Yemi sighed and tried not to roll her eyes. “?‘To understand the people.’ Are you planning to work your way into the Senate?”
“Something like that, perhaps. The civil unrest in the country isn’t going away. I just want to see us whole again.” Dahlia shrugged.
“And to you, is the country everyone but me and mine?”
“Everyone without your… power, yes.” She bit her lip. “If I may be candid?”
“We are already drowning in Dahlia Drake’s candor,” Yemi replied. She watched Dahlia choose her words, contemplating all the possible ways the night might end if she were to snatch Dahlia by her sharp bob and dash her head against the low stone garden wall.
“Imagine being owed a debt for your loyalty to your country,” Dahlia started. “But not only do you never receive it, you are also asked—your children are asked—to prove it with blood. Your blood. Your life. Your children’s lives, and their children’s lives, and so on. Even if that debt is just peace, at what point do you question why you were ever loyal in the first place? When you’re returning your first child to the sea? When you’re putting out the second fire set to your home? At what point do you do whatever it takes to ensure your children’s lives are valued?”
Yemi’s eyes narrowed. “We are all paying the consequences for someone else’s decisions. Had my grandfather been a baker or a blacksmith, we would not be where we are. But he was a king, like a hundred others before him, andnowthere’s a problem? We govern by right, according to centuries ofyour people’srules. We didn’t force anyone to adopt Mer law, and we didn’t ask for any special loyalty.”
“But if it’s not there organically, shouldn’t you earn it?” said Dahlia. “You have Ixians fighting for your cause only because it keeps them in their homes and out of the yoke of the unknown. The country hasn’t flourished in over fifty years. The best it’s managed is recovery, but that’s only until the next war, isn’t it?”
“My father was Ixian. Are these not also my people? Has my mother not fought for and alongside all of you, despite the othering of her blood?”
Dahlia shook her head pitifully. “My Light, you are fruit of the poisonous tree.”
“Careful,” Yemi seethed, feeling violence twitch in her muscles.
“The careless union that destroyed our nation’s peace is bestundone, or it might kill us all. Itwillkill us all. These people will not back the Blackgate line forever. If you have any love for your country, you’ll consider a… a different future for Ixia,” Dahlia insisted, though her final words felt fumbled, as if she’d considered a dozen ways of putting it and landed there sloppily.
A different future.Yemi nodded sagely.One where I’m not a part of it, naturally.She looked around at the carousing beyond their little corner, the polite clinking of delicate glasses, and the raucous laughter that followed. Boxes of fireworks were being shuffled up stairs and around corners. Nova watched them carefully from a low wall nearby.
It was interesting to her that Dahlia had yet to present her own views and had gone with the angle of messenger. She wondered if she was expected to believe any of this.
“So this isn’t about your family’s failure to marry into the royal line?” she asked Dahlia. “Your grandmother being brushed aside when mine came ashore and took root in a space she thought belonged to her? You have no feelings about that one way or another?”
Dahlia stood speechless, something in her eyes suddenly cold and dark.
Yemi smiled. “See, you didn’t take the knee. It was a specific, personal decisionyoumade to defy me and didn’t have a single fucking thing to do with bringing the people’s grievances to our attention. You wantedmeto know that you oppose whatever it is you think I stand for. And now I do. So enjoy your night. And be grateful that all of this happened while the Bear Queen is on the throne.Youwould not be ready for me.”
She didn’t bother extending the ring. Instead, she sipped from her own fluted glass and waited as Dahlia Drake bowed—ever the good girl—and departed without another word.
Nova approached with a curious smirk.
“Finally,” Yemi groaned.
“How’d that go?” she asked.
Yemi shook her head and watched Dahlia mingle without a care apparent on that alabaster face of hers. “She’s too comfortable.”
“It’s a party, and she thinks she’s won over the Bear Queen of Ixia. She has no idea she’s being handled.You, on the other hand, are not comfortable enough. We can fix that, though.”
“What do you suggest?”
Nova stepped back in anafter yougesture and ushered Yemi toward the performers. It was subtle, but Nova kept her hand on the small of Yemi’s back as she guided her through the nameless nobles and other drunken guests. So few people were allowed to touch her, and Nova relished doing it in these small, intimate ways that made Yemi smile in secret.
She pointed to a woman in a top hat with a feline effect to her eyes who told stories and puffed colorful smoke that took on the shapes of fish swimming in a fog around their feet. Someone in a massive dragon mask took in various liquors and blew out flames of different hues that turned to showers of glitter over their heads. A dapper man who introduced himself as Vannish, Master of Ceremonies, explained the science of it to an enamored Nova.
A woman with a toothy grin self-immolated to everyone’s panic, and a hunched old man who may or may not have been an actual monkey ran over to douse her with what turned out to be a bucket of confetti, but the fire—and the woman—disappeared. The crowd waited in gravid, horrified silence, staring at the pile of ash, then gasped as it twitched, and screamed as a hand grew out of it. Yemi had Nova’s arm in a vise grip as the hand extended to an arm and a torso and a head, until the woman had fully formed again as if she’d simply climbed out of an ash-covered hole. The monkey man threw a teal-colored robe over her shoulders as the woman rose. The crowd erupted with applause as she took her bows.
Yemi was in a full-on good mood as Nova made her laugh. They collected small plates of food from vendors from every district (but left the Drake wine alone) and watched the king of Muris get the Bear Queen to dance. Even though she wore the mask, Yemi knew her mother was smiling beneath it. Flashbulbs from the cameras ofjournalists fired when the queen threw her head back in laughter, and the air lit up as lights bounced off jewels and falling glitter and tinkling glasses.
The fireworks display announced itself like cannon fire over their heads and commenced with great showers of electric blue and gold. As the crowds standing in the gardens turned their attentions to that, Nova seized the opportunity to kiss the space where Yemi’s jaw met her throat. Yemi smiled at the sky and braided her fingers into Nova’s, where they rested on her hip. She hid her blush behind a glass of champagne and scanned the crowd before them for wandering eyes. Their relationship was no secret to anyone who mattered, but decorum rejected public displays of affection or contact with the flesh of a royal by anyone who wasn’t. Neither of them particularly cared, but things were easier left out of the papers.
“Tell me you want to get out of here,” Nova shouted beneath the explosions, her breath warm and tinged with the scent of stone fruits as it hit her neck.
