I frown. “No. At least, not to my face.” Although I have no doubt he knows what I look like, since I know how he looks, I’ve never actually met my grandfather face to face.
Sybille’s query makes me wonder if Nonna’s lies extend to my grandfather’s character. What if he isn’t as unpleasant as she’s made him out to be? What if he doesn’t hate me? What if the only reason he’s never visited is because she keeps him away?
I squash all those questions beneath a single, hard fact: if he had any love for me, he’d have sought me out. After all, what sort of general leads an army into battle but fears entering his former spouse’s home?
I loose another sigh and push myself up to sitting. “Tell me how it was?”
Syb strides over to my small bed and sinks onto the rumpled sheets. “Magical. Regal.” Sybille’s wide gray stare glitters as though some of the sequins adorning the peaks of her high cheekbones had caught onto her lashes. A second later, she changes her tune. “Horrid. Absolutely horrid.”
I flick her because I know she’s lying to make me feel better. That’s what friends do. “I’m not jealous. I had a pretty enjoyable night myself.”
“Drinking ale?”
“Drinking ale.”
“Not alone, right?”
“Not alone. Don’t you remember the salt oath we made? Not to drink alone until we’re at least two hundred and rumpled from forehead to toe?”
She rolls her eyes. “We were nine.”
“Still, I swear I wasn’t alone. Gia was with me.”
“And . . .? I mean, I love my sister, but she’s rather staid.”
“Gia’s not staid.”
Sybille cocks an eyebrow. “Um. All my sister does is work, work, work. What shedoesn’tdo, is social-anythings, especially if it involves drinking.”
“Well, she was with me and we drank.”
“Ale? You really drank ale?” Sybille wrinkles her nose because it’s the cheapest type of liquor that exists in Luce, and therefore frowned upon by anyone with an ounce of Fae blood.
“Ale is hardly the worst thing I’ve put in my mouth. Remember those squishy mollusks Phoebus dared us to eat?”
She gags. “Oh, Gods, don’t remind me. Why did we go along with his dare again?”
“So he’d stop mooning over Plimeo and ask him out.”
“Oh right. You and I . . . always so selfless.”
I laugh, still remembering the crimson stains on fifteen-year-old Phoebus’s cheeks as he walked toward the object of his obsession and asked if he wanted to stargaze on his parents’ obscenely spacious rooftop.
“Who else was at this ale-fest besides my sister?”
My expression turns cautious. Although I know she’s not in love with Antoni, never has been, guilt worms itself through my thin nightshirt and penetrates my breastbone. “Antoni, Mattia, and Riccio.”
Her lashes sweep high. “Aha. Now we’re getting places.” She tips her head to the side and squints at me as though trying to solve a puzzle. “I’m going to go with Mattia.”
“You’re going to go with Mattia-what?”
“My guess as to who put that flush in your cheeks and that hickey on your neck.”
I palm the patch of skin she’s directing an eloquent smile at. “Not Mattia.”
The corners of her mouth waver. “Riccio?” My headshake wilts her smile. “I’m hoping it’s Giana.”
“Why?”
