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“What a handsome boy,” Andromeda said, plopping herself down and pulling the cat onto her lap. Like everyone else who met her, Finnick immediately surrendered to Andromeda’s charms. Purring away, he looked up at her adoringly—when usually he was the one demanding adoration.
Penbrook hesitated in the hallway beside Fia, the line of his mouth set. She thought he would say something to her about how he and Andromeda knew each other, which might explain his uneasy behavior, but he only straightened his shoulders and entered the parlor like it had transformed into a wolf’s den.
“I’ll get the tea, then,” Fia said, scurrying off to the kitchen. There, she let out a long breath, listening to the rain drumming against the window while shivering in her wet clothes. Uselessly thinking of Penbrook’s hand in hers as they ran down the street, and the way their fingers had slipped apart.
I was the one to pull away, she tried to convince herself. I was absolutely the one to pull away first.
So decided, Fia fumbled everything together for tea, burning her thumb on the kettle, spilling sugar across the counter, then clattering filled cups and a pot of honey on the tray after the tea had steeped. For her own drink, she cast the subtlest of chamomile calming spells. Her golden dust settled like a pretty confection on the tea’s surface, then sank into the depths. It was something her mother had taught her and Fia had refined, so that the spell belonged to the both of them.
Fia certainly needed that sense of calm now, flustered though there was no reason to be. Just as there was no reason for the odd constriction in her chest.
With the tray in hand, she returned to the parlor, peeking her head into the room.
Andromeda sat in the same spot, stroking Finnick’s back. “I didn’t expect it of you,” she was saying to Penbrook.
As if he hadn’t wanted to dampen the furniture by sitting, Penbrook stood in front of the hearth, where a fire blazed higher than any Fia could command. “Because everyone thinks I’m biddable,” he replied before clamping his mouth shut at the sight of Fia.
“Tea!” she chirped much too brightly, setting the tray on the side table with a clatter of cups and saucers.
“Oh, thank you.” Andromeda accepted the offered tea, sniffing the vanilla caramel blend with a sigh of pleasure.
Penbrook, hands held stiffly behind his back, seemed disinclined to drink—and decidedly put-upon by Fia’s interruption. And this time, instead of letting discomfort chase her from the room, she flushed with irritation. This was her home, after all. And that almost haughty look of Penbrook’s practically demanded she defy him. Never mind the squish of her wet skirt, which she really should have gone to change, she took the emerald chair across from the sofa, basking in the warmth of the fire and the tea in her hand.
“We were just talking about—” Andromeda began.
“Our travels through Trivoris,” Penbrook finished brusquely.
Fia turned her face up to him, wondering what it might be he didn’t want her to know. She told herself he had a right to his privacy. They didn’t owe each other their secrets. Yet she wanted to whisper to him as he’d done to her the day she’d shown him the shop’s ledger. One secret?
Or was it Andromeda he hoped to keep things from? Maybe he worried that Fia would tell her about his curse? She had no idea what kind of relationship they had—but she suspected they must be close if Andromeda had followed him all the way here from Fantillian.
And even though it didn’t matter, not at all, Fia found herself prodding. “Dromeda said you were friends?”
He shifted in front of the fire, looking down his nose at Fia while sharing the vaguest of details. “Our families are well acquainted.”
“So we’ve known each other forever,” Andromeda added. “Oh, I could tell you stories.”
“Andromeda.”
Fia caught the flash of warning in his eyes before, feeling a little traitorous, she turned toward the other girl. “I like stories.”
Andromeda smiled around a sip of tea, considering. “Hmm, well, there was the time the Archlights threw a huge gala at Brighton Hall, fundraising for their art gallery.” She glanced at Penbrook, gauging his reaction. “You remember that night, don’t you?”
Leaning against the mantel as if all the strength had gone out of him, he let out a long-suffering sigh that seemed a begrudging confirmation.
Without receiving any other objection, Andromeda warmed to her story, eyes bright as she focused on Fia. “The gala was the event of the season, and one of the few that welcomed children—at least that first year, though, come to think of it, it might have been the last too. Some of us were complete terrors.”
“Penbrook?” Fia asked doubtfully.
“Definitely not.” Careful not to disturb Finnick, Andromeda leaned toward Fia with a conspiratorial smile and a clink of the glinting rings dangling from the ribbon around her neck. “Roman Vangor and I might have rearranged some of the paintings in the exhibit.”
“You didn’t.” Fia laughed, so easily comfortable with the other girl.
“It was my idea,” Andromeda confessed. “Before that, though, all us children were marched along and shown off to the guests, told to hold our tongues and smile. We didn’t want to go. It was summer, and we hated the idea of wearing the stiff outfits our parents had chosen for us when we could have been cartwheeling through the grass and chasing fireflies and howling beneath the moon.”
“You were the only howler,” Penbrook muttered.
“But wait, you cartwheeled?” Fia asked him, trying to picture it—and realizing she could. That boy in the shadow of his father breaking away in rebellion, turning himself upside down until his hair went wild. The way she’d seen him dash so unexpectedly through the rain.
