I take a tentative sip and all but cough up a lung at the bitter tang.
Giana’s wide mouth splits into a grin. “It’s an acquired taste.”
“How long did it take you to acquire it?”
She laughs. “A while.”
So this isn’t her first time in Rax . . .
“Antoni’s in a positively foul mood. What in Luce happened on the boat?”
I glance over the crackling bonfire at where Antoni and one of his friends have taken residence on a felled tree trunk. “We discussed politics.”
“And he and you don’t share the same views?” She lifts her mug and takes a sip.
I attempt another swallow. This time, it goes down without maiming my lungs. It’s still revolting. “He doesn’t think Dante would be any better a ruler than Marco.”
“Ah.” A simple sound that carries a complicated weight.
“What’sahsupposed to mean?”
She lowers her mug to her lap and encircles it with both hands. “It means that once you’ve been around as long as both Antoni and I have, your views may change.”
“YouknowDante, Gia.”
“And IknewMarco. I may not have gone to school with him, but he used to frequent the tavern. It would be a stretch to claim we were friends, but we were most definitely friendly.”
The idea of Marco sitting at a table inBottom of the Jugis so jarring that I don’t say anything for a long minute, but then curiosity gets the better of me. “Did you and he . . .?”
“Cauldron, no. Even when I was still debating whether I preferred males or females, I never preferredhim. His ego was as large as all of Tarelexo. All of Tarecuori, too, for that matter.” The flames of the fire dance in the pale gray irises she shares with her entire air-Fae family. Even though she looks no older than a human in her early thirties, Giana is almost a century old. Those eyes have seen things. “And it only got worse after Primanivi. He returned from that battle acting like a god.”
I observe the huddles of bald and turbaned humans tittering and dancing as though they haven’t a care in the world, as though the five half-Fae who crashed their party didn’t share blood with the man who’d crushed their uprising two decades ago. “How come the humans allowed us to partake in their revel?”
She stares around her, meeting a few sets of guarded eyes and a few sets of inquisitive ones. The same feeling I had when we arrived at this party comes over me again—that my fellow Lucin outcasts are more familiar with these humans than they let on.
“Because they need coin.” She pushes back a springy curl, letting her index finger linger on the curved shell of her ear. “And because of these.”
I sigh.
Because ofthese, I’m sitting here instead of on a tufted chair in Isolacuori. I brush away the morose contemplation before it can take root and further ruin my evening. “Coin?”
“What?”
“You said humans need coin. I take it someone paid for us to be here. Which one of you paid, and how much do I owe?”
“Fallon—”
“You know me. I don’t like debts.”
“Antoni took care of it. He took care of all of us, so there’s no need to feel indebted.” Giana touches my wrist. “As for our earlier discussion . . . I know you care for Dante, and frankly, I’d like to think that if he were in a position of power, he’d change things, but I’ve learned that if Fae have nothing to gain, then they have nothing to fight for.”
“Except he’d have so much to gain!” I toss my hands in the air, sloshing ale from my mug and garnering the attention of the humans closest to us. I dry my wrist on my skirt and press my lips together, regretting having drawn attention.
“Name one thing the royals would gain from helping lesser Fae and humans out?”
“Our loyalty.”
“They already own us.” Giana dips her lips into her ale, gaze on the flickering flames.
