“What happens if your great-grandmother refuses to help?”
“I’ll board a vessel to Shabbe. Surely, they’ll take me in seeing as how they hate our king.”
“No boat will take you to the queendom.”
“Then I’ll swim there.” My frustration grows roots.
“I thought you were doing all of this to avoid swimming?”
I toss a hand up in exasperation. “Then I’ll scurry back to Monteluce and hide there for the rest of my mortal days.”
The sinews in his neck are as rigid as the mooring lines bolting his boat to the dock. “Monteluce’s one of the most dangerous places in the kingdom.”
“I’m not scared.”
“You should be.” His blistering tone must heat his skin because his ocean-and-sun scent embalms the small cabin.
I place my hand on the doorknob. “Well I choose guileless oblivion. It works for me.”
Antoni makes a sound between a huff and a snort. Casting his eyes on the tiny window leaking insipid dawn light, he says, “I need to get the boat ready for the day. See you at dusk.”
“I’m sorry.”
He doesn’t respond. Doesn’t even look my way, but I know he heard me. How could he not? The cabin is tiny and I didn’t whisper or croak.
Sighing, I walk off Antoni’s boat feeling like smooshed dung and rethinking involving such a good man. Especially when I have nothing to offer him, except my friendship.
You will be queen. Bronwen’s words clang through my mind, reminding me that if I’m successful—No.WhenI succeed, I’ll be able to give him all the riches he deserves. I’ll buy him that apartment he wants.
A whole house.
I’ll make him rise alongside me.
Forty
Istand in front of the oblong mirror pinned to Giana’s wall, tightening the belt on a pair of pants.
Pants. Actual pants. The sort women are forbidden from wearing. The last woman who dared walk the streets of Tarelexo in a pair ended up wearing them to greet the serpents.
Fashion can be deadly in Luce when it goes against the monarchy’s rules.
However much I like the beauty of gowns, there’s no denying that pants feel like swaths of freedom. “How am I ever supposed to go back to wearing dresses?”
“Thanks to that half-baked scheme of yours, you may never have to. Crossing Monteluce on your own? It’s foolish and reckless and—”
“You really know how to build up a girl’s confidence.”
“Fallon, I’m worried!” Giana pulls so hard on the fabric, with which she’s flattening my breasts, that it strips my lungs of air.
I turn away from the mirror and put a hand to her shoulder. “I know your reproof is born from a place of love, but please, Gia, don’t make me rethink it. I spent half the night scolding myself and the other half hyperventilating so hard Syb pried my eyes open to make sure I hadn’t turned into an air-Fae, then built a fort of pillows between us.”
Gia’s slender jaw tics, undoubtedly with more admonitions.
“Besides, I could turn all that criticism around on you.”
Her pupils spread, blotting most of the gray.
“Look, I’d prefer for your parents to keep believing I’m running away to meet a man behind my grandmother’s back.”
