“I grew up in a desert kingdom,” Amina reminded him through gritted teeth.
Javi paled and offered up a half-hearted apologetic smirk.
When Risa thought it was inevitable that she would spew herguts all over her shoes, she felt cool, deft fingers press against her temples.
“Stare at a fixed point,” Javi told her, voice soft and reassuring. “Your shoes, that questionable stain on the wall, my eyes…”
Against her better judgment, she took his advice. Tilted her chin up a fraction. Heard his sharp intake of breath above the whirring of the airship. Met his gold gaze.
It was like having the heat of a thousand suns turn on her.
“Oh gods, I think I’m going to be sick.” Amina’s voice interrupted the moment. Javi dropped his hands and looked away. Brunie agreed with Amina, whiskers tickling the back of Risa’s neck as the cat stuffed his head beneath her shirt.
Risa tore her gaze away and stared at the rust stain on one of the steel panels as the machine chugged on. Her heart skipped several beats, though she couldn’t attribute it to the swaying airship or the crowd. In this limited space, she was beginning to suspect it wasn’t Brunhilda’s spell causing her bizarre illness. Her faintness of breath, her thundering heart, her aching chest. Something else was happening, something she’d never felt before.
The airship docked with a hiss. A rumble reverberated through the steel frame. Steam swirled up from the crack between the platform and airship when the doors slid open.
Risa didn’t realize she hadn’t moved until riders shoved past her and Javi. One man, dressed in a crisp suit of dark blue, muttered, “Tourists.”
Amina bolted out of the airship, Javi ambling after her. That left Risa alone to grapple with the sudden emptiness that cracked open in her chest.
It hit her while she was stumbling out onto the gleaming silverplatform—unable to take in the marvel that was San Cirilo—that Javi was, perhaps, avoiding her.
Ever since that kiss behind the crates with all those Sanguines chasing after them. Javi was trying to let herdown. Probably figuring out the right time to tell her that he was sorry, he might not want to marry a despot’s daughter, but he certainly didn’t want to cast his ballot for some country bumpkin, either. He just couldn’t risk having his supposed good luck charm abandon him for the rest of his misadventure.
Javi was trying to save his own skin, much like she was trying to save her own.
She couldn’t have that. She had to set the record straight, right then. He didn’t have to consider her feelings. There was no need to treat her like a fragile thing that would shatter under disappointment. She had been forged by disappointment.
Besides, she wouldn’tbedisappointed. That was the whole point. He didn’t have to spare her. He didn’t have to like her. She certainly didn’t like him. Not in the least.
Except, when she opened her mouth to tell him so, she realized Javi was bent over the princess, rubbing soothing circles against Amina’s back as she was sick into a tall waste bin she could barely reach.
Brunie nuzzled his head into Risa’s cheek, frazzled whiskers twitching. Risa blinked at the sight before her. Sweat trickled down her back. Her stomach performed a belated somersault.
Now it was her turn to throw up.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONEIn Which the Prince Stages the Performance of a Lifetime (and His Companions Are Unimpressed)
Risa swallowed the words and bile. Pressed the heel of her palm into her chest and pounded, forcing everything down.
Javi noticed. His hand paused on Amina’s back, and concern briefly flashed across his features.
“Are you going to be sick, too?” He caught himself and glanced back at the princess, who groaned and shrugged him away. “Amina already hurled.”
Amina was half sprawled over the bin, hood thrown back, both hands gripping the rim with white knuckles. “I wouldn’t do anything so obscene ashurl,” she corrected. “I was sick.” She slid off the bin as she mumbled something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like “of you two,” but Risa couldn’t be sure.
The hub where the second airship had docked was the largeststructure Risa had ever been in—floating or otherwise. Steel rafters made up the skeleton of the domed station, and paneled windows ran across the ceiling and walls, allowing endless sky to serve as a backdrop to the airships docked inside. Wrought-iron lamps, unlit in the day, hung from the rafters, while intricately carved pillars supported the architectural marvel. Two arched gateways, each sporting their own hanging ticker, were stationed at the end of the hub. The streams of people had divided themselves into two lines.
Javi pointed at the longer line snaking out of the archway on the left. That ticker readEVERYONE ELSEin bold black letters.
“I think that’s us.”
The shorter line beneath theCIRILIANSticker had a variety of patrons: men in crisp suits much like the man who had made his opinion on tourists well known; women in carefully pressed and pleated trousers and skirts; people in matching linen ensembles that had not a speck of dirt to be seen. The line that held “everyone else” was made up of individuals wearing similar clothes, only theirs were covered in a fine layer of dust.
Risa, Javi, and Amina did not look like the kind of people to be found in the Business District. Not in their billowing clothes borrowed from a giant, and their cape and ruanas that proved quite useful in the cold air thousands of feet high. The only one among them that looked remotely like they belonged was Brunie, and that was only because he was a cat.
They stood behind two men deep in discussion about something very serious. One man gesticulated wildly while the other nodded, stroking his curled mustache in thought. At some point, the impassioned man argued something Risa couldn’t make out.
