“Maybe,” he said with a chuckle, “but that’s not why they do it. You’re royalty, my love. We both are. They do it out of respect.”
“Oh, right. I wish they wouldn’t. It makes me feel . . . weird. I thought this would be the last place I’d feel unusual, surrounded by all these mythical creatures that aren’t really mythical.”
He slid his arm around my waist and pulled me close to him. “Stop worrying about what everyone else thinks.”
“Easy for you to say. You’ve been beautiful and you forever. You’re used to it.”
“And you’ve been beautiful and you forever, too. Your forever is shorter than mine, but you should be used to it by now.”
“I’ve only been beautiful and royalty for a few days, and I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it.” In fact, every time I caught my reflection in the mirror since the Ang’dora, I had to stop for a moment, making sure it was really me. So I stayed away from mirrors as much as possible. It was too much to accept.
Tristan kissed the top of my head. “You’ve become self-conscious on me again. You remind me of when I first met you.”
I remembered how uncomfortable I’d been with him, torn between wanting him to know the real me and trying to be “normal” because I thought he was. It felt like several lifetimes ago.
“Sorry. I just feel so out of place here,” I said as I contemplated the odd assortment of houses lining the street.
Some were painted in vibrant colors or with wild patterns, and others appeared to be from the ancient Greek era, perfectly preserved. The mish-mash looked as though houses from Whoville were picked up by a tornado and randomly dropped into a neighborhood of Parthenon-like buildings. Various odors carried on the air, some pleasant, some not so much, making me wonder what kinds of concoctions were being created in some of the more eccentric homes. A few people were outside—one cutting herbs from a garden, another walking a pet tarantula the size of my head on a leash, making me shudder—and they all inclined their heads as we passed by.
“I’m the alien but they all treat me like . . .” A weirdo.
“Royalty?” Tristan finished for me.
I sighed. “Yeah. At this rate, I’ll be ready to get back to normal life sooner than I thought. At least in the normal world, I know how to behave, what to do.”
He gave me a squeeze. “We’ll be leaving soon enough, I’m sure. But first you have a lot to learn. You need to train. Have you been practicing at all, or just gawking?”
“Pretty much just gawking,” I admitted, and then I frowned. I hated listening to people’s thoughts, and it felt especially intrusive when the people close by thought they were in the privacy of their own homes. At least on the main street, people would be thinking fewer intimate thoughts and more about their business at hand. “Let’s go back downtown, or whatever you call it, so I can be with more people.”
As we walked, I pushed my cloud out to people we passed long enough to hear a brief thought, then quickly pulled the cloud in as soon as I’d succeeded. I kept to only one person at a time, afraid I’d lose control if I tried more. Fortunately, what I heard was mostly mundane, except . . .
“Can’t stop thinking of him as Seth. Look at him, walking around as though he owns the place, his hands all over the real royalty, as though he owns her. He’s such a traitor. He’ll be the downfall of the Amadis.”
As we walked by, the man—I picked up the thought he was a were-animal of some sort—inclined his blond head like everyone else, and hurried past us.
“Wow, he’s not quite a fan of yours,” I muttered to Tristan. “He thinks you’re a traitor.”
“Yes,” Tristan said with a hint of steel in his voice, “there are some who think I shouldn’t be here . . . and especially shouldn’t be with you.”
Before I could say what those people could physically do to themselves, my brain rattled with an agitation that exceeded my own. Somehow my mind followed the disturbance to pick up the disjointed thoughts.
“This meeting . . . a farce! . . . What to believe! . . . Another daughter? . . . And the boy? . . . Martin ruling? . . . Is it possible? . . . Tristan—a traitor! . . . Something needs to be done . . . the Amadis . . . Decimated!”
I peered over my shoulder, sensing the owner of such mental chaos behind me, but no one was there. Whoever had been so upset had disappeared.
My own mind spun. The fragmented thoughts made no sense. Were his thoughts really so disjointed, or did the telepathy cut in and out like a poor cell phone signal? Did he mean my future daughter? And Dorian? Who was Martin? And, most importantly, how many people thought Tristan would betray us, and how could they possibly still believe that after everything he’d done for the Amadis?
I opened my mouth to tell Tristan what I heard, but he cut me off. “Rina’s asking for our return.”
“She told you? But not me?”
Tristan shrugged, took my hand, and led me back to the big, white building at the top of the hill, the Council Hall. I wondered briefly why Rina had only spoken to Tristan as if I was inferior, but by the time we entered the little room in the council building to wait with Mom and Rina, my mind had returned to the commotion I’d heard.
The man had mentioned the meeting being a farce, but didn’t specify which meeting. The council meeting that was about to begin or another one? Thinking he might possibly be a council member, I knew I needed to gather my wits and courage and do a damn good job of “listening” for Rina. Something was definitely going on.
“You can’t go in there!” Owen’s bark came from the other side of the door, pulling me out of my internal thoughts.
“Owen, I am your mother. You let me in right now,” commanded a stern female voice. The door burst open. “Sophia!”
“Sorry,” Owen muttered, following the woman in.
Mom grinned widely. “It’s okay, Owen. I doubt your mother is trying anything sneaky with us.”
The woman slid out of her leather jacket and tossed it to Owen as she strode over to Mom and embraced her. She wore black leather from head to toe—a bustier, pants, and combat boots—and though her build was slight, the confident way she moved and held herself would make a bully cower. She appeared to be in her mid- to late-thirties, but she had to be nearly three times older: Owen appeared to be twenty-five, but was actually sixty-eight, and this woman, apparently, had given birth to him. With shoulder-length, straight hair the same shade of blond as Owen’s and eyes the same sapphire blue, the resemblance was obvious.
“I know I’m breaking protocol, but I couldn’t wait a minute longer to see you or to meet Alexis,” she said, already advancing on me. She didn’t wait for introductions. “Ah, yes, you are as beautiful as I’ve heard. Hello, Alexis, I am Charlotte Allbright.”
It took me a moment to recover from her straightforwardness. “Uh, nice to meet you, Ms. Allbright.”
She laughed. “You can call me Charlotte or Char.”
“Or Charred or Charcoal,” Mom said.
“You’ll never let me live that one down, will you?” Charlotte gave Mom a mischievous smile at some private joke.
“Alexis, this is Owen’s mother, as you’ve figured out,” Mom said. “And, I have to admit, a long-time friend of mine.”