Slowly, he turned to face her.
Suddenly and undeniably, he was gazing into the eyes of his charge again, and not, after all, the woman with whom he’d spend the rest of his life. What’s more, he was gazing into the eyes of the enemy—someone who had been on the most intimate terms possible with the very man responsible for all the bloodshed. Someone who—it was clear to him now—had used him toward her (and his, Valdus’) ends.
He marveled at how he’d managed to ignore the utterly obvious: her use of the white ignudi as a kind of courier during their sojourn, the emerald ring which he now noticed was unusually large and had surely contained a homing beacon before its limited power source would have rendered it inert, the obsession with the color green—Valdus’ trademark—all part of a deception
