Grumbling, she emerged from the bathing room, carefully unlatching her mother’s necklace. Afraid she’d lose it in the tavern, she placed it on her nightstand for safekeeping. “Can either of you tie up the back for me?”
Gracia volunteered with a raised hand, flitting to Sol’s side and motioning for the Princess to turn. “This dress looks lovely on you,” she commented, her nimble fingers lacing the corset with ease. “I’ve never worn such finery.”
Sol fiddled with the skirts that fluttered at her toes. “There’s a blue dress in my bag,” she said. “You’re welcome to wear it, if you’d like. You’re no bigger than me, so it should fit you fine.”
Her eyes brightened with such unabashed mirth as she stepped in front of Sol when she was finished. “You don’t mind?”
“Not at all.” Sol motioned towards her bag. “Help yourself.”
She certainly did as Sol offered, rifling through her bag and disappearing into the bathing room with the dress held tightly in both hands.
“Come sit down,” Riel instructed, her voice unusually soft as she pulled out the chair from behind the desk. Draven was currently stretched beneath it, having sought asylum when Riel breezed into the room. “Let me tame that rats nest of yours.”
Sol sank into the wooden chair, flinching as Riel immediately set to work on untangling her hair. “What’ll you do with it?”
“I’m not sure.” Riel worked out the knots with surprising gentleness. “What you’re doing for Gracia by letting her wear your dress, thank you. It means a lot to her.”
Her brows furrowed as she craned her neck to look at Riel. The Quartermaster’s eyes were focused on Sol’s hair, but the emotion that flickered there was not one Sol could place. “It’s nothing,” she said. “I’d let you wear it, too, if it fit.”
Riel began to braid a small section of red. “Gracia isn’t like me,” she said quietly. “I was raised on a ship, but my father was a wealthy man. Anything I wanted, I was given. Gracia and Luca… They weren’t that fortunate.”
Sol frowned. “Where are they from?”
“Lymeria,” Riel answered. “A city in Nedros that’s known for high crime rates and even higher slave trading. It’s a wonder Gracia was never taken.” She pinned a thinly pleated braid beneath the crown of Sol’s head. “They’ve never known their father, and their mother died when they were young. Until Fynn found them nearly a year ago, they’d spent their lives living in abandoned buildings. The city guards would always chase them away, but I think they felt sorry enough that they never bothered to arrest them. They were children without a home by no fault of their own.”
“Where did Luca learn to become a healer, then?”
“He’s mostly self-taught,” Riel told her. “But there was a healer in Lymeria who pitied them. Before he was murdered, he let Luca and Gracia sleep in his cellar so long as Luca agreed to work at his practice. He mostly took inventory, but Luca’s observant. He learned everything he could just by listening.”
Sol’s heart ached for the twins, for the things they’d never had that she had always taken for granted. She may have resented the towering stone castle that loomed over all of Sonamire, but at least she’d had a place to call home.
“They’re so kind,” she mused quietly. “And happy. I’d never have known unless you told me.”
Riel shrugged, twirling a curl around her finger. “They’ve always had each other,” she said. “And that’s always been enough for them. But when they joined us on the Refuge all those months ago… I’m glad Fynn found them when he did.”
Sol did not ask what she meant, what condition the twins had been in to have prompted Fynn to save them in the first place. “Thank you,” she said instead. “For telling me.”
Nodding, Riel fell silent as she twisted Sol’s hair into several thin braids. She gathered them together at the nape of her neck, and they webbed like a net over the hair Riel had left down. Curls framed the Princess’ face, ones that Riel had twisted around her fingers until they were perfect ringlets. They bounced in front of her eyes.
When Gracia emerged from the bathing room, she was twirling and spinning and splaying the skirts of her new dress. Her sea-green eyes were lighter than Sol had ever seen them, and Riel grinned as Gracia twirled for them. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
“No,” Riel said. “You are.”
The helmswoman blushed, fiddling with the pleated braids that fell over either shoulder. She turned to Sol, who’d spun in her chair to look back at her, and smiled bashfully. “Thank you.”
Sol shrugged. “It looks better on you than it ever did me.”
Riel squeezed her shoulder in silent thanks. “Well, you’re both dressed and this one’s hair has been tamed—sort of. I’d say it’s time for us to leave. Fynn and the others are probably already there and drinking.”
Rising from her chair, Sol turned to Draven who was staring at her from beneath the desk, his unblinking eyes wide and glowing in the candlelight. “Stay here,” Sol told him. “I won’t be long. Help yourself to the rest of my dinner.”
Not that Riel had left much of it.
The direwolf huffed, licking Sol’s hand as she reached for him. She scratched him behind his ear. “Behave while I’m gone. Don’t go on any adventures without me.”
Draven dropped his head as if she’d foiled his plans.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
SOL
This place was no tavern.
She had expected the dancing and drinking, the merriment of her friends as they laughed and teased and gambled away their money on cards. But she had not anticipated the sparkling chandeliers that hung from the high-beamed ceilings, nor the candlelight flickering in golden braziers being tended to by beautiful Fire-Wielders.
The crew had taken bets on how long it would take Fynn to flirt with them.
Their booth was placed beneath a stained-glass image of Thymis. The colorful shards fractured the moonlight into glistening shadows across their table, shadows that Riel had tried to capture between the palms of her hands until Gracia had taken her beer away.
Sol sipped from a goblet of wine, her eyes flitting amongst the crew as she surveyed their reverie in silence. Riel had dragged Gracia off to dance nearly an hour ago, spinning and leaping in the circle of her arms while Gracia simply bounced on her feet. It did not appear as if the helmswoman liked to dance, looking for all the world like she’d rather be anywhere else, but she would stand there if it made Riel happy—and it did. Riel was smiling wider than Sol had ever seen.
Arden, to Sol’s joy and relief, was sat between Luca and Fynn on the opposite side of the table, her hand laid protectively across her torso. Sol wondered if it still hurt, if healing did nothing more than mend the wound and if the pain still lingered despite it. She had never asked her brother, and she’d certainly never asked Fynn who was smiling coyly at their waiter.
Swirling the wine in her glass, Sol tried not to pay any mind to Amael, squeezed into the booth to her left. He had not even looked at her when she’d slid into the empty seat beside him, and he was careful not to touch her as he leaned over the table and slapped down his playing cards in front of Luca.