“What a beautiful room,” Leo said, because he felt that was what was expected of him.
Rahel beamed. “I designed it myself. Wait until you see where I sleep! I’ve got a pink comforter and pink pillows and a golden dresser. Do you like pink?” she said to Sera, then just as quickly turned back to Leo. “Can you make her talk again? Her voice is so pretty.”
“I’m not a windup toy,” Sera said, and Rahel applauded.
“My mother is going to love you!” she said. Leo’s stomach sank. He didn’t want any of the Triumvirate getting their hands on Sera—or worse, finding out that her blood contained magic.
“These desserts look magnificent,” he said, changing the subject. Rahel needed no further encouragement.
“Aren’t they? These are wine-poached apricots, and that’s a chocolate lava cake that’s so gooey it makes you want to scream. What’s your favorite dessert?”
She was looking at Leo like he was the treat. He made himself give a long, slow smile, the kind that always worked best on the tavern girls back home.
“Well,” he said. “I do love a good cobbler. Peach if I can find it. With whipped cream.”
Rahel licked her lips. “I can get you that! My chef makes anything I tell her to. I’ll be right back!”
She slipped out and left Sera and Leo alone.
“What . . .” Sera sank down onto a plush pink chair.
“Yeah,” Leo said. “She’s a lot to take in.”
“What do you think she’ll do with us?”
“It’s not her I’m worried about. It’s her mother, and the other two queens.”
Sera nodded. “She doesn’t seem to care about who I am. But she likes you quite a lot.”
Was Leo imagining the hint of resentment in her voice? He was pretty sure Sera liked girls, given that she had three mothers and came from a city of only women. Why would she care if Rahel thought him handsome?
He moved to look out the window, a large circle covered in gauzy gold curtains. The lights of the market were already tiny as stars in the distance. “We’re moving pretty fast. Wonder how long till we reach Ithilia.”
“What do you think Agnes and Vada are doing?” Sera asked.
“They’ll make a plan,” Leo said, and he hoped he sounded surer than he felt. “They’ll figure something out. Agnes wasn’t born with all those brains for nothing.”
“At least we kept her out of the Triumvirate’s hands,” Sera said. “Being the heir to Culinnon and all.”
Leo was relieved that he felt no jealousy about that whatsoever. His sister could have all the islands she wanted. He felt like he didn’t know who to trust in this country—as much as Agnes had been longing to meet their grandmother, Eneas’s parting words plus the letter he’d sent Phebe had left Leo with a cold sense of foreboding. Whatever the deal was that had been made and then broken, it seemed Ambrosine wasn’t happy about it. But she was also their best chance at surviving the Triumvirate and getting to Braxos—especially if she was controlling the flow of ships to the Lost Islands.
Silence wrapped around them and Leo dreaded the moment when Rahel would return. The girl was exhausting. There was a clock on the mantel that ticked loudly and his heart picked up speed with each passing second. There was nothing he could do in this moment, no way to escape and no idea of what would happen when they reached Ithilia. Finally the quiet grew too much to bear.
“What would you be doing right now?” he asked Sera, the words rushed to cover his increasing panic. “If you had never come here.”
She seemed relieved by the question, as if she had been fighting against the silence as well. “I would likely be working in the stargem mines,” she said. “That was my next apprenticeship. Though I do not think I would have been any better at that than I was at cloudspinning, or tending the seresheep, or working in the orchards.” She poked at a gelatin mold and watched its thick green body undulate. “There was meant to be a wedding season coming, that’s what Koreen said. I’d never seen a wedding season before. I was so excited.”
“You have a season for weddings?” Leo asked, leaving the window to take a seat on the couch beside her chair.
She nodded. “And a birthing season follows after. I was born at the end of the last birthing season, so there has not been a wedding season in my lifetime yet.”
“Did you . . .” Leo cleared his throat. “Was there someone—well, two someones—who you wanted to marry?”
“Oh, no,” Sera said, and Leo felt a selfish pang of relief. “No, I . . . Leela had been kissed, but not me.” She twined her fingers together and glanced at the door Rahel had gone through. “I did not think that sort of love was meant for me.”
“But you do now?” he asked, tensing in anticipation of her response.
“I know it,” she replied. Leo was certain she could hear his heart pounding through bone and skin and muscle.
“What happened to change your mind?”
She turned to him and her eyes were a burst of refreshing blue in the golden room. “I came to this planet,” she said. “And discovered I am attracted to males.”
She confessed it as if it were the easiest thing in the world, as if she could not hear the bells ringing out inside Leo’s chest. This was not where he’d expected the conversation to go and he wasn’t sure if he’d truly allowed himself to acknowledge his feelings for Sera until this moment.
“Are you all right?” she asked. “Your face looks . . . strange.”
“Does it?” His voice sounded unnaturally high. “No, I’m fine, I’m . . .” He searched for a change of subject, but Sera found one for him.
“Oh,” she said, and her hand flew to her necklace.
“The moonstone?” Leo asked.
She nodded. “It just went cold.”
She took it out from beneath her dress and Leo found his eyes drawn to it. The stone was a white purer than a swan’s wing, shot through with delicate ribbons of color.
“Is it as smooth as it looks?” he asked. He’d never touched it before, never even dared to ask.
Sera smiled and held it out in her palm. “Would you like to feel it?”
Their hands touched as he ran his fingers over it, Sera’s skin igniting a greater thrill in him than any magic stone ever could. The moonstone was like an ice cube that wouldn’t melt—Leo found himself compelled to stroke it over and over again, its smoothness almost compulsive. Sera laughed, a richer, kinder sound than Rahel’s giggles.
“It’s pretty, isn’t it?” she said. “My friend Leela found it on the banks of—”
All of a sudden, the moonstone flared up in their hands, so hot Leo wanted to pull away but found that he couldn’t. Sera’s palm began to glow and Leo had the same sensation he’d had when he and Sera had blood bonded and shared memories—a disorienting weightlessness, a feeling of heat zipping through his veins until it finally reached his heart. Sera gasped, and he knew she felt it too but he couldn’t unstick his jaw to ask her what was going on.
There was a crackling sound, like static through a radio, and Leo’s vision blurred—for a second he saw a different place, almost like an overlay across the opulent room, shadows of another location with columns and paths and clear pools of water.