“I do what I can,” I say.
“I hear that’s true,” she says, her brows bouncing. “He won’t tell me anything, but I could see it on his face.Everyoneis talking about how he went there to save you and what must have happened after.”
My cheeks turn red. “Everyone?”
“I won’t make you tell me what he’s like. Although I have always wondered; who hasn’t? But tell me at least if you’re together. I won’t tell anyone. Maybe Taran, but he probably already knows, although he'd never tell me. Which is really quite unfair, now that I’m saying it out loud. I think I’ll go and start a fight with him about it later.”
“I bet you will.”
“Well?” She nudges me with her elbow.
I think about last night after we returned from my walk with Adria and Larus to the sea. About how I felt his need when he passed me in the dining hall. How I’d waited until Adria was asleep to creep back into the corridor and through the passage into his chambers. About the many wonderful hours I’d spent there, and how I’ll do it again tonight, the second that I’m able.
“Yes,” I say. “There’s…something there.Don’ttell anyone.”
“Your secret is safe with me,” she says. “Are you free later? I need help with my mask for the ball.”
The masked ball. It’s in two days, on mybirthday, of all days, and I’d forgotten all about it. “Shit. You don’t have two masks by any chance?”
“Meet me after lunch,” she says. “We’ll go shopping.”
Quinn takes me to the vendor in the market that hates Nithyrians over my repeated protests.
“There is no one in this city who doesn’t know who you are. You are going to be the consort of the king. The queen, one day. No one will dare defy you.”
The world spins wildly beneath me when she says it. I’d forgotten that bit too. It had felt fun to imagine back on stage when Ronan had crowned me at the end of the Festival of Sport. But it feels different now that I’m spending my nights in his bed.
It feels real.
Queen Sylvie of Selara.
It’s a long way away if it ever happens. But it’s difficult to imagine my life without Ronan in it now. It’s difficult imagining any sort of future thatdoesn’tinvolve binding myself to him in some way.
It’s scary, but a future without him feels scarier.
Quinn was right about at least one thing: between all the events of the Festival of Sport and the Alchemists’ Guild crisis, people do recognize me in the street now. The rumors reach beyond the palace walls, making it difficult to walk through crowded places without being stopped. Ronan had offered to send a couple of his guards with me—well, he’d insisted, really—but I had thought that would just draw even more attention.
Of course, he’d sent them anyway, trailing behind Quinn and me at a reasonable distance.
The mask-seller is a handsome man with curly dark hair and sculpted features that he contorts into haughty expressions as the stragglers from court, ourselves included, fight over the last remaining masks. He’s an asshole through and through, but he doesn’t say anything about my Nithyrian heritage, although admittedly I’m passing for Selaran these days in my attire. But he also doesn’t make any remark when I greet a pair of distant cousins in their Nithyrian leathers.
“See? He’s a changed man.”
I sincerely doubt that’s the case, but if my presence here means other Nithyrians were welcome, I suppose it can’t have been all bad. Though I still didn’t know if I should be supporting his business.
But Ronan had been right about the masks: even the limited supply he has remaining is lovely. Quinn chooses a fox for herself made from delicate filigreed gold. It’s expensive; the Alchemists’ Guild shake-up has people worried about gold scarcity. With only a few days remaining, Ronan has dialed back the harvest festival celebrations to prepare for shortfalls.
I’m concerned about it myself, having seen the effects of hunger firsthand. But I know Ronan would strip the palace of all the gold it has before letting the people go hungry.
He may just do that anyway.
I’m ready to take the last remaining silver mask, which was intended for a man and covers more than half of my face, when Quinn finds a golden eagle mask. I can’t resist it. It looks just like the griffin.
She grins, concealing some private joke, but I’m in too good a mood to care.
On the day of the ball, Adria embarrasses me at lunch by having the chef bake me a plum pie and doing the Nithyrian birthday chant, which causes a lot of other people to join in, although they don’t know all the words.
There’s no one like a sister to mortify you in front of a crowd.
