“Mamma was saying that a woman named Bronwen was watching. Do you know her, Nonna?”
The sheet slips out of my grandmother’s grasp and rolls across the mattress toward my side. “I’ve not the faintest idea.” Her stiff fingers and throbbing pupils tell another story. Without looking up at me, she retrieves the fitted sheet and stretches it, this time hooking it beneath the mattress with a snap.
I glance toward the window, at the curls of lavender smoke rising over the swamplands as humans light bonfires to heat the night. “You think it’s an inhabitant of Rax?”
“For all we know, it’s someone who lives in Agrippina’s head.”
My heart throbs for the seated woman, whose excised ears made her lose her grip on reality.
I hate King Marco for having forced my grandfather to punish his daughter, but I hate my grandfather more for not resisting and protecting his flesh and blood.
“True, but for once, the words made sense.” I wonder if Bronwen is from Luce, or from a neighboring kingdom. “She also mentioned something about it being time.”
Nonna feeds the feathery duvet, which has yellowed and thinned with age, into a cream cover, mended in so many places it resembles a topographical map.
“Fallon Rossi!” My name thunders through the gaping window of Mamma’s room, shaking the wisteria vine that’s taken over three of our walls.
I sprint to the window, a smile already blooming over my lips, because I know that voice, even though I haven’t heard it speak my name in over four years.
I lay my forearms on the sill and grin at the upturned face of my visitor, at the blue eyes that glitter like morning dew. “You’ve returned!”
I sound breathless and giddy, which makes smirks rise across the faces of the prince’s entourage, but I don’t much care what his friends think of me. All I care about is what Dante thinks of me.
Growing up, I kept expecting him to cast me aside, but he never did.
“You’re even more beautiful than I remember.”
I laugh as the air-Fae gondolier struggles to keep the boat from rocking, what with two grown men shifting around in their velvet seats and one standing. “Are you home for good or for your brother’s betrothal?”
“For good.”
Four years look delicious on him. His shoulders have filled out, his face has been whittled into a sharper landscape, and his mass of brown box braids has grown longer. It now skims the jeweled handle of the sword strapped into his ornate leather baldric. Only his blue eyes and brown skin have remained the same.
He hooks his thumb over his shoulder. “My barrack is right across from your house, Signorina Rossi.”
“How convenient.”
I feel a presence at my back. Since Mamma cannot stand, I know it’s my grandmother.
Dante bows. “Signora Rossi, looking otherworldly as always.”
I snort at his endearment.
“Welcome home, Altezza. I hope your trip up north has been most auspicious.”
“It has, thank you. If war ever comes, we have great allies to count on.”
“War will come.” Mamma’s voice is low, and yet it must reach the prince’s ears because a dent mars the smooth span of his forehead.
Pure-bloods have unparalleled hearing.
My cheeks flame from the shame of my mother’s proclamation. I hope Dante missed the ominous whisper, but in case he didn’t, I change the subject. “I’d love to hear of your adventures, Dante.”
Nonna tsks.
“Princci Dante.” I roll the R and my eyes because, before being the Prince of Luce, Dante is my friend.
The boy who convinced his brother not to have me carted off to the castle for further assessment the day I bonded with a serpent.
