That was one of life’s most tragic secrets: War never actually ended. It survived in the lives destroyed by things large and small. The soldiers whose nightmares haunted them even with their eyes open, whose reflexes were forever set onkill, whose adjustments to peacetime came with the sobering knowledge that they were forever out of sync with a world that was desperate to move on from what they couldn’t. The families whose loved ones were the soldiers who never made it home, whose lives had been bisected into the before and after of having them around. The civilians who had lost mobility, lost property, lost sanity, or lost sleep to the shadow of a beast that announced itself with a roar before the roaring fire—if you were lucky.
War survived in the buildings now built to withstand fires, as well as hurricanes and floods; in the redrawn town lines; in the landmarks turned to ruin. And it survived in the hearts now filled with a hatred, suspicion, and paranoia that hadn’t existed before they were forced to grapple with all the ways humans could hurt one another.
Faron understood the pain rotting away inside the first man, bleeding out now that he’d had a few beers. She’d felt it herself. But she still thought it very bold of both of them to be talking about the queen like this in full view of her ancestral home, even if they knew she wasn’t there.
“What would you have her do, then?” the man with the locs asked.
“Show them that we fought our way out from under their thumbs and they can’t shove us back there.”
“And risk another war?”
“I’ve always been ready for another war.” The first man finished his beer and slammed the bottle on the bar so hard that Faron thought she heard it crack. “When a country’s used to having everything, it doesn’t let anything walk away. I’ve heard the rumors.”
“What rumors?”
Reeve started to say something. Faron hushed him and tipped sideways in her chair a bit, straining to hear the conversation.
“—were looking for something here, and they used the whole thing as a distraction to get it.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Locs scoffed. “What could they possibly want? I mean, besides the scalestone, and they know the Queenshield have that under guard.”
“I’m just telling you what I’ve heard. I’vealsoheard that they’ve got the Childe Empyrean’s sister.”
“Got her? What do you mean, got her?”
“They took her to Langley in secret.”
“I think we’d have heard about that.”
“Not if the queen was keeping it quiet to avoid a panic.” Beer Man’s chest puffed out. “I have a cousin who knows a girl who works at the palace, and she said there was a huge commotion on the first night that the queen covered up.”
“We’d know if the Empyrean’s sister was missing, Roger! You’re drunk, mon.”
“So what? It doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”
Faron frowned, adjusting her head wrap so that it hid more ofher hair. The half-finished meal in front of her no longer looked appetizing. She turned her face away from it, and from the men, hoping they would leave before she did.
“Hey,” whispered Reeve, touching her wrist for attention. “What’s wrong?”
“Rumors are traveling farther across the island than the queen might have wanted,” Faron whispered back before summarizing everything she’d just overheard. “We have to let the queen know that she has to address this. Nationally, rather than locally. Otherwise…”
Instead of dying down in the wake of the Summit, things seemed to be getting worse. And if the unrest had spread across the island rather than being limited to the capital, that was dangerous. The last thing that San Irie needed was to fall into a civil war with Langley circling like a vulture, trying to awaken the First Dragon and Rider.
This whole night had been a mistake.
“Listen, maybe we should go back to the—”
“I hear music,” Reeve said suddenly, wrapping up the bones of his chicken and tossing them into the nearby wastebasket. “Want to dance?”
“Now?” Faron asked. Though she’d barely touched her own food, she couldn’t deny the excited thump of her heart at the idea of one more distraction. “Here? Don’t we have more important things to—”
“Yes, now,” Reeve interrupted. His hand touched her wrist again and then, when she didn’t pull away, wrapped around it. Faron glanced down at the point of contact and then up at him, confused and strangely warm. He didn’t blink, and neither did she.“Listen, I’m not ready to go back to that house yet. So let’s just stay out a little while longer. Okay?”
This was so out of character for him that Faron knew without asking that he was doing this for her. She just didn’t know why he would do it, and her heart was pounding too loudly for her to gather her thoughts. She looked back down at their hands, and her gaze stayed there. “Okay.”
The closer they got to the thumping call of the music, the more the beat seemed to slide through Faron’s body, energizing her legs, her hips, her heart. The anxiety of what she’d overheard fell away, replaced by simple joy. Her hand was in Reeve’s, and she refused to waste time questioning why she didn’t mind. Under the cover of darkness, wrapped in the blanket of melody, nothing mattered. Nothing but this.
An open field appeared at the end of the block, and a crowd was milling across the grass, drinking beer and listening to a live band set up in the center of it all. A woman strummed a cuatro, the small guitar keeping perfect time with the vibrating thump of her companion’s steel drum. Another two musicians played an abeng horn and a tambourine, respectively, and the final one sang a bright, unknown song in the heavy patois common in the countryside. Faron saw adults dancing, laughing, talking as the makeshift party brought the community of Seaview together beneath the half-moon.
