“You won’t survive on your own,” Pagona sneered, finally finding her tongue again. “Ugly girls never last long.”
Tasia felt the involuntary eyeroll down to her toes. “That’s it. There’s no reason for me to hold back any longer, either.”
Pagona opened her mouth to speak, but Tasia rolled right over her.
“Pagona, you are well on your way to becoming as selfish and evil as Bunny. Do you really want to end up like her? Rotting in the king’s prison?”
“Tasia,” Anthi admonished, “that is no way to talk to—”
“Oh, I have words for you, too,MotherAnthi.” Tasia put her hands on her hips. “Your laziness and refusal to mother your children is a sneakier kind of evil, but it’s still evil.”
A small crash sounded from the kitchen, followed by Chara’s small “Oops.”
Everyone else ignored her as Tasia swiveled to face Stavros again and jabbed her finger in his direction.
“Andyou! Your willing refusal to rein in your family when you find it inconvenient is the root of it all. Be a real man andengage.”
Silence met her final proclamation. She made deliberate eye contact with each one, then turned around and swept back out the door.
It took a while for her heart rate and breathing to settle, but she felt good. Exactly the right words had come exactly when she needed them. She felt strong and, dare she say it, smart.
Mitch found her wandering outside the inn yard some time later. When she explained what had happened, he laughed for a solid minute. Then he gave her a hug, told her how proud he was, and offered to retrieve her things since, as he put it, she had made the Galanis home too hot to hold her at present.
Gathering Tasia’s things from the Galanis household was fun for Mitch. He didn’t say a single word, which seemed to fluster them more, and laughed up his sleeve the whole time. Tasia had told him what to look for and where she had hidden her earnings. The expressions on their faces when he pulled twelvecoin pouches out of a stack of old buckets was too much. He took his time fishing each pouch out separately, making sure to shake each one to hear the coins clink.
When he tired of tormenting Tasia’s tormentors, he returned to the inn where he had secured a room for her. There, he spent a pleasant half-hour helping her rearrange her trunk to hide the coins he had recovered and the heavy purse that Frank had given her. Then he spent a frustrating half-hour trying to nobly convince her to go back to Diomland with the prince.
In his heart of hearts, Mitch wanted nothing more than to whisk Tasia away from Boschivo and take her anywhere else. Anywhere but a giant city pretending to be a small country. He admitted the selfish thought to himself but didn’t share it with her.
“Don’t you want to reconnect with your friends?” he asked for the third time.
A sigh that told him she was on the edge of her patience warned him to back off. “Of course, I do. But I can write letters from anywhere.”
He nodded reluctantly.
“Where doyouwant to go?” Tasia asked, also for the third time.
Mitch felt obligated to guard her delightful, but oblivious, self until she established herself somewhere. The first two times, he had fobbed her off with something vague, but this time, he risked an answer closer to the truth. “I will happily escort you around for as long as you want me to or until you find a permanent place.”
She brightened, all traces of irritation vanishing. “I would love that!”
“Where do you want to go first? Diomland?”
“Ugh!” Tasia let her head fall to the desk in her new room. “I can’t do this with you right now. Please leave.”
“As you wish.” Mitch vacated the room and headed for his.
He was intercepted by the prince.
“May I talk with you for a moment?”
Cranky and out of sorts, Mitch didn’t have a valid reason to avoid the royal, so he followed the man to the same cramped room he had occupied before.
Mitch crossed his arms and stared the prince down.
To his credit, Frank didn’t flinch. He walked over to the chair and sat down. “I’m heading out tomorrow.”
“But Tasia—”
