“Auriel!” I snapped.
“Okay,” he said, holding up one hand. The other was still around me, grounding me, keeping me from falling off our dragon. “I surrender to you, Lyriana. Truce! Let’s be friends again.”
“You’re impossible,” I said.
The pyramids were growing larger as we moved closer. They housed the library where I’d first met the half-Afeyan. It was in the stacks of scrolls where Ramia had first approached me, and then more recently, proceeded to seek me out, multiple times, trying to convince me to wear Asherah’s chest plate. The chest plate that she’d given to me on my birthday—on Mercurial’s command.
I frowned. “Ramia?”
She looked back again. “Let me guess. A question?” She lifted her eyebrows.
“If I’m allowed. Just … Mercurial is a member of the Star Court,” I said slowly.
“Yes. First Messenger,” she said. “Why?”
“Well, you work with him—with the First Messenger of the Star Court. But you were born into the Moon Court.”
“This all true.” Ramia pursed her lips together. “And?”
I suddenly felt like an idiot. I had no reason to expect Ramia to willingly share her parentage on her own. And it wasn’t like I’d ever asked. But I should have at least known what court she’d come from. I’d never wondered—never even bothered to consider the distinctions between the three. As far as I was concerned, they were all Afeya. I thought they were all the same. But now, the idea of her working with Mercurial, especially whenshe was so high-born of another court, was beginning to sound alarm bells in my mind.
“You work with the Star Court,” I said. “Is that normal? For a princess to work so closely with a … a First Messenger?”
“I only half-Afeyan,” Ramia said. “Remember?”
“Your father isn’t King RaKanan?” Queen Ma’Nia had been married to the King of the Sun Court for centuries.
Ramia made a face of disgust, as if the question were absurd. “How I half-Afeyan if two Afeya parents? RaKanan? No. He not my father.”
“So if you’re half-Afeya, does that make you half-princess?” I asked.
Ramia laughed and scrunched up her face. “Like bastard? No. My mother queen.” She waved a hand in dismissal. “I princess.”
“Then … I mean, who is your father?” I asked.
Ramia snorted. “Some man.” She shrugged her shoulders, unconcerned. “My mother lay with him one time. Then I come.”
“And that’s it? You don’t know who he is? What country? What Ka?”
Ramia shrugged, “Who says he has Ka? Not important. I am my mother’s daughter. And princess. Who care about father?”
I shook my head in annoyance.
“It’s quite common,” Auriel said quietly, his mouth still close to my ear. “Afeya do make life-long commitments like the king and queen, but making a promise for life works a little differently when they live forever. They quite openly take lovers on the side. Have other relationships. What counts is they always return to each other.”
“Oh,” I said. But that still didn’t answer my question. I didn’t care what kind of commitments Afeya made, or how open or closed their marriages were. However different they were from us in that arena, we had other similarities that I was much morefocused on. Like living within the borders of our countries, and forming alliances between them. Showing loyalties to our rulers. I knew the Afeya banded together against Lumeria. But the courts remained separate, not governed under any one entity. There was no Afeyan Empire. Unlike us, none of them had been forced to bend a knee to our Emperor, or any other.
“Does your mother know you work with the Star Court?” I asked, trying for another angle.
Her nostrils flared. “Who you think introduce Mercurial?”
“So your mother works with him, too? With the Star Court’s First Messenger.”
“Work?” Ramia scrunched up her nose. “Together?” She frowned. “Shared goal. More accurate way to describe.”
“And what goal is that?” I asked.
Ramia shook her head. “Not mine to say. I only princess. Enough question. Why not relax? Enjoy ride.” She turned then, and the water dragon dragged its tail before lifting over a current, and splashing us from behind.
