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“Don’t tell me!”
“I’m telling you!”
“He proposed?” said Jaspar, practically vibrating with excitement.
The giant thrust out one of its many hands, the nails long and filed to rounded tips. On the middle finger was a ring of thick iron, inset with a giant onyx.
“Ohhh, that is so exciting! When is the ceremony?”
“Midsummer. We don’t want to wait. And of course, you’re invited, dear Jassie.” There was a pause and a few arms pushed aside the baskets by Teigra’s face. “Particularly when it looks like you might finally ’ave a date to bring?”
Teigra blushed fiercely as the two of them chatted for another half an hour. As they departed, Gyges reached into a hidden basket and gave a flower to Jaspar, humming innocently as though she couldn’t hear his protests.
It was beautiful. A bead of dew ran down the petals, so deeply, impossibly red that they somehow glowed gold in the sunlight.
“Wait,” said Teigra, her eyes widening. “That’s not...”
Jaspar chuckled. “An eternal rose of Ardor? No, this one will wilt in a few days, not a hundred years. But they look pretty close! Gyges grows them. Some secret technique to get the coloration and that shine. Although she doesn’t sell them too openly. Even up here, some people get a bit funny about knocking off holy symbols.”
With a few clumsy flicks of his wrist, juggling overfilled baskets in his elbows, the big minotaur shortened the stem and removed the remaining thorns. “May I?” he asked, pointing toward her hair. “This is how all the fashionable young ladies wear them. If they are lucky enough to have a man to give them one, of course!”
“But... won’t people think I’m taken?”
His eyes darted away, shyly. “Would that really be so bad?”
The blush returned.
Teigra hesitated. Her hair was much more liable to have hay stuck in it than beautiful flowers. But there was something in his eyes—kind and comforting, that made her give a slight nod of approval.
Jaspar pulled her hair gently into a loose plait, with the flower tucked into the top.
“It suits you,” he said with a smile, before embracing a nearby olive trader.
All the while, Teigra’s face flushed hot, and she said little else for the remainder of their tour.
34
TEIGRA
Teigra stared at the two wooden coins.
Every person entering the Ardoralia festival had received them, although no one had explained their purpose. Both shared a portrait of the king on one side and a rose and oak motif on the other, with one made of light wood, pink poplar perhaps, and the other dark, likely walnut.
“All those scrolls and they didn’t tell you about the timber staters of the Ardoralia?” said Aurelius in passing.
“Not yet, no!” she said, the pleasure at having remembered the local wood varieties overwhelmed by the pleasure of her cousin finally speaking to her.
He’d barely said a word to her all week, coming and going from his residence at all hours—heading straight out and returning straight in.
At first, she’d thought that she was the one avoiding him. But after she’d crossed his path a few times in the embassy courtyard by accident, with him only grunting a few words to her greetings, she’d realized that the avoidance was now mutual.
Aurelius glanced at the oncoming figures. “Don’t worry. I am sure your new friends will explain.”
Teigra sighed as Aurelius walked away. This distance between them was unfamiliar and unwelcome, though no more than she deserved. After all, his words confirmed exactly why he was angry: she had put her new master ahead of her own blood. And now, he felt betrayed.
Worse, she still hadn’t found the courage to tell him about the folio, meaning he had no idea that it even still existed, let alone that Princess Zosime had stolen it.
I’ll do it when things are back to normal, she reassured herself. I will!
