The powder on my skin tingles. It smells of ash and dust and old flowers, and I fight the urge to sneeze. I study the back of my hand with dismay. It doesn’t look light skinned so much as dirty.
Mula and Storm take the lead, Waterfall smacks the draft horse, and we set off, rattling and creaking down the trail. Mara and Belén follow behind on their mounts. We left Horse—along with Hector’s mount for company—on long leads in a sheltered glen with plenty of grazing. I crane my neck for one last sight of her, hoping she’ll be all right until I get back.
Hector holds his elbows tight to his sides, trying to make himself as small as possible. I barely refrain from rolling my eyes.
But as we bump down the trail, our shoulders occasionally knock, and he flinches each time. Exasperation bubbles over, and I blurt, “You don’t have to try so hard to avoid me!”
His face freezes, but then he looks sheepishly off into the distance. “It doesn’t seem right to . . . take liberties when I have not given you an answer.” He says it quietly, and I have to strain to hear.
“There’s an easy solution to that,” I point out. “Just say yes.”
He turns his head to regard me, and my breath catches. How did I not notice, the moment I met him more than a year ago, how very striking he is?
“I don’t want to be a prince consort,” he says. “I have little desire to rule, even less to be a figurehead, and that’s what a prince consort is, you know. A useless trinket on the arm of his queen. It’s not what I ever imagined for myself.”
My heart is sinking like a stone, but then he adds, “For you, though, I am considering it.”
Mara and Belén ride just out of earshot, but Mara catches my eye and gives me a quick wink. I send her a mock glare.
Hector adds, offhand, “You could order me to marry you. You’re my queen, after all.” His gaze on me is unwavering as he awaits my response.
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “Never.”
He arches an eyebrow.
“You once said you couldn’t have me just a little, that just a little wouldn’t be enough. Remember?”
“Yes,” he whispers. I hope he is also remembering the way he kissed me that night, the way he held me close, thinking it was the last time.
“I feel the same. I want all of you, Hector. I want the political match you bring, yes. But I would be miserable if I didn’t have your heart too.”
He lifts a forefinger and traces my bottom lip. My skin soaks up his touch like I am parched desert, desperate for spring rain. I barely manage not to lean into him. “You feel so strongly about me, then?” he says.
“Don’t be daft. I love you.”
He grins. “You’ve never said.”
I blink up at him. “I haven’t?”
“Not directly. You told Franco so, but it crossed my mind once or twice that you might be lying, saying what he wanted to hear.”
Is that what all this was about? He was worried about how I really feel about him? I work very hard to keep my expression serious. “Well, I do. I love you.”
He raises his eyebrow again. “More than you loved Alejandro?”
“I never loved him.”
“More than you loved that boy from the desert?”
“His name was Humberto, and now you’re just being petty.”
He has not stopped grinning like a little boy about to open his Deliverance Day gifts. He leans closer until our lips are a finger’s breadth apart. He brushes a strand of hair from my neck, and I shiver. “If we were alone right now,” he says, “I would . . .”
“I would let you.”
The wagon hits a rut, and our foreheads crack together, which startles a too-loud “Ow!” from me. He raises fingers to his head, wincing.
“Stop!” I say. “You’ll rub off the powder.”
His hand freezes, then he lowers it, grimacing. “Well, come here, then.” Not that there’s anywhere to go in this tiny cart, but I duck under the crook of his arm, which he wraps around my shoulder. I’m careful to keep my powdered face away from his cloak as I lean into him. His lips press against the top of my head, and I close my eyes.
“I love you too,” he whispers in my ear. “Wholly. Madly.”
“Does this mean you’ll marry me?”
“I suppose.”
I elbow lightly him in the stomach. “Even if it means being a prince consort? And being married to someone so egregiously powerful?”
He sighs. “Even then.”
“If it helps, I’d like you to continue on as commander of the Royal Guard and my personal defender. I mean, if you want to.”
His arm around me tightens. “I’d like that.”
“Now all we have to do is live through the next few weeks.”
“I confess, I suddenly have an overwhelming desire to survive.”
My whole body tingles warmly. I’m very glad I never stopped taking the lady’s shroud.
“Hoods up, everyone!” calls Storm. “We’re about to turn onto the main highway.”
As one, we flip up our cowls, which surely seems suspicious to anyone watching. But as the trails curves around to merge with traffic—hoards of Inviernos on foot, a few carts like ours, one large carriage with a team of four—I see that cowls are the fashion of the day. Or maybe it’s a practical necessity in this cold climate.
Our ride smoothes the moment the wheels clunk onto the slight lip of stone paving. I peer over the edge of the cart. Each paver stone fits so perfectly to the next, and the thin lines of mortar sparkle with tiny bits of colored glass. This highway is a work of art. It doesn’t seem fair that my enemy should have such a glorious highway when the main thoroughfare leading from my capital city is rife with ruts and half covered in sand. Because of our recent war with these people, I’ve had no funds for repair.
I know it’s small-minded of me even as the thought pours out, but I can’t help it: If I ever lay siege to this place, I will turn this offending highway to rubble.
The Inviernos surrounding us are invariably tall, lithe, and lovely. Seeing so many, pressed so close together, I realize how odd my people must seem to them, how graceless and stunted and dark.
“Try not to gape,” Hector whispers. “You’ll attract attention.”
He’s right. I curl tighter against him, trying to seem invisible, instead listening hard to the world around me. It’s a cacophony of footsteps, cartwheels, and clattering horseshoes, and just below it all, the constant hum of chatter. I catch several words in the Lengua Classica. But there are more words I don’t recognize, the syllables stretched out in swinging high and lows, like a song. Storm once told me the Inviernos have been here for thousands of years, that my own people are comparatively recent interlopers on this world. So it makes sense that they would have their own language, something ancient and alien.
I sit straight up as the thought hits.
“Elisa?” Hector says.
“Why do so many Inviernos speak the Lengua Classica?” I whisper, fast and low. “If our people brought the language to this world, and the Inviernos were already here as Storm claims, why did they adopt it?”
Storm looks over his shoulder and shoots me a glare. I lean back against Hector, chastised.
“Storm always says what he believes to be true,” Hector says. “But maybe he has been misled about this.”
“Maybe.”
We travel the rest of the way in silence, and as the Godstone cools in my belly, I grow frustrated with my cowl. It blocks too much of my vision. The skin of my neck starts to prickle. Danger could be coming up behind me, even beside me, and I would not know until it was too late.
Our cart jerks to a halt. I start to lift my head to peer around us but think better of it.
“State your business,” comes the sibilant voice of an Invierno man.
“Cargo bound for the Deciregus of Crooked Sequoia House,” says Storm, and I can’t help but admire the way our deception is hidden in the truth of his words.