As we reach the bottom of the stairs, I grow self-conscious under his gaze. Is Shaw mocking my attempt to fit into Ferusa? Am I ridiculous for even trying?
Max and Cal, still mercilessly teasing each other, brush past us and out into the night air.
“Is this okay?” I ask uncertainly, smoothing the front of the dress once more, though the fabric lays perfectly. The silk is unblemished, rippling out around me like water from a spring. “Do I look like an average Ferusian?”
Shaw’s face is gravely serious as he comes to my side. “No,” he replies. My heart sinks. “But you are breathtaking.”
The smile at the corner of his mouth breaks out into the open, lighting up his face in such a manner that I immediately smile back. It transforms him from merely handsome to entirely devastating, and I decide that I could happily spend the rest of my life eliciting his smiles.
Shaw offers me an arm and I take it, for once, no thoughts of Easton or Denver or the Achijj clouding my thoughts.
It’s only us, stepping into the darkness. Shaw leans over, his whisper a warm caress in my ear, “it’s time to see the beauty in the Darkness.”
ChapterTwenty-Six
Mirren
Shaw didn’t exaggerate the beauty of the Moon City. In fact, despite the layered intricacy with which he wove his words, even they couldn’t have possibly done Nadjaa justice. As our small skiff streams across the Bay of Reflection, now turned from black to silver, my eyes can’t move fast enough.
The moon hangs low in the sky, its iridescent orb so large and bright it looks as if it has fallen from the heavens and come to rest atop the Averitbas mountains. Its light pours into the city’s streets, illuminating the white pavers so that they glitter and shine like gemstones. The store fronts of the marketplace and arts district have been draped in shimmering fabrics of brilliant silvers and whites, and the strings of miniature lanterns wrapped around the trees reflect in the large bubbles that float through the air, making the whole world seem effervescent.
Andpeople.
So many people.
Notes of laughter ring through the air from groups of skiffs that have gathered in the bay, bawdy and raucous. We stream past, parking at a large dock that wends its way across the length of the marketplace. People shout and hug. They sway to the soft music, the shimmering notes clinging to the air like dew drops. There is so muchlifethat it fills me to brimming, as though it might spill out of me at any moment, wild and unfettered. Equal parts exhilarating and terrifying, I decide as soon as I step out of the boat that this is a place I could give my whole heart.
The thought stops me short. Thisisthe place my father gave himself to. Left me for.
As I watch it with greedy eyes, I find I can’t fault him for it. Not in this moment, anyway.
Max climbs out of the skiff behind me, adjusting her dress and fluffing her hair. Her eyes light on a table laden with sparkling wine and intricately decorated mini cakes. She tugs Calloway toward them with a delighted squeal.
Shaw touches the inside of my arm gently and guilt rolls through my stomach. This may be the city my father gave his heart to, but this is the boy he gave the love that should have been mine by right and by birth. The pale blue of his eyes looks silver in the moonlight, the contrast striking against his dark lashes and brown skin. I should be angry or jealous, but all I can feel is thankful. Grateful there was someone to show Shaw the light in a world that can be so very dark. Someone who gave an abandoned boy a beautiful place like Nadjaa.
I want to reach out and run my fingers down the plane of his cheekbone or the sharp edge of his jaw, but I clasp them in front of me instead.
“You’re uncharacteristically quiet,” Shaw observes with a roguish grin. “All this and not one question? Not even some scintillating commentary on the lack of manners?”
I shove him playfully. “I’ve given up on your lack of propriety. You’re officially hopeless.”
“I’m going to choose to see that as a compliment,” he replies with a wicked laugh. “There are a few people I want you to meet tonight. Evie is the councilwoman I told you about,” he says gesturing to a quaint little shop painted a vibrant shade of purple.
“What’s that?” I ask, gesturing to the wooden arbor that has been erected above the shop’s doorway. It looks hand carved, crafted from a deep, richly colored wood. “It’s so beautiful.”
Shaw follows my gaze. “It’s custom after a couple is engaged to leave the arbor over the doorway until the wedding. It’s the story of her and Berik’s love,” he tells me, leaning toward me slightly as he speaks.Love.The word elicits a shiver. Because it’s against the Keys? Or because it’s Shaw’s voice that says it? Close enough that I only need to turn my head slightly and I could watch the way it looks on his lips.
“What do you mean?”
“The carvings. One side of the alter is Evie’s life before she met Berik. Having her children, losing her first husband, almost losing her life. All the beauty and the pain of it.”
Before I’d come to the Dark World, I would never have seen the beauty in any of that, only the tragedy. But now, as I take in the detailed carvings, it is obvious how finely the sweet edge of beauty mingles with the bright sting of pain. How each one defines the other.
“The other side is Berik’s story. And the top of the altar is where their stories meet.”
Indeed, the top of the altar is the most beautiful of all. The woods of each side, so different in composition and texture, twist around each other delicately. By nature, their differences should repel the other, but instead, they serve to enhance each material’s individual beauty. It seems impossible, that the two woods should fit together so perfectly, but they do. So well, that for a moment, a lump forms in my throat. I swallow roughly and tear my gaze away from the arbor, terrified to give way to the knot of emotions in my stomach.
Shaw watches me in that peculiar way of his that feels too close. As if he can read every thought I try to shove down. But instead of mentioning them, he says, “there’s someone else I want you to meet, as well. Someone I think can help find your father. She should be here somewhere.”
