The intense southern light makes the colors look kind of unreal: so many shades of green and pink and orange from the unfamiliar plants and flowers surrounding us. A complicated fountain gurgles at the courtyard’s center, tiled in a bright mosaic design that depicts many-colored fish.
Even the stonework is delicate. Archways and walls are carved with intricate patterns and shapes that must have taken stoneworkers a lifetime to create.
I guess if you’re a Siphon, you don’t mind waiting a century or two for your construction project to be complete.
It’s all a little over the top—but then, so is their asshole king.
Noemi keeps pace with me, but she’s uncharacteristically quiet, slowly pulling pieces off her pastry and popping them into her mouth.
We pass under another arch and into a smaller courtyard with no flowers, just deep green grasses and trees, thick and lush. The stonework here is all painted in blues and greens, giving us the impression of being underwater. The trees cast a little more shade, keeping the air cooler, adding to the effect.
I glance left at Noemi again. Her drained, tired expression makes me want to punch something.
My biggest regret is how I couldn’t protect her from what happened during her Trials. I was already serving at the front—already Alpha, for that matter.
The Daemos instructor that year was one of my Gammas. I told him to keep an eye on her, to watch out for her even though she wasn’t in our pack. I made it clear to him, or at least I thought I did, that she was my family.
Maybe it was too culturally ingrained in him, the way the king chose a companion. Maybe he looked at that frightened eighteen-year-old girl and somehow saw a woman eager to please her regent.
I can’t ask him for his reasoning. After I found out what happened, I enthusiastically divorced his barely functioning brain from the rest of his body.
Couldn’t undo the harm Noemi suffered, though.
“Mimi,” I ask now, hoping that my concern won’t shut her down further. “Are you okay?”
Noemi tilts her face up toward me. Her eyes are red and puffy, the circles underneath dark and ominous.
She’s stopped walking, and I stop, too, staying silent to give her space to answer.
“IthoughtI was okay,” she says finally. “I’ve done a good job just… not thinking about any of it. You know how it is at the front. There’s always some new crisis, some battle or defensive strategy, that needs your full attention. I could block it out and not deal.”
She ducks her head and gazes down at the patterned pathway beneath our feet.
“Even when we were home with my family,” she continues, “suffering their disrespect, listening to that awful misogynistic song about women’s tears, getting hassled by my cousin… it felt outside of me somehow. Like something that happened in another life, to someone else. Some version of me that I used to be.”
Noemi looks around and then finds a seat on a shaded bench a few feet away. The tree above it has slender branches covered in silver-green leaves that cascade like a waterfall.
She toys with her pastry, eating some but letting most of the flakes drift to the ground.
“I know that Lucien isn’t… isn’thim,” she continues. “Maybe he’s just as bad, or maybe he’s an excellent ruler, who knows. But seeing him with that woman—suddenly I was back in Cyril’s lap in front of everyone, having to smile through what was happening to me because if I didn’t, I would die.”
My jaw clenches tightly, hands curling into fists. She’s barely wanted to talk about this since it happened, and who could blame her?
“All of it came rushing back. Just as strong as it was then. Turns out, I hadn’t moved on. I hadn’t left those feelings behind. They’ve been living inside me this whole time, festering and rotting.”
Her voice breaks onrotting, and I put my arm around her shoulders. WishingI could somehow make her pain and trauma physical so I could battle it, defeat it for her. She lays her head against my shoulder and sighs.
“I wish I was strong like Meryn. That my hatred and anger could fuel me and drive me to vengeance. But mostly I’m exhausted. I’m tired, Valstark. I’m so tired.”
I take her hand, squeezing it between mine. “Surviving is its own strength, Mimi. You made it out. You’re here. That’s enough.”
Her body relaxes just a little bit next to mine. We sit on the bench together, gazing at a tiny blue-and-white bird that whizzes through the ferns in front of us, wings moving so fast we can barely see them.
“You know what Great-Aunt Gertie would say, right?” I ask, hoping to make her smile.
“What? ‘Don’t grow a gray beard’?” she guesses, and I laugh. Noemi’s face lightens a little.
“I never understood that one, did you?” I ask. Some of Gertie’s sayings were full of wisdom, once you figured them out. Others would just remain an enigma.
