the J’Edaeii, of course, is beyond compare. Especially one like you, Evangeline, who possesses such a rare talent.”
    She took a sip of her wine, then rolled her eyes. “Ah, but, no. We are the lapdogs of the upper class and have no value,” she said, recalling Anatol’s comments. “We live to sit up and beg at the whim of the Edaeii and hope they throw us a bone.”
    She’d angled for laughter, but instead Tadui became grave. “The commoners have been exposed to some dangerous ideas of late. Their thoughts grow too loose, too easy. We managed to politically neutralize the author, but all it did was martyr him. In recent years this man, this Gregorio Vikhin has breathed life back into the text and added texts of his own.” Tadui shook his head. “The situation becomes more explosive by the day.”
    Evangeline understood what he talked of, even though politics and the social conditions of the proletariat held little interest to her. Years back Kozma Nizli had written a book called A Future without Royals that had sparked a tiresome controversy that seemingly had no end. The book had spoken of freedom and equality to all social classes within a democratically elected government.
    It had called the rule of the Edaeii dispassionate and irresponsible. Self-serving and reckless. It called for the lower classes to take control of their future and overthrow their government in favor of democratic rule.
    Nizli had been caught and executed—beheaded—by the Royal Guard for disloyalty to the crown, a fate that Evangeline had found far too extreme. But who was she to judge these things?
    All the copies of the book that could be found had been publicly burned, but illegal hand-copied tomes still circulated. Even after the burning the country had seemed to simmer, or so some said when she’d been unfortunate enough to be caught in conversations about the subject.
    And then this Gregorio Vikhin had popped up. A self-educated commoner