Ward Against Darkness (Chronicles of a Reluctant Necromancer) by Melanie Card

carried a weapon. The place was safe, relatively speaking.
    Fruits, pastries, and cured meats were spread on a long table, and the room smelled of freshly baked bread mixed with the bittersweet aroma of jahalva—a black beverage preferred for breakfast in the southern principalities. Her stomach rumbled. It had been too long since she’d had a proper meal, but she didn’t know if vesperitti ate normal food as well as their mythical diet of souls.
    The boy left her under the watchful eye of another servant—a middle-aged woman—who stood by the breakfast table presumably to serve the repast. It seemed there wasn’t any place she could go without being monitored. This would make finding Val challenging. She was going to be spending more time than she liked climbing out her bedchamber window and dodging thorny rose bushes.
    She had the servant put food on a plate—she didn’t care what—and sat at a table that gave her full view of the room and both doors. A woman near the patio laughed, her head thrown back, exposing the tanned length of her neck. The man across from her chuckled as well. They seemed an odd pair. She with streaks of white in her dark hair and he barely more than Celia’s age.
    The woman fanned her face with her hand, a genteel motion that accentuated her lack of genteel features. Her face was too broad for true nobility and her clothes—the cloth and cut—suggested a working woman. The man, on the other hand, had the long narrow features of a nobleman with honey-blond, shoulder-length hair.
    A striking figure darkened the hall doorway, and Celia slid her attention to the new arrival. Val. He stood on the threshold of the parlor. His dark gaze landed on her, and his pale brows pinched together.
    Not the expression she’d hoped for.
    She’d hoped for even a hint of the flirtation they’d shared at the Prince of Brawenal’s court a year ago. But something about her troubled him—maybe because he thought she was a vesperitti. But did that mean he figured she was competition for souls, or was he upset she was undead?
    He strode to her table with all the confidence she remembered, but without the cockiness. This wasn’t the carefree man she used to flirt with in the palace. For a heartbeat, she feared her plan to reignite the attraction between them and seduce information from him wouldn’t work.
    “Celia Carlyle. Not the person I ever expected to see at the House of de Cortia. Looks like we’re destined to be together after all.”
    “So it would seem, although I don’t take much stock in destiny.”
    Val flashed his heart-melting smile. “How can you refute it now? You’re here. I’m here. It doesn’t look like you’re leaving anytime soon. I’m sure your father would have given me your hand in marriage eventually.”
    “Oh, eventually. Without a doubt.” She filled her tone with playful sarcasm.
    “I know he has his eye on the Estwinshire estate in southern Brawenal. I’m sure if I’d put that in my next offer he would have taken it.”
    “You would’ve paid a bride price?” That defied all Brawenal custom. Usually the bride’s family set a dowry to attract husbands. “I didn’t realize you felt so strongly about me.”
    He leaned forward, capturing her hands against the tabletop. “There’s something special about you, Celia. Every man in court could see it. And now we find ourselves here and everything—”
    “Everything has changed.”
    “It doesn’t have to be so different. Our…condition has made our old life impossible, but the Goddess has seen fit to bring us back together. Things don’t have to be so difficult anymore.”
    “Yes.” She wanted to ask what he meant by difficult, but had no idea if that would reveal her lack of knowledge about vesperitti.
    The patio door opened, and a blond girl in a yellow day-dress twirled into the room, followed by a tall, dark-haired man. She wasn’t that old, perhaps fourteen or fifteen, and looked familiar. Celia had