The formal receiving room had been decorated for seduction.
Not Cordelia's seduction — she had no intention of being seduced by a man whose idea of romance involved taxidermy — but the seduction of an alliance. Her father had spent the morning transforming the room into what he apparently believed was the aesthetic ideal of the Crimson Court: black candles in iron holders, dark velvet draped over every surface, a centrepiece of dead roses arranged in a silver bowl, and, inexplicably, a stuffed raven perched on the mantelpiece that Valerius had borrowed from a taxidermist in town and that looked less like a symbol of dark elegance and more like a bird that had died of embarrassment.
"The raven is crooked," Livia observed from the doorway, where she was leaning against the frame with the boneless slouch of a teenager who had perfected the art of looking bored while being absolutely fascinated. "Its left eye is higher than its right. It looks drunk."
