And yet she continued to make no improvements.
“You were in a state of desperation the first time,” Gael suggested one day, when Faron kicked over one of the wicker chairs on the patio just to feel some satisfaction. “Maybe you need to be in that state again.”
“Iamdesperate,” snapped Faron. “I keep talking to you, don’t I?”
A smile as slow as honey dripped over his face. “I don’t think that has to do with desperation. I think you like talking to me.”
“I thinkyoulike talking tome.”
“Have I denied it?” he asked, eyes dancing. “This is the most like myself I’ve felt in centuries.”
Faron hadn’t known what to do with that, so she’d decided to ignore it. Several deep breaths later, she’d tried again only to failagain.
At this point, she caught herself fantasizing about setting fire to one of the servants’ shirts just to see what excitement might result, and that was when she figured it was about time she got herself out of here. Just for a few hours, at least. Just to see what else Seaview had to offer besides the ocean and a house too large for any one person to be anything but alone in.
Of course, as soon as she climbed down her balcony and landed soundlessly in the grass far below, a hand darted out of the night to grab her wrist.
“You’re so predictable,” Reeve said before she could call on the powers of the gods. “I knew that look in your eye today meant trouble.”
“Ugh,” Faron replied. “I’m not even doing anything.”
He raised his eyebrows at her, then gazed pointedly from where she’d just climbed down, then looked back at her.
Faron folded her arms. “What aboutyou? How long have you been lurking around outside my window, you creep?”
“I wasn’t ‘lurking around’ outside your window,” said Reeve, rolling his eyes. “I was sitting on the patio, trying to figure out if your lessons with the Gray Saint are playing into my father’s hands,like you asked, when I heard you clambering down the side of the house like a crocodile on wheels.”
“His name is Gael,” Faron muttered. “And Iwas not—” Shestopped herself, but only barely. She didn’twantto knock him out and leave him here, but she would if he tried to stop her. She took a deep breath for the patience to try diplomacy first. “I just need a break from the studying and the pacing and the worrying. There’s a whole town at the base of this cliff. Don’t you want to see what goes on there besides the temple?”
“It doesn’t matter if I do or not.You’regoing, so I’m going.”
“Oh, please. You want to see it as much as I do. Don’t pretend you have some noble reason for it.”
Reeve gestured for her to lead the way. Faron held her head high and did just that.
Seaview was a completely different experience at night. The first things that Faron saw were the lights. The town glowed against the starry night sky, and she could hear calypso music luring them in, drowning out the sound of the ocean. She had put on a navy head wrap to cover her hair and wore nondescript clothes in the hopes that few people out here would recognize the Empyrean. Maybe finding a dance hall would be the best way to keep her identity under wraps. People drinking and dancing under dim lights weren’t likely to look too closely at whom they were dancing with, and she wouldn’t mind attending a party right now.
She wouldn’t mind having a moment of joy in the middle of so much frustration.
“Are you hungry?” Reeve asked, nodding his chin toward a grill surrounded by savory smoke. There were already a couple of customers milling by it, drinking and exchanging gossip. It wasn’t that Faron had tired of the elaborate meals that the servants prepared for them every day, but there was something irreplaceable about fried street foods. Maybe it was the slightly burned taste fromspending too long on the grill, or the rowdy company and conversation, or the echoing smacks of people trying to stop a mosquito from stealing their blood.
Maybe it was all the above. That was therealSan Irie, the San Irie that Faron knew when she wasn’t busy being taken from one gilded cage to another.
“I’d love some,” she said, shivering a little at the cold. That was another thing the grill would help with. “I hope that means you’re paying.”
Faron and Reeve found a table near the back that seemed to be out of the blast zone for most of the smoke. He got them two sliced-up pieces of jerk chicken as well as a paper bowl filled with festival. Faron began attacking those curved fried dumplings while he showered his chicken in hot sauce.
“I can’t believe the queen let them come back here,” said a portly man at the bar, taking a long drag of his beer bottle. “It’s disgraceful, is what it is.”
“I’m not too mad about it,” said his companion, a tall man with locs drawn up into a knitted cap. “I understand the urge to show those Novan pigs how far we’ve come since they thought they could claim us.”
“We didn’t fight for our independence so we could roll out the welcome mat for them the second they decided to recognize it!”
“It’s been two months, mon.”
“I don’t care if it’s been two years. It never should have happened!”
Faron looked at the men more closely. The first was dressed in a white collared shirt and black trousers, but there was a medal glinting on his breast pocket that caught her eye. She recognized it from some of Elara’s posters; it indicated that he had fought inthe San Irie Revolution in one of the branches of the army. She only knew it wasn’t the Sky Battalion because she knewthatsymbol intimately, thanks to Elara. The other man had no such decoration, but looking closer revealed that half his face was twisted and scarred from burns. It didn’t take much of a leap to guess he’d fallen victim to a dragon attack.
