Ksenia snatches another piece of bread from the silver toast rack beside her. “Perhaps not shifter Serpents.”
“Perhaps we’d prefer not to find out,” Antoni snaps from a way’s down the enormous dining table that can easily fit eighty people but holds only a dozen at the moment.
“Yes,” Taytah chimes in. “There will be no swimming.”
She waits for her people to comply before turning back toward Konstantin, whose attention has also fallen on our section of the table. His lip and nose are fully healed, and the tips of his ears are no longer bruised, nevertheless, he’s yet to spear his diamond studs back through their points.
His left eye twitches, and though he doesn’t regard me with quite as much vitriol as last night, gone is the pleasant, smirking monarch I interacted with on the Lodge’s porch.
The door to the dining room once again swings wide, this time to welcome General Salom. He marches toward the head of the table where he hands Konstantin a missive. The king breaks the seal with his thumb, then unfolds the parchment and reads. He’s either a tremendously fast reader or there aren’t many words, because he’s out of his seat a second later, crumpling the letter in his fist.
“Everything all right?” Izolda asks, turning in her seat.
He stops his mad escape as he reaches the door, then, with a smile that’s entirely for show, he says, “Yes. It’s nothing.”
He gives Salom the sheet with a nod. After reading it, the Faerie incinerates the vellum with a burst of fire.
Izolda continues to watch her brother with concern. “Will you still be boarding the first ship with us?”
Her brother’s silence drags on for so long that the corners of her mouth begin to plummet.
“I think the better question is: will he be coming at all?” Ksenia asks, sliding her elbows onto the table and creating a little hammock for her chin with her fingers.
I heard, through the grapevine, that she wasn’t thrilled when the Cauldron matchmade her sister with a Crow. Could jealousy have fostered her bitterness, or is Aodhan’s heritage the cause?
“Am I right?” she asks, when Konstantin’s silence endures.
Her insistence snaps him back to the here and now. “I’ll be there on time. Don’t depart without me, Iz.”
Ksenia purses her lips, evidently miffed that shewasn’tright. Her frustration doesn’t go unnoticed by the captain of Konstantin’s army, who narrows his eyes on the unmated twin.
“You should probably have rethought the timing of the Jubilee, what with all the unrest,” Ksenia says after her brother and his general have taken off. “Did you hear about what happened to your favorite High Priest? The one who agreed to marry you and?—”
“Ksenia, please,” Izolda murmurs.
“His temple was bombed.”
“What?”
“Train derailments. Terrorist acts. Widespread starvation. Our kingdom is quite a mess.”
“That’s enough!” Izolda snaps.
“Eponine and I can assure you, Ksenia,” Taytah says, “that every monarchy has its troubles.”
Eponine nods. “But troubles shouldn’t put an end to the celebration of life, however cruel it might seem to you that some rejoice while others weep.”
“There’s rejoicing”—Ksenia taps her fingers—“and then there’s this ridiculous revel.”
Smoke billows behind Izolda’s chair before weaving into the shape of a man.
Aodhan rests his hands on his mate’s shoulders. “Your brother would like a word with you, Ksen.”
“Ilya’s awake?”
“Not that brother.”
Ksenia leers at her sister as she stands, breathing out, “I wonder why.”
