“You prefer human princes.”
“Always.”
“It doesn’t hurt to love them?”
She looked at me sharply and then her gaze darted to something behind me. “Of course it does. But I’d rather feel that pain than nothing at all. That is always the problem with immortality, is it not? That one day we will outlive our love of life.”
“You may find someone who makes you feel otherwise.”
Uloopi waved a disinterested hand. “That day has yet to come.”
“I’m sure you’ll tell me all about it when it does.”
“If I do, I want your whole supply of dream fruit.”
“Deal.”
“Excellent,” said Uloopi. She raised one slim eyebrow. “Want some gossip?”
“Absolutely not!” I fluttered my hand to my neck before leaning over the counter. “Why? Who’s it about?”
Uloopi laughed. “Did you see that man who grew three other heads last week?”
“I think I’d remember if I saw that.”
“Well,Iheard that it’s because he wanted to keep a couple extra eyes on his wife. Honestly, if you want to keep your wife, is your head the thing you should be investing in?”
I swatted her. “Blasphemy.”
She held out her hand: “Dream fruit, please. Or I’ll tattle on you to Nritti.”
“You know you don’t get any dream fruit until you tell me something about yourself. And besides, Nritti wouldn’t believe you.”
“A serpent tail was not the only thing I inherited from snakes, you know. I have hypnotic eyes.”
“That’s just myth.”
“Am I a myth so soon? You’re making me feel ancient. Only thing noteworthy today was that I’ve nearly perfected a resurrection jewel.”
“That sounds useful considering you can’t die.”
“I wanted to see if I could make the impossible and as usual I outdid myself.” She flipped her hair over her shoulder. “Is that exciting enough for you? We can’t all have absurd and tragic tales like the Shadow Wife.”
“Who’s that?”
Uloopi rolled her eyes. “Don’t you know anything?”
“I spend most of my time outside of the heavens and in the human world. I don’t get much gossip.”
Uloopi huffed, which I took as tacit acceptance that she thought I had a point.
“The last scandal I remember was when the Lady Saranyu, the wife of the Sun god, decided she could no longer stand the brilliance of her husband. So she ran away and left her shadow, the Lady Chayya, in her place.”
“He didn’t notice?”
“Of course not! They were twin images of one another.”
“But they were different people?”
