Hazel looks up at me and pauses, narrowing her eyes.
“That’s a joke,” she says, but she sounds uncertain.
I stare at her for another moment before I crack, letting myself smile.
“It’s a joke,” I say, and offer her my arm. “Would you care to stroll the gardens with me?”
She wraps her fingers around my forearm, and even through my leather jacket, I can feel her warmth sinking into my skin, sending jolts of electricity through me. We walk on between the rose bushes, the mostly-dark windows of the palace above.
“You still haven’t told me where you’re taking me,” she says, keeping her voice low.
“We’re going to the ugly part of Velinsk,” I say.
“There’s an ugly part?” Hazel says, then frowns. “Wait, the Shadow Quarter?”
God, what a ridiculous name.
“Do the English maps still call it that?” I ask.
“Don’t tell me it’s really called something else,” she says. “Shadow Quarter sounds romantic and exotic, like it’s where the brothels and opium dens are.”
“Brothels and opium dens are romantic?”
She laughs softly.
“Wrong word,” she says. “I just mean interesting and dangerous.”
“You won’t be disappointed, then,” I say. “The gray district doesn’t have brothels or opium dens, but it’s both of those things.”
Her hand adjusts on my arm, and we stroll under another arch, entering another section of the gardens, this one filled with willow trees.
“And yet I’m letting you take me there, no questions asked,” she murmurs.
“You’ve asked quite a few questions,” I point out.
“Sounds like I haven’t asked enough,” she says.
“We’re meeting some friends of mine at a bar,” I say, and glance over at her.
“That’s it?” she says.
Then she frowns.
“Wait, I thought there were no bars in Velinsk,” she says, her voice suddenly hushing.
“There are no legal bars in Velinsk,” I say, dropping my tone to match hers. “My father shut them down when he re-opened the summer palace here. There can be no hint of immorality in a ruler’s surroundings,” I say, imitating my father’s stern voice.
“I watched him down at least six shots of vodka the other night,” she says.
“It’s not the drinking,” I say, wondering how the hell I can explain this to an American, the important difference between bar-drinking and home-drinking. “It’s the rowdiness in a public place. The congregation of too many people all under the influence.”
She looks at me very, very skeptically, even as her hand tightens on my arm.
“My father sees every opportunity for people to gather as a threat to his reign,” I say softly.
“I thought Sveloria was stable,” she says, her voice just above a whisper.
“It is now,” I say. “But twenty years ago my father made it that way by blood and fire, and he knows that twenty years isn’t very long. To him, every face he doesn’t know will always be a threat. Soviet loyalists around every corner, communists, anarchists, all just waiting to put an end to everything he’s worked for. So he still rules with a metal fist.”
“Iron fist,” Hazel says.
“A fist is a fist,” I say.
I’ve been trying to get him to loosen his grip ever since I got back from the Royal Guard. Other countries have bars where people get drunk together and don’t overthrow their governments. Other countries have a free media that reports on anything and everything, and power still transitions in an orderly fashion from one ruler to another.
But I know he’s never going to change. There are lessons you just can’t unlearn.
“So we’re going to an explicitly illegal speakeasy in a dangerous part of town,” she says.
“There’s still time for you to feel chickens,” I say.
“The phrase is chicken—”
“I know,” I say.
“Sorry,” Hazel says, laughing.
I stop. We’re in the middle of a grove of willow trees, their long green branches waving around us in the same breeze that just barely moves Hazel’s long black hair.
Skip the bar and stay here, something inside me whispers, something that doesn’t give a shit about the stern talk my father gave me.
The ground is soft enough. No one would hear you. It’s late, no one else is out.
Just once.
I nearly snort out loud. I can already tell that once would never be enough. I’m already being stupid and reckless, out here, alone, with the first girl who’s ever made me feel like I can’t help myself.
I’m playing with fire. I know it.
I also don’t care.
Chapter Thirteen
Hazel
Kostya stops short, right in the middle of the willow grove. I press my lips together, wondering if I’ve said something, or whether he’s changing his mind about taking some dumb American to his secret hangout.
Then he looks down at me, and I swear his serious, smoldering gaze burns a hole right through me, even as I’m half-convinced that I’m reading all his signals wrong. Every time that I’m sure that this tension between us is real, a moment later he’s Prince Serious again, and I’m wondering if I’m imagining things.
Right now, for instance. I almost can’t tell if he’s about to kiss me or reprimand me. Maybe both at once. It seems like something a Svelorian could do.
My insides start to twist anyway. I don’t break his gaze.
Just kiss me or say something or do something, I think.
I’m gonna lose my mind if this keeps up for a whole month.
Kostya slips his arm from my grasp, then slides his hand into mine, warm and rough. He half smiles.
I swallow.
Then he pulls me between the curtain made by two willow trees, their long green branches dragging over my hair as I duck. Behind them is a tall, dense green hedge. Kostya hesitates for a moment, scanning it, and then pushes into the small gap between two plants, still pulling me behind him.
Four feet of shrubbery later, we’re on a paved asphalt road, a green field on the other side of the black ribbon. I look left and right, trying to figure out where exactly we are, because this part of the palace’s grounds doesn’t look familiar at all.
“The back route to the garage,” he says, and we start walking down the road. He doesn’t take his hand away and I don’t either, even though we’re right out in the open now.
You haven’t done anything yet, I remind myself, over and over again. Not yet. Not really.
“I thought you didn’t have to sneak,” I say.
“I don’t have to sneak to the ramparts,” he says. “If my father caught me out in the gray district, it would be a different story.”
He looks down at me, and we come around a curve, the big stone building coming into view.
“Particularly with the Ambassador’s daughter,” he says.
I swallow and pretend very hard that we’re not holding hands, even though I don’t let his hand go.
“You’re just showing me some Svelorian hospitality,” I say.