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Fia flinched. She’d never heard him speak so snidely before. He might have heard this sort of condescension from his father, but it didn’t fit him.
“Don’t be rude.”
A look of regret shadowed his eyes, and he forced out an apology. “Forgive me. I don’t think anyone knows how. None of the curse workers I’ve seen in Fantillian or Trivoris have had any luck.”
Of course he would have tried to break the curse, was still trying. Flustered, Fia wrung the fabric of her nightgown—soft, but not as soft as Penbrook’s shirt. “Maybe—”
“Maybe I’m doomed,” he mused gloomily, raking his fingers through his hair.
“Maybe there will be a spell in The Book of Ribs strong enough to dispel the curse.” Fia threw the idea out hastily, hopefully. “The grimoire supposedly has”—she thought back to the entry in Rare Creatures: A Review—“ ‘indescribable and unheard-of power.’ ”
“If only,” Penbrook said, growing more despondent.
Fia shouldn’t have suggested it. Even if they managed to find the grimoire, there was no way they should even open it, let alone attempt to cast a spell from its fleshy pages. After all, it would want a sacrifice in return, and there was no part of Fia’s body that she would like to lose.
But here Penbrook was, who knew how few sleeps away from some eternal slumber. Like a prince in a fairy tale who might wake with a kiss, true love or otherwise. Some curse worker he’d consulted to break the spell was sure to have taken one look at his pretty face, and in an effort to preempt death, offered their lips to him already—without effect.
Fia skipped back, sure she shouldn’t be thinking about kissing Penbrook while they were standing there in their nightclothes. Not that she was thinking of kissing him herself.
“You’re hopping,” he said.
A few more steps back, and she slipped to the more respectable distance of the doorway. “I’m not. I should just… feed Finnick.”
“Can’t have the good boy starving.”
But as ready as Fia had been to scurry away, she hesitated in the hall. “Are you still up for—”
“Please don’t tiptoe around me now.” Penbrook straightened his shoulders indignantly, though he didn’t manage the same polished air he usually carried. Not in those sleeping garments, no matter how fine their quality. “I’m not fragile.”
Yet they both knew he was.
Still, Fia simply nodded. “I’ll be in and out of the bath, then it’s all yours. I’ll meet you downstairs, and we’ll see if you can hunt down The Book of Ribs.”
Fia’s hair curled long down her back, nearly dry from her bath, and Penbrook still hadn’t appeared in the shop.
Perhaps his fatigue had slowed him, but she suspected it was all the more likely he always took this long readying himself for the day and thought nothing of indulging in a good, long soak. He was probably using up all her soap, too.
Impatient and hungry, Fia finally stepped outside, hoping the storm clouds would hold back the rain as she walked to the nameless café on the corner. (Nameless because—the proprietor would boast to any who asked—that was the best tactic for keeping fairies away.) A navy awning stretched across the storefront, simple and neat, defying the lively interior where an odd assortment of chairs ringed every table, the plates and bowls and glasses never matched, and the artwork on the walls wonderfully clashed. No one who came here minded the chips in the cups or the hodgepodge of cutlery.
Fia grinned, imagining the disapproving look she’d find on Penbrook’s face if she ever brought him here.
She wove between the tables where the morning crowd gathered over fat mugs of cinnamon-spiced coffee, leaf and acorn designs in the foamy whip. Customers ate from their mismatched plates, some filled with eggs and rosemary-fried potatoes, others stacked with pumpkin pancakes dripping with golden syrup and a sprinkling of crushed pecans tossed over the top, and a few platters crowded with huge cinnamon rolls so thick with frosting, her mouth watered.
At the counter, she placed her order. As the server went to fetch the pastries, Fia’s eyes snagged on an abandoned newssheet someone had left beside their licked-clean plate. She didn’t want to read anything that might have been printed about Thistledown or the spellshop or even her, yet her hand lashed out, swiping up the paper. Might as well peek at it now rather than hear everything from Grace later.
The headlining article of the Trivoris Herald practically screamed at Fia:
A RUIN OF CURSES
Instead of reading on, her thoughts flew back to Penbrook. Thinking of him ruined and cursed. Of him lured to sleep by the dark enchantment. His head could so easily dip beneath the surface of the water in the bathtub, where he’d drown. Oh, she should never have left him alone!
“Miss? Your order,” the girl said from behind the counter.
Fia spun around, smashing the newssheet into the pocket of her coat and snatching up the offered bag. “Thank you,” she said in a rush, all but flinging a handful of coins at the surprised-looking server—more than was owed, but deserved given Fia’s frantic exit.
She raced toward home, all the faces she passed on the street a blur, but among them she thought she glimpsed Sebastian Smith. Spinning without completely slowing, she glanced all around, doubly anxious now, but caught no sign of him. He might have entered a shop.
He might never have been there at all. Don’t imagine the worst about everything, she chided herself, hurrying forward again.
