As we walk up shimmery stone steps, past a carved archway, I’m momentarily pulled out of my glumness by the splendor of the columned veranda with its garlands of yellow vines in full bloom and the rosette cutouts in the pale stone.
Dante comes to a stop and slowly drops my arm. “Fallon, I’d like you to meet my betrothed, Eponine, and her father, King Roy.”
My attention swerves off the stonework and onto an ornate dining table. Syb, who trekked through Isolacuori beside Gabriele, bumps shoulders with me.
“Santo Caldrone,” she murmurs. “We’re lunching with two kings?”
My Crow vigilantes dive beneath the arches. Where some perch on the balustrades others rise to the tall stone eaves and pace the air. With a squeak, Eponine releases the gold wineglass she’d been lifting to her painted mouth.
Although the goblet doesn’t shatter, the large terracotta plate it hits cracks, and a crimson splash lurches from the goblet’s rim, splattering the burgundy velvet she wears. The servants, who haven’t seized up at the sight of my feathered companions, jump to attention, wet and dry cloths at the ready.
Unlike Eponine, her father does not make a sound, but the harsh lines of his face visibly sharpen. As he surveys my assigned guards, I survey the Nebbans who sit across from each other. They look almost identical, what with their twin green eyes and narrow faces, matching brown hair shot through with various shades of gold, slender noses and tall foreheads that one has adorned with a crown of golden thorns, and the other, with a jeweled headpiece.
Syb drops into a low curtsy. When she sees I haven’t followed suit, she tugs on my wrist. I don’t sink into a reverential squat, but I do incline my head toward father and daughter.
Although I cannot see much of Eponine, what with her sitting, the triangular shape of her torso baffles me. Until I recall Syb explaining that Nebban women use corsets to crush their rib cages so a man can encircle their waists with one hand. I hope Eponine isn’t planning on making Lucins adopt such a barbaric trend.
A round-eared woman with chin-length hair, dressed in a white sheath pulls out the chair beside King Roy and nods to me. The fine hairs along my arms rise because I don’t care to sit so close to the man nicknamed the Butcher of Nebba, but refusing will cause tension, and I want to keep the peace.
Besides, women are allowed to be soldiers in Nebba, so perhaps the man’s reputation is unmerited.
As I tuck myself into the proffered chair, I launch right into that subject. “I hear you let women into your army.”
“You hear correctly.” Pierre Roy turns in his seat, the emerald tunic he wears barely creasing as he turns. Although centuries-old, the monarch’s skin is barely lined.
“Allwomen?”
“All those who wish to fight for Nebba.”
“Even halflings?”
“Even humans, Mademoiselle Rossi.” He tilts his head, his gaze slinking over each one of my features, as though he’d never looked upon such an exotic face. Save for the hue of my eyes, nothing about me is exotic. “Just like your king.”
I look past King Roy at Dante who’s lowering himself into the seat at the head of the table between father and daughter. “You’re allowing women into the army?”
Dante halts mid-squat, palms flat on the table.
Pierre leans back. “I didn’t realize you still considered the Fae monarch your king.”
My faux pas hits me at the same time as Syb’s foot. Why the Cauldron did my mind hop to Dante when Roy mentioned my king?
“I don’t have a king,” I end up saying. “I have a queen. Have you ever met her,Maezza?”
“I had the chance to meet Priya once. When the wards fell two decades back, she paid me a visit to discuss an alliance. I turned her down.”
“May I ask why?”
“She suggested we join forces to take down the Regios, but the only thing I wanted, she wasn’t willing to give.”
“What thing did you want?”
“A Shabbin wife.” His gaze slicks across my face. “From her bloodline.”
My spine prickles. Yes, he added the wordline, yet all I heard was the wordblood. Although it isn’t uncommon for a king to want to wed someone of his status, I sense his desire to marry someone from my bloodline has everything to do with the strength of my lineage’s magic and nothing to do with rank.
“I hear Meriam is a free agent,” I suggest sweetly, and also . . . how practical would that be? “Perhaps you should find her, Your Majesty?” I turn toward the Lucin King. “Would I be too forward in supposing that you’d assist your future father-in-law in his search and”—since the termrescuedoesn’t seem fitting, I swap it for—“capture, Dante?”
My suggestion is met with a stony-faced expression on Dante’s part. Pierre Roy, on the other hand, seems quite amused.
