“How?” she asks.
“Can we sew it on?” I offer.
Then she sets down the other objects, which both Abi and Paoli are studying, and pulls out a bit of thread. She then ties the stone around the short breast band covered with small diamonds.
It fits in perfectly.
I hug Melisa, counting the seconds until I can get rid of this cursed dress. She turns me to the mirror.
“You’re a superb present for a pompous ass king. Isn’t it such a miserable thing to behold? I hate that they feel entitled to whatever pretty thing sits at their feet. A part of me is sad I won’t be there to witness his rage when he realizes we’ve all gotten the fuck out of this place.” Her expression grows bitter.
“You’re right. And I hate it too,” I say, looking at the glossy sheen of my skin.
Abi steps forward, looking at her scar. “I wish that I never saw my face or knew what beauty I had before… I wish my image was merely a distorted reflection in the river—because then I wouldn’t have to mourn what was lost.”
“You are worth more than what you see when you look in this mirror.” I step forward and push the gilded, polished metal over. It crashes to the ground, denting and distorting in the middle.
“Fuck the giants and their court,” I say, seeing so much more than a pleasing set of eyes and well-combed hair.
I see desperation, passion,courage.
Each emotion licks against my inside. The Fuegorra begins to sing into the air, and the women around me gasp. Despite my fragile, mending mind, my eyes see a flicker of the future with perfect clarity.
Snow. Shiny, armored tails. Metal.
Hope, brilliant and as pure as freshly fallen snow.
The image is interrupted by a knock on the door.
A guard looks between me and the fallen mirror.
“Time to go, whore.”
Chapter 18
Melanterite
TEO
The spy that Ayla had promised me is a middle-aged, weathered man with the fear of the gods written plainly across his face. They’ve sat him in a chair that was conjured by Farryn.
“There’s a slave, a short one, with curly brown hair and brown skin,” Ayla says, leaning over him and pointing a knife at his throat.
He trembles, and I would protest the cruelty of it all if I hadn’t already won him the chance to live.
“There are many slaves that fit that description,” he says, with a slight tremor in his voice.
I roll my eyes. None looked like my Estela.
“She will have been guarded, maybe even paraded around by Rholker,” I say, not deigning to use a title for him.
The man’s eyes widen with recognition.
“Oh.Her,” he whispers. “Is she really your queen?”
The anger bubbling under the surface of my skin boils over.
“Yes,her,” I grit out and he shrinks back. “And she’s your queen, too.”
