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A priest of Aharté, she thinks, for he wears a simple sleeveless wrapped robe in contemplative style, in burnt red like the Silent priests and guards of the Vertex Seal.

Lean, and shapely as a dancer. His face is clean-shaven, as Silent priests prefer, his black hair loose, thick, and slightly waved around his ears and neck.

His eyes are a dark brown with a flare of perfect mirané-brown flecks around the iris, and tilted up at the outer corners as they balance evenly over wide cheekbones.

Beneath a straight nose his lips rest in a gentle frown.

A scatter of black freckles spreads from his left cheek out over his temple, marring the easy symmetry of his face.

Concentric four-point stars have been painted in mesmerizing green and blue along his same cheek, to distract from the iconic freckles.

He’s magnificent. Iriset wants to touch him.

With her open mouth. She wants to do more than that.

He calmly allows her to stare, and Iriset only late remembers she’s not supposed to , and hides her eyes with her fingers.

The man asks again, “May I?”

Iriset nods, forgetting what he wants, and he takes her stinging hand away from her face, cupping it in his own.

All Iriset’s willpower is required not to moan.

A slight frown bends his mouth as he studies her flesh.

She forces herself to look, too, at the tiny dots of blood on the underside of her knuckles.

“Garnet, do you have…?” He glances out at the garden and Iriset’s eyes follow to where the large Garnet méra Be? stands beside Sidoné with his hands on his hips. The priest at Iriset’s side trails off, shrugs. “She’s bleeding.”

“Glorious Silence!” cries Amaranth. “What are you doing to my handmaiden?”

Iriset opens her mouth to speak, but her hand is still cupped in his, and she can’t breathe very well as understanding batters against her lust.

“I startled her,” the man says, abashed.

Garnet strides to the fountain, tearing off a section of the red cloth mask that flutters at the side of his head. Iriset stares at him, the better to avoid glancing anywhere else. He rinses it, wets it again, and brings it over, scowl carefully modulated.

“Thank you,” says Lyric méra Esmail His Glory. Then the Vertex Seal gently dabs blood from Iriset’s skin.

Lyric presses the cloth to her palm, holding it there.

Iriset clutches at her vellum, her charcoal stick trapped against the material, likely smudging her roses.

When he raises his eyes to hers, Iriset immediately drops her gaze.

She can’t tug the end of her mask across her face because both her hands are extremely occupied.

“You’re Iriset mé Isidor,” the Vertex Seal says. “I’m very glad to meet you finally. My sister and Ambassador Erxan, and even my mother, speak well of you.”

“Oh.” It’s all she can manage. And breathy at that.

Rising force dominates his inner design. It lifts the design around him, lightening her thoughts: She’s dizzy, dazed.

“What are you drawing?”

Iriset gently frees her hand from his and offers him the vellum book. “Flowers,” she says, eyes safely on his hands as he accepts the book and smooths two graceful fingers along the edge of the vellum.

“You’re very detailed,” he says.

“Details are where the design appears.” Thank Silence she can finally complete a sentence.

“Do you see knots or hints of the larger patterns of Holy Design when you study these smallest creatures?”

“I haven’t looked for larger patterns, Your Glory,” she says softly. Lying. Demure. She is not Silk. She cannot have this man.

The silence stretches between them, and Iriset draws careful breaths both to balance herself—to pull inward and away from his strong rising force—and to hide the depth of her uncertainty.

It is too easy to sit beside him. He held her hand and holds still much worse within his purview.

Her father’s future. The entire empire’s future!

She’s too off-balance from her morning with the Moon-Eater.

How could she have let this happen today of all days?

She’s unprepared to coax him, to be sweet or even figure out the best approach to his sympathy.

“You draw with Erxan,” Lyric says.

“That is how I met the ambassador, yes. I get along well with him.”

“And he with you. He believes Singix will like you.”

Iriset wants to cheer, Yes, yes, bring me closer to you , but she only lowers her eyes. This man, this Vertex Seal, will marry Singix of the Beautiful Twilight. “Erxan speaks highly of her. I hope I can have the chance to be liked by someone like her.”

In the quiet following, Iriset glances up. He’s watching her with a tiny frown. She couldn’t have said anything wrong.

Finally, the Vertex Seal says, “May I ask a favor of you, Iriset?”

“You do not need to ask, but only command, Your Glory.” She struggles to keep the words from biting. To remain soothing and soft.

Lyric pauses. He turns a page in her vellum book, revealing an elaborate drawing of butterfly wings.

Next, the repeating patterns of stars in the lattice of her bedchamber window.

Next, a study of a coiled stem of needle sage.

Next, repeating curves of flow force, like waves, with tiny numbers counting off the rhythm of that strange almost-breath Iriset hears humming through the palace architecture at night.

There the Vertex Seal stops. His posture is so very straight, as if even in repose he can’t relax his design. “I would prefer to ask, as my question is of a personal rather than princely design.”

A thrill of ecstatic sparks in her, helping her resettle herself like a rock tossed into a still pool. He wants a favor from her. “Ask, then, Your Glory,” she murmurs.

“My sister has always judged people well. Though your provenance is obviously questionable, I have yet to be wrong when I trust Amaranth’s opinion.”

He pauses to look at her.

Iriset quickly looks down. “Her Glory saved me. I can only balance her trust with trustworthiness.”

“Yes.” The Vertex Seal adds no more.

“You… have a favor to ask, Your Glory?”

He makes a light sound that in anyone else Iriset would think was a tucked-away laugh. “Will you allow Erxan to teach you some Ceres? I would like for my wife-to-be to have folk to speak with in her home tongue when she arrives.”

Surprised, Iriset barely stops herself from agreeing immediately.

She’d say yes to anything to make him indebted to her, but this has several possible advantages.

New language skills, drawing her closer to the ambassador, and setting her up to befriend the future consort of the Vertex Seal.

“I want to do that, Your Glory. And I will. But…”

Lyric waits as if he has all the time in the world.

Iriset asks with all the hope she can conjure, “May I see my father?”

There’s a pause, and she stares at the knob in his wrist. His hands are so relaxed. “Very well,” he finally says. “Briefly. Tell Sidoné to arrange it.”

“Thank you,” she breathes out, shoulders sinking. Permission to see her father will make disguising him with a craftmask so much easier. A smile grows on her lips.

“Thank you.”

There is so obviously an answering smile in his voice that Iriset looks up, meets his mirané-brown eyes for a flash, then skews her gaze to the black freckles at his cheek and temple. No shape aligns the dots, no pattern she can discern.

His hand lifts and he touches the freckles with two fingers. “Garnet wants me to cover them up completely, as they’re an obvious signal of who I am, my external design. Easily re-created.”

“No,” Iriset answers before she can stop herself.

“They’re asymmetrical, which makes them very difficult to design—for an architect.

Symmetry is a human necessity, differentiating our designs from those of She Who Loves Silence.

A mask of your face would be a challenge, unless there were freckles on both sides, in even numbers.

” She leans nearer than she needs to, counting swiftly.

“Thirteen. A terrible number for architecture.”

With a teasing smile, Iriset flicks a glance at his eyes, then realizes she’s flirting with the Vertex Seal. Over apostasy, of all things.

But Lyric studies her thoughtfully. “I will tell Garnet he should stop pressing Menna to cover my flaws up, then.”

“Only…” Iriset swallows to regain her voice. “Only Aharté is master of asymmetrical design. Rather than a flaw, it is her blessing.”

Something shifts in the gaze of Lyric méra Esmail as she rudely stares, but he says no more.

That night, Iriset begins to draw the eyes of the Vertex Seal.