“Is there such a thing as too many?” Sincere curiosity glittered in his eyes. “One might think that with your life of having so very little, you would crave for more.”
Oh.
That explained the constant brigade of gifts marching into my room almost every day. He thought I wanted fancy things because I’d never owned anything nice, other than the warped pearl I rested on Gaia’s worship shelves months ago.
Luxuries were nice, sure. But I wanted freedom, respect and a life of my own. Even if all of that came within the walls of the palace, I still wanted them. Not dresses.
Mind, the hand-bracelet was convenient and beautiful, so I wasn’t complaining about that gift. Those could keep coming for all I cared.
The Prince eventually stepped away from me with a curt sound like a hum, and turned his back to me.
I watched him stride to the door without so much as a goodbye.
“Thanks for the fumble,” I called out after him, maybe pushing my luck a bit. “I needed that.”
The Prince paused, hand on the door, and looked over his shoulder at me darkly. “Is that what you call it?”
I smiled as sweetly as I could manage. Sugar-laced poison. “There’s another word, but it might too crude for your taste.”
The Prince rinsed me over with an uncaring look before he left.
The second I heard the click of the door, I was whipping the sheet off my body and scrambling out of bed.
I had a tortured friend to visit before the festival.
11
I picked through Ava’s dinner leftovers and distantly remembered the knock on my door when Prince was dressing. It must have been my meal.
My stomach growled in protest as I nibbled on the end of bread crust. I was spoilt now. My body was used to better food, fresher bread, smoother butter.
With a sigh, I dropped the stiff crust to the plate and looked up at Ava. “How are you feeling?”
It was a silly question that I felt I had to ask. But it was silly because I knew exactly how she was feeling. The Prince had gotten me with that same kind of torture before, and it struck the bones with aches that lasted days.
Sitting on the windowsill, Ava stared out at the fluttering crows. She must have developed an interest in birds since we came to the palace, because she sure as hell didn’t give a damn about them before on Zwayk.
“Better since Jasper brought me tea,” she said. “Aniels drink it after too long at sea. Helps soothe the cold that gets in the bones.”
I knew I should have kept my mouth shut. We’d only just started talking again, and that was purely down to my defiance against the Prince after he tortured her, and that I—not Jasper—climbed over her and used myself as a mortal shield to protect her.
Still, knowing the rocky ground we were on, I really shouldn’t have said what I did.
“Fuck Jasper.”
Jaw clenched, she shifted to face me and those brown eyes of hers smouldered like embers. “He did what he could.”
I snorted. “What, watch you be tortured without so much as flinching? Yeah, he did real good. Great catch.”
“It’s hard not to love them, even through the fear and betrayal,” she said. “You should know that more than anyone, Lissa.”
Her implications prickled my skin and my insides went cold.
Did she know? How much could she know?
It was only an hour ago that the Prince left my room, I was still wearing his smell on me. There was no way she could possibly know what I’d done with him.
I couldn’t let her know.
“I never forget what Prince Poison is. I don’t know if you can say the same about you and Jasper. He would cut your head off with a blunt knife if it meant pleasing his God.”
Ava slipped off the windowsill and wandered over to the table I slouched at.
“I don’t think he would,” she said, and finished off the crust I’d nibbled on. “And he knew, when the God was hurting me, that he wouldn’t kill me. Jasper knows Prince Poison better than anyone does. He’ll keep me alive as long as he wants you.”
“Ah, but he’ll break up your mundane days with a little bit of torture here and there,” I scoffed. “Look, I know what it feels like to want them, and how it feels when they want you back—”
“Do you?” Ava rested her hand on the rim of a tepid cup of tea that I assumed was the aniel-favoured brew.
She stared at me with a look that I’d never seen on her before, one so distant and calculating that I hardly recognised her.
“When you’re with Prince Poison,” she said, “does it feel like bells in your body, calling you home? Does it feel like love, or death?”
Bells in your body, calling you home...
Damianos flickered in my mind.
I couldn’t tell her about him. He was shielded from my blood memories, but not from hers—at least, I wasn’t sure if she would be protected in her blood memories like I was. Uncertainty was enough to make up my mind.
I couldn’t tell her.
There’s so much I have to hide.
“None of that matters.” I ran my hands down my face and slumped back in the chair. “An aniel is more dangerous than a God, because at the end of it all, they’re just puppets. Aniels will always do what their masters want, no exceptions.”
A grim look turned down her face.
“It’s so hard to keep things from you,” she said quietly, as if not really speaking to me but rather to herself about me. “Soon, you’ll know what I do. Soon, you’ll wake up and see what’s really going on. I hope you come to me when you do.”
As if on cue, there was a knock at the door. The guards, ending my time with Ava.
For a beat, I just sat there staring at her.
This Ava across from me was a stranger. Someone I didn't grow up with or work with or travel with to the Land of the Gods. And I found myself wondering, could I care about someone who didn’t exist anymore?
A heavy pull wrestled my heart as I pushed back the chair. “I have to go,” I sighed. “I’ll visit you tomorrow.”
“Maybe.”
The knowing look in her sorrowful eyes gave me chills.
Those chills followed me all the way back to my bedchamber, where Nalla was waiting by the steaming washtub, ready to prepare me for the festival.
Thankfully, my favourite maid had a cure for the hollow bitterness that Ava had plagued me with; a long, thin glass full of a bubbly drink that tickled my nose and made me feel lighter than the clouds on a warm, sunny morn. ‘Shapay’ Nalla had called it, and said is was made from ripe plums in the very gardens of the palace.
It was definitely a taste to get used to, but by the time I was fitted into my tight dress and my hair fell down my back in flower-threaded spirals, I’d barrelled my way through three glasses already. Nalla advised against any more than that.
I fiddled with the glitter left on the rim of the glass as Nalla fastened the straps on my sandals. The pale pink glitter had come from my painted lips. It felt grainy against my skin, but was so pretty that it made me think of the Prince. Beautiful and prickly. Like the roses he sometimes sent me.
I let out a whooshed breath and found my reflection in the long, golden-framed mirror on the wall. I blinked, startled. I barely recognised myself.
I mean, mirrors on Zwayk were hard to come by, and even the ones we did have were grimed in mud and dust and age. Reflections were never as clear as the one that faced me. Still, I knew I’d never looked like this before.
In the darkening lantern light of the bedchamber, the ballgown’s dusty pink hues had paled to peachy tones. Tulle curved out from below my pinched waist, then cascaded to the carpet in a bouquet of withered pale flowers and threads of silver, over and over, all the way around the hem of the breath-taking dress.
But it was more than the dress that stunned me into silence.
It was me. My milky-toned face, my stark-green eyes. All sparkling with sprinkles and smears of peachy glitter and pink rou
ge, masking the new harshness of my looks that had come to be in the palace.
Even my ashen hair had taken a new life with golden hues that hadn’t been there before. I glanced at Nalla’s downward head as she finished with my strappy sandals, and I wondered what she’d used on me to bring me to life on the outside, when I truthfully had felt dead on the inside for so long.
I didn’t get the chance to ask her, though.
A familiar no-knock at the door came as it whipped open and I caught the scent of the waxy candles from out in the corridor.
Great.
I knew who was in my boudoir before I even looked up at him.
By the hard look on his beige-toned face, I knew he’d heard all about my visit with Ava.
Jasper folded his arms over his chest and, with a burning gaze that itched my skin and made my cheeks hot, he jerked his head.
“Shall we?” he said as Nalla helped me to my feet. “The Prince won’t wait long and you’re already late.”
“You are the late one,” I muttered and pulled gently at the lace sleeves of my dress. They cut off just before the two hand-bracelets I wore. “And I’ll be sure to let the Prince know that if he asks.”
With a haughty sound, I held my head up and strode past Jasper into the corridor.
As the door shut behind us, Jasper leaned in closer and whispered with as much darkness as the night, “You or me, it hardly matters. The Prince won’t make that distinction.”
“You overestimate yourself,” I bit back at him. “And you underestimate my worth to your God.”
That shut him right up.
12
When I first arrived in Scocie, I thought the carriage ride from the ship to the palace was awkward. Now that I was trapped with Jasper in a plush above-ground carriage that drifted over the palace grounds, I knew better.
News travelled too quickly in the whispering walls of the palace. He must have known what I said to Ava, how I tried to convince her of his depravity. Otherwise, he had a whole other reason for glowering at me from the shadows of the carriage, and I hadn’t the faintest idea what it was.
Wherever his silent rage came from didn’t matter. It was that he tried to kill me with his glare alone. I wouldn’t be surprised if he flung me out of the carriage and let me fall to my death on the stone patios somewhere below.
After a while, I couldn’t stand his stare anymore. I peeled back the velvet curtain to look out at the gardens.
“Are those the baths?” I asked and tapped my ring-covered finger on the window.
Below the carriage was what looked like sapphire-blue ponds that descended in natural steps down the bone hill. Heat ribboned up from the pools in steam that shimmered grey under the lights of the gaslamps that ran all the way from the palace doors to the bottom of the hill, as far as I could see from the carriage window.
“Those are the Hot Springs,” Jasper said, his anger at me unyielding in his icy tone. “The baths reside within the palace walls.”
I made a mental note to remember both. For all I knew, I was out of bounds tonight, permitted by the Prince. But I fancied a visit not only to those magical looking Hot Springs, but to the indoor baths as well, even if they were communal.
“Now we’re above the Wild Gardens.” Jasper was gazing out the window with a glazed-over look in his eyes, like his mind quickly drifted elsewhere.
I hummed and pressed the tip of my nose to the cool window.
The view outside roughened into something unruly. Weeds strangled the roots of thick tree trunks whose branches looked to be charred wood, and the grass shifted to a white shade paler than the Prince’s marble skin.
Little bulbs of light led the way for the carriage down the hill, burning white and bright far above the orange glows of the gaslamps.
I watched the small balls of light burn bright against the dark landscape, and fleetingly thought of a story my mother once told me about these tiny little creatures that the Gods made long before us—pixies.
I never gave much trust to the tale of the pixies, and always thought of their story as little more than the tales of the beasts who roamed Zwayk’s woods. Fantasies. Scary stories meant to keep children in line.
As I studied the bulbs, I wondered if pixies had existed after all, and they’d never been put to death like their story told, but rather they’d been captured and bottled for the God’s to use as pretty lights in the sky
Finally, our carriage started to descend to a row of colourful carriages tucked behind a line of midnight blue trees. The carriage landed gently on the milky white grass.
A blue-suited worshipper opened the carriage door. Jasper, with a look as murderous as a cornered wild animal, helped me out of the hot box and into the relieving breeze of the Wild Gardens.
Scattered black flowers stained the white grass that grew wildly at my feet. With Jasper’s loose grip on my arm, we moved around the line of carriages where mossy steps climbed up to a stone court.
Trees, taller than any on the palace grounds, grazed the night sky. Cosy balconies were tucked in the thicket of branches high above—from the fleeting glimpses I caught as Jasper led me through the crowd on the courtyard, those balconies sparkled like stardust statues and I wondered what they were made from.
The crowd parted for us.
Eyes sparkled with intrigue and it took seconds before realisation turned those looks hungry. Their gazes followed me all the way through the crowd, never tearing away.
The hushed sound of whispers prickled at my ears and I was sure some of the onlookers were mocking me. Maybe the way I looked, or the worry lines pinching my lips.
I stuck close to Jasper’s side.
When his hand slipped away from my arm, I had to fight back the urge to grab onto the sleeve of his white coat.
He led me through the sea of onlookers like a ship through a brewing storm. We found the Prince under a midnight blue arch, fashioned from sewn leaves and butterfly wings.
My lip curled as I noticed who the Prince was speaking with. My least favourite aniel, Adrik.
I hoped the arch would crumble and pile down on him with the thorny leaves and sharp butterfly wings.
Jasper cleared his throat.
At the sound, the Prince stopped speaking to Adrik and turned to face us. The breath was hit out of me instantly, and I felt my stomach flip too high.
His usual crimson military coat had been replaced by a charcoal-black suit that made his pale, smooth skin all the more striking. Fiercer than ever, his moonlight eyes gleamed like those white pixie-bulbs running alongside the carriages. Long dark lashes fringed his bright eyes, stretching shadows down his cheeks.
My eyes dropped to his lips as they moved.
The Prince was speaking the aniel language to Jasper, but it all sounded like static to me. I was too fixated by the red streaks of glitter that smeared his lips, not unlike the pink that stained my own.
The Prince looked beautiful. So beautiful that my breath was stolen away and all that familiar giddy attraction came rushing back to me.
As promised, a ribbon was tied around his wrist and its shade matched the dusty pink of my ballgown.
That ribbon, I quickly realised, was the focus of a lot of nearby looks that lingered too long. Some glares were hidden among the looks and, the longer I scanned the crowd, the more obvious it became that those vile looks came from Gods as well as aniels.
“Valissa.”
At the sound of the Prince’s stern voice, my head jerked up and I blinked at him. Disapproval sparked in his eyes like a match being struck.
“Sorry,” I muttered and glanced at where Jasper had been standing moments ago.
He was gone now, and I’d been so lost in the wonder of my surroundings to notice.
“I was distracted,” I added, feeling the familiar iciness of the Prince’s hand on the small of my back. “Everything’s so beautiful—I sometimes forget where I am.”
Understanding softened his eyes as he regarded me. “You do
not spend enough of your time appreciating where you are.” He slowly grazed his fingers up my spine to the string of pearls loose from my hair, hanging at the nape of my neck. “Too many days and nights wasted in your bedchamber.”
As his fingers threaded through the pearls, I chanced a seductive smirk up at him. “You didn’t complain about wasted time in my bedchamber earlier, and we spent the whole day in there. I missed my dinner because of that.”
He let his disinterested stare linger over me for a beat. With a lazy gesture to a nearby server, he summoned over some of those long tube-like glasses of shapay.
I was eager to down my sour, bubbly drink right away, but I forced myself to controlled sips. After all, I was among Gods. Not only did I have to hide my unpolished village side, I had to keep my wits about me and I was already feeling bolder than I should.
“Jasper mentioned your interest in the Hot Springs,” the Prince said.
I frowned up at him, my curiosity spiked by his conversational tone. “Yeah.” I shrugged stiffly. “I mean, they looked ... like nothing I’ve ever seen.”
“Trident created them before she stretched the seas.”
My eyebrow hiked up. I couldn’t hide any scrap of suspicion that startled my face.
“The outer gardens are not restricted to you,” he went on, looking out at the tangled crowd. “Your guards will escort you if you wish to visit them.”
I hummed before I downed the last few drops left in the narrow glass. As a nearby server drifted by, I made to trade my finished drink for a fresh one, but the Prince squashed my plans quickly.
He took me by the waist. “I’ll assume by your memories that you’re familiar with dancing.”
Prince Poison guided me to the stone platform that was cracked with weeds and white grass poking out all over. Every gaze landed on us again, a renewed spark of interest lighting up the festival like a fresh set of gaslamps igniting.
My breath hitched as the Prince pulled me against him, then drew back his hands. Slowly, he peeled off his gloves, one finger at a time, and a collection of whispers rose up from our audience.
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