I jump. Dante straightens and releases my arm as though worried what people may think of seeing him touching the halfling with the odd eyes, who may or may not be able to speak Serpent.
Still reeling, I trail my gaze over the seesawing shards of the wineglass, to a hem of pomegranate silk, and then upward, to a pale, oblong face framed by waist-long black hair.
I feel like I’m staring at my grandmother, except Nonna is in Tarelexo, and Nonna has green eyes and furrows around her mouth and eyes. This woman’s eyes are blue like Mamma’s, and her skin, as smooth as my mother’s.
“Xema!” the woman screeches.
Perhaps she isn’t my aunt. But the family resemblance . . .
Someone mutters from inside the giant reception area packed with gaudily attired guests, who all slowly twist around toward the woman in red.
“What now, Domitina?”So the womanismy aunt . . .Xema’s voice isn’t shrill, yet it booms across the room, which has fallen so quiet that I hear Dante slow-swallow.
The crowd parts around a woman with a puff of silver hair, lustrous pearls running up the shells of her peaked ears, and a brilliant-hued bird on her shoulder. She hobbles forward, leaning heavily on an ornate cane.
Although her hair isn’t flaming-red like I imagined it would be, her irises are. As they settle on me, they flare brighter than the firepits peppering Selvati. “What stray have you dragged inside my home, Princci?”
I blink. I didn’t expect a hug, but really? A stray?
My fingers ball into fists. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but strays are homeless. Since I have a home, one I love terribly much, I’m afraid the term you’re looking for is visitor. Or guest. As for being dragged, I assure you, I came willingly.”
My great-grandmother’s eyes blaze. I suspect she’s two seconds away from incinerating me.
“Scazza.”
I’m so used to the derogatory term that I don’t bristle at being called a street urchin, but I do bristle at being called that by my own family. Insults may roll off our round ears, but they also trickle inside and round other parts of us.
I will not be rounded.
Nonna warned me Xema was unpleasant, yet I hadn’t envisaged that she’d be the love child of a fire poker and a cantankerous sprite.
“Quiet, Beau,” she hisses to the bird on her shoulder.
Wait. . . the insult came from her parrot? Can she also hear birds or did it just talk out loud?
Dante must sense my shock because he leans over and says, “That parrot insults everyone, princes included.”
Xema stops beside Domitina, and both look me over, lips curling in time with their noses. I feel like I’ve dropped into the pages of one of Mamma’s books, the one about the girl with the awful stepmother and evil stepsisters; the one in which the girl, considered no better than vermin, becomes queen.
How fitting.
My thoughts drift to Morrgot. Is he witnessing this from some shadow, or is he busy overseeing Sewell’s digging? I wish he’d flock tomyshoulder and stare down these horrid people. Maybe even run a claw down their pretty gowns and nick their skin.
What am I thinking? I blow out my wickedness, ashamed. Nonna taught me better.
Although I will never sit on your shoulder, once I’m whole, we can revisit teaching them some manners.
“No,” I breathe.
“No?” Xema raises an eyebrow that is jarringly black.
“No . . . offer of a drink?” I swipe my tongue over my parched lips.
Domitina crosses her arms. “We don’t serve round-ears in our establishment.” Her eyes fall to the short-haired blonde gathering the broken glass by hand.
The kneeling girl, a halfling like me, flinches. I hate to imagine the staff’s quality of life.
I paste on a confident smile. “I didn’t expect you to serve me, Bisnonna.” Considering Domitina doesn’t even call her Nonna, I sense calling her Great-Grandma will irritate her to no end.
