I keep my stinging gaze on his cool one, refusing to look upon the dripping spoils of an unjust war.
“Unlike my grandfather, I enjoy peace, Signorina Rossi. Peace between man and man, but also peace between man and beast.”
His declaration drives back the vitriol slickening my tongue. “Then why haven’t you dismantled that awful thing?”
“Would dismantling it bring the sacrificed serpents back to life?”
No . . . it wouldn’t. “If you want peace, Maezza, then prohibit serpent-slaying.”
“And how, do tell, shall I prohibit their species from killing ours?”
“They’d learn. In time, they’d learn.” My heart still thuds fast, but for an entirely different reason now. After fear and anger, I now feel a glimmer of hope. “It’ll take decades, perhaps even a century to reverse the damage, but it can be done.”
“Or. . . Or it could take one willing girl and a little of her time.” The crown glints, haloing Marco’s head as though he were the Sun God himself. “Unless my brother was wrong about you, and you cannot actually charm serpents.”
I sip in a brisk breath, surprised by his mention of the decade-old appeal that saved me from standing trial. Dante had claimed that he too was charmed even though he was no serpent. He’d even taken a salt oath to cement his words, which in turn, had cemented his place in my heart.
Marco’s eyes rake across my features, as serrated as the talons of the crow from the Acolti vault. Every area of skin he grooves with his gaze, I patch up before any stray thought can bleed out.
Does this monarch really desire peace, or is he trying to lure a confession from my lips?
I try to read him like he’s reading me, but his features are as impenetrable as the gold walls of his palace. “I want peace, too, Maezza.”
“Shall we bring it to Luce together?”
The bang of metal tears my gaze from the king’s face. I glance over my shoulder, past my grandfather, who’s stepped behind me and drawn his sword. His gaze must alight on the new arrival at the same time as mine, because he tucks his sword back into its sheath.
Dante strides forward, white uniform streaked with dirt and brown skin lambent with sweat. “What is the meaning of this hearing?” He sounds positively incensed.
I want to run to him, burrow my face against his chest. I want him to whisk me out of the throne room and off Isolacuori, away from these men who want things from me I don’t want to give.
“Good afternoon, brother.” Marco’s voice breezes past my rigid neck.
“You’ve arrested Fallon on what grounds?” Dante’s nostrils flare as though he’s raced across every bridge in Isolacuori to get to me.
“I haven’t arrested anyone.”
“That’s not the word going around Luce.”
“You should know better than to trust the words that circulate around my kingdom.”
“I heard them spoken from your personal guards.”
“Justus, I thought we employed soldiers, not gossips. Gather their names and give them leave.”
I balk. “It was harmless chatter, Maezza. Hardly worth losing a job over.” If anything, I want to thank these men, because they brought Dante to me.
“Is it your army, Signorina?” the king barks.
I pinch my lips shut.Not yet.
“If Fallon wasn’t arrested, then why is she here?” Dante looms over my grandfather, seemingly as intent on reaching me as Justus seems intent on keeping us apart.
“It’s a hearing, brother. She’s beingheard.”
Dante’s jaw clenches. “Heard or interrogated?”
The brothers stare at each other, tension crepitating between them like the fire in the throne room. Unlike Giana and Sybille, who are as thick as thieving sprites, the century of life that separates the two Regio siblings is a rift that neither man seems capable or willing to leap across.
