His father looked suitably stoic. Or cowed. Rowen was never sure which.
But the painter was rumored to be the finest in the city—and one of the best in the entire region. He had quite the reputation and that mattered far more than accuracy. Lady Burchette had even said once Rowen obtained Jordan’s promise she would arrange to have her included in a brand-new sitting.
His mother had promised Jordan would be as much a part of their family as Rowen felt he was a part of hers.
And now?
It was all ruined.
He growled out his frustration, his hands snapping forward to grab the picture by its frame and dash it onto the floor where he could better dance on his mother’s face. Once she had called Cynthia Astraea her “best of best friends.” And yet she had abandoned her—believed the Tester and accepted the worst of all rumors …
She had not defended her in her time of need.
His fingers tightened on the frame. Just a small move to lift it off the hook and …
“It is a fine portrait.”
He jumped, hands clamping down on the picture in surprise and pulling it free from the wall.
Catrina blinked in surprise.
Rowen swallowed a groan. “Would you”—leave me the hell alone for a while, for once? He stretched his lips into a smile—“like to see it closer?”
She tilted her head. Weighing the scene with glittering eyes. “Why yes,” she said, stepping over so that she stood tucked up into the curve of his side, her skirts pressing against his hip, her shoulder warm against him. “Oh. Wait,” she said, and she ducked under his arm to stand between him and the portrait in his hands.
The change in position was unsettling. Her skirts brushed the front of his trousers and her perfume filled the small space between them. Then she spun in the circle formed by his arms and the huge portrait and managed to press her bodice—was something that low cut truly the fashion of the day? he wondered—against his chest. “Remarkable,” she whispered, batting her eyelashes, her nose nearly at his chin as she looked up at him from beneath lacy lashes.
She leaned in, stretched up …
Rowen belched and she shrieked, engulfed in a scent that surely clashed with the bouquet of her perfume.
Straining his shoulder with the weight of the picture, Rowen’s right hand released it to allow Catrina some distance. He turned back to the wall and hung the portrait again. He belched again. “Yes. Nearly as remarkable as the cucumber sandwiches I had at the Astraea estate—they keep”—he belched once more and rapped on his chest with a fist as he turned back to face her—“talking to me.”
“Oh, Rowen,” Catrina said, pulling her fan free to move the offensive air away. “Whatever would your mother say?”
“She would say, ‘Dear heavens, Rowen, have you not yet managed to come to grips that your innards are not capable of appropriately processing cucumbers?’” He shrugged. “I will surely spend more than my fair amount of time in the water closet as a result.”
Catrina wrinkled her nose.
“And God help whoever attempts to use it after me—I can curl your hair without pins or presses,” he said, pressing his lips into a firm line and nodding with an expression frighteningly akin to pride.
Catrina fanned faster. “Rowen, that is highly inappropriate talk—offensive talk—to share with a lady.”
“Then perhaps you’d better go, because I do not feel a desire to be tremendously proper on this eve.”
“Oh. I see.”
Rowen turned to head down the hall. She had not moved farther, so he determined it was up to him to put greater distance between them. But only a few feet toward his next destination he heard the clatter of her heels as she raced to catch up.
“Perhaps just this once I might be a bit improper, too,” she suggested with a wink.
Inwardly he groaned and instead of turning left at the next intersection of hallways, he turned right, pausing at the top of a set of stairs.
“Excellent well,” he said, sounding far heartier than the shadows in his eyes proved him to be. “Let’s get drunk.”
Catrina startled at the suggestion, stepping back from the top of the stairs and eyeing Rowen in disbelief. “Get drunk? Imbibe?”
“Imbibe our asses off,” he clarified.
Her eyes shot wide open. “Why, Rowen … Such language.”
“I’m ranked Sixth of the Nine. We imbibe. We smoke. We curse. Jordan understood that.”
She opened and closed her fan again and again. “Well, Jordan had reason to understand such behaviors, considering the taint of her blood.”
“Do not.”
“Do not what?”
“Do not speak that way about Jordan. You know her better than anyone. You were her friend first. You introduced us—”
“And I am so awfully sorry for that, Rowen. I nearly brought you to your ruin because I made a poor choice of a friend.”
“No. Do not do that. Jordan isn’t perfect.”
“Wasn’t perfect,” Catrina corrected.
“Why are you putting her in past tense? She’s not dead.”
“She must be to us,” Catrina said with a discerning pout. “What is your family’s motto?”
“Justice foremost.”
“And that is what this is, dear Rowen. Swift and terrible justice, but justice nonetheless. Imagine if she had been allowed to continue unfettered? What a danger to society might she have become? We have enough problems with the Frost Giant lurking about the streets, but a full Weather Witch?”
Blinking at her, he wrapped his fingers around the staircase’s broad wooden banister so he wouldn’t wrap them around her slender neck. “They are wrong. Jordan is no Weather Witch and they will discover their mistake soon enough and make things right.”
“Then how do you explain the storm she summoned—or the sparks the Tester’s touch and Test elicited? How, Rowen?”
He shook his head, hair flopping into his eyes again. “I don’t know. Yet. Maybe these things happen. Maybe there was another Weather Witch there that they somehow overlooked but it appeared Jordan was the likeliest candidate. Maybe it’s really me! Or maybe,” he said, leaning down to be on eye level with her, “maybe it’s you.”
She hopped back from him as quickly as if he’d belched. “Don’t be so absolutely ridiculous!”
He descended onto the first step.
“She is gone, Rowen,” Catrina insisted. “And we are both better for it. Now you have a better chance at raising your rank.”
He turned and looked at her, his eyes the coolest blue yet. “What do you mean?”
“Be honest with yourself, Rowen. You were pursuing Jordan because you want to step up—not for any other reason. You’re a social climber like the rest of us. You never wanted Jordan—and why would you—she’s as petty as she is pretty—”
He bounded back up the stairs and touched his nose to hers. “Stop now before I stop you.”
Her mouth opened. And closed wordlessly.
“She is our friend.”
“She was a poor substitute for what a real friend should be and you know it,” Catrina challenged. “She whined, she worried, she put herself first—even to our detriment. Showcasing herself the way she did! That you cannot deny. But now she’ll understand what it is to be last. She will be better for being humbled.”
Rowen’s eyes were mere slits. “If I ever find that you are connected to her family’s ruin…”
“Rowen! You are insane! Why—”