“So, you’ve been here before?” Kalyan asks.
“No, I’ve just seen that it’s open after I leave the Underground.” I lean forward and he mirrors me. “I don’t normally go celebrate after I beat up ten men.”
“Then whatdoyou do?”
A man ambles up to our table. “Drinks are at the bar. Here is what we are offering this late at night.” A menu smacks onto the table as he turns away. I guess I can count that as the third-warmest greeting, but the paneled curtains, in all their brocade brightness, come pretty close.
“Do you think they know we knocked out ten men and burned their ship, or is it something we said?” Kalyan asks.
“Must be the way we breathed.” I know it must be our faces, but I don’t want to ask him how I look right now. Because it’s going to end up being an awkward “You look fine,” or even “You look beautiful,” when I don’t care because I survived a Vencrin battle, and thank the gods, Kalyan isn’t someone I need to impress. Just someone I need to cover if a Vencrin walks in rightnow.
The waiter boomerangs back to us eventually and we order everything that sounds edible. Kalyan goes to the bar to buy Roloc, a frothy liquor Agsa invented that glows in a rainbow of colors when swirled. I ask for a continuous flow of coconut water to be dredged to our table.
“So tell me, what do you think of Jatin Naupure?” Kalyan asks as he slides back into our little corner. There he is, Jatin, the man I do need to impress one day. The man I’ll have to be pretty for.
I choke on my first sip of coconut water. I’m starting to wonder if there is a mind reading spell the academy secretly teaches its students. “What? Why?” I sputter.
“I want your opinion.”
“Why would I have an opinion about him?” Gods, I really don’t want to talk about my fiancé.
“You seem like the kind of person who always has an opinion.”
Was that an insult or a compliment?
“I mean that in a good way. I want to know what you think,” Kalyan continues before I can say anything. “And I know you havesomeimpression.”
He had me there. I can’t say I didn’t meet him in the carriage. I don’t exactly know how to answer, though. I’m speechless.
“Fine. Better put, do you think he and Adraa will get along?” He tries to catch my eye. “Be happy?” Well, that officially reconfirms it, then: Kalyan doesn’t know who I really am. I’ll have to thank Maharaja Naupure later for keeping my identity a secret.
I guess that means I can be truthful. I finally face him head-on. “Honest answer?”
“Of course,” he urges. Eagerness lights his eyes.
“I think Jatin is arrogant and cold.”
Now he’s the one to cough. “Wow, so you’re saying she hates him, then?”
“I don’t think it would be hatred between them.”
He brightens, cocks an eyebrow, and smiles. Maybe it’s the adrenaline from the compact series of events that have transpired in the past few hours, but I want to release this truth, out of the thousands of secrets I hold within me. “I think it would be worse, contempt.”
He pauses, looks down at his drink, and rubs the condensation off the glass with his thumb. It flashes pink to blue. Jatin is his raja! I shouldn’t say this stuff to him, no matter how honest or loopy from adrenaline I am. Besides, honesty isn’t my strength. I still can’t seem to tell him my real name. I don’t want to burst this thing, this partnership we have.
“I’m sorry if I offended you. What’s he really like?” I ask.
He frowns as if he can’t name one good quality.Oh blood.“Gods, you can’t think of one nice thing?”
“No, no, just don’t know where to start.”
I snort, but gulp my drink to obscure the noise.
“He’s good at magic.”
“Ah, huh. But so are you,” I counter. And Gods was he.
“It isn’t a contest between the two of us.” He smirks.
