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Kylian looks at me. “We will stop there on the way to Purgatory,” he says.
“Good, because I don’t feel like dealing with Kaiser at the moment. Now that we have discussed spies, vengeance, mutilation, missing sisters, and the likely opening move of a war, we should eat before the festival ends.”
Kylian looks toward the glowing streets beyond the dock. “You are celebrating?”
“My people are celebrating,” Xavian says, turning as if he expects us all to follow. “I have found that letting people be happy is less work than forcing them to pretend.”
We leave the dock and follow him into the city.
The market district opens around us in a flood of music, food smoke, and voices, and I stop as I take it all in. This is nothing like the last time I was here, the people seem . . . happy. I have never seen anything like it.
Lanterns hang from balconies, and ropes of red, orange, black, and gold are stretched between buildings. Fire bowls burn in the street inside wide iron rings, and musicians play from raised wooden platforms.
Children run through the gaps between adults with sugar on their fingers and paper masks tied crookedly over their faces.
Women dance with bells around their wrists and waists, transforming this palace from the strictly controlled kingdom I remember to something that I’ve only ever read about in books.
Men lift cups and call greetings across crowded tables.
The deeper we move into the market district, the more obvious it becomes that tonight is different from every other night in Malachor, because the humans do not move out of Xavian’s way with the same hurried fear I have seen in his kingdom before. The adults still watch him carefully, lowering their gazes too quickly when he passes. They still pull their children back by instinct.
Yet no one flees.
Though I feel a lot of that is because of the copious amounts of alcohol they’ve consumed. However, the children do not seem to share that fear.
A small girl crawls out from beneath one of the long market tables, her dark curls full of dust, her cheeks flushed with outrage, and she plants herself directly in Xavian’s path.
“Do you even know how to play hide and seek, or are you too old and forgot?” she says, glaring up at him with the full fury of someone who has been wronged beyond repair.
Xavian stops so abruptly that Kylian nearly walks into him, and when he looks down at the child, his expression shifts into something so solemn that I know he is enjoying himself.
“I was hoping you would fall asleep,” he says, his voice grave enough that several nearby children burst into giggles.
The girl gasps, deeply offended, while her small hands tighten around whatever it is she’s holding. “That is not how you play hide and seek. I stayed under that table for over an hour.”
“I know,” Xavian replies, glancing toward the table with a thoughtful frown. “I walked past you three times while I was checking the docks for my guests, and I must say, you are a terrible hider. What were you doing under there for such bad words to leave your mouth? Your mother ought to wash it out with soap.”
Her outrage falters briefly before returning with twice the force. “I was making you something.”
Xavian lifts one brow. “Under a table?”
She holds out a crooked crown made from folded paper, dried leaves, and what looks like scraps of gold ribbon stolen from a stall display.
“I made you this,” she says, holding it up proudly, then adds with the seriousness of someone reporting important kingdom news, “Tommy made you a cape out of his mother’s tablecloth, but then he got in trouble because it was her favorite one, and she said if he wants to dress kings he can start by learning to fold laundry.”
For one moment, Xavian only stares at the crown.
“So are you going to wear it?” she demands. Kylian snickers beside me, and I elbow him. Xavian lowers himself to one knee in front of her. The whole market seems to quiet around the movement.
I watch several people exchange tense glances while the girl steps closer without any fear at all and places the crown on his head.
It sits crooked, yet Xavian wears it like it belongs there.
The few children who wandered over cheer. “See, I told you he would wear it!” the little girl says as Xavian rises with the paper crown still tilted over one brow.
A woman rushes through the crowd then, pale with panic, as she reaches the girl and pulls her back against her skirts. “My king, forgive her, please, she meant no disrespect, she was only excited because of the festival. I should have been watching her more closely.”
The girl frowns up at her mother. “We were playing hide and seek.”
