“Veya.” My brows bump up, hands stilling. “Kaan lost it after you passed,” he says with a shrug. “She knew he’d have regrets if the place fell into complete disarray.”
“Oh,” I murmur, stashing that prickly parcel beneath my icy lake with the speed of a lightning strike. “So you knew me … before?”
“Little bit. It was a long fucking time ago—”
“You don’t remember much?”
“Quite the opposite,” he counters, winking at me. “My memory’s the sharpest weapon in my sparse armory.”
Right.
“Good for you.”
Mine, as it turns out, is quite shit. Not that I’m complaining.
He tosses a small red thing into the air and catches it with his mouth, crunching through it. “Wanna know anything?” he asks, a hopeful hitch to his voice that I squish before it can crawl up my leg and pinch me.
“Creators no. I was just curious.” Knowledge is power and all that. When I have Kaan erased from my memories, I’ll need to snip all tethers to the past me.
To Elluin.
That now includes Pyrok. Probably a good thing, since he’s really starting to grow on me.
He clears his throat, tugging the string taut on his treats like he’s suddenly lost his appetite. “Well,” he says, twirling his finger, a heaviness to his tone that wasn’t there before, “let’s see.”
I do a spin, my hair woven into a braid that starts at the crown of my head and brushes the bare skin at the small of my back, secured with one of the clamps I removed from the gown. A strip of gathered fabric is draped upon my breasts, others pulled tight across my hips before they fall in a gush of silver tendrils.
I’ve never worn something so fierce.
Flattering.
Sexy.
My favorite part is the twin triangles of sparkly sheer material tethered to my shoulders that chase me in a flutter of motion. Like wispy wings. Though I left Kaan’s málmr in the dwelling.
Felt safer there.
“It was hard to get the back panel clipped in place, but I think I got it right,” I murmur, glancing over my shoulder at it.
“Looks right.” He pockets his treats, gaze sweeping across my gown again. “Though it appears you’ve left half your dress behind …”
“I did,” I say, collecting my slippers before I kick my leg up over the wall. It’s hot, and I’ve grown accustomed to being naked in the bush—though I don’t tell him that.
All that fabric felt unnecessary, so I unclipped a few tendrils here and there. Crisscrossed some. Tied knots in a few places.
Released my inner crafty bitch and let her shine.
Pyrok chuckles, shaking his head. “Come on,” he says, strolling toward the city. “We’re missing out on all the fun.”
The esplanade is a riot of color and cheer.
We weave between a churn of eloquently dressed folk, masked kids darting around with sticks clutched in their hands—the long silver ribbons attached to the ends being twirled and flicked through the air. They roar like dragons as they chase each other. Catch each other.
Fall in giggling heaps of ribbons, feathers, and makeshift wings.
Everyone is masked, crafted masterpieces fashioned from all different materials. Moltenmaw feathers and the scales of Sabersythes. There are some made from sheets of copper bearing the dents from whatever tool was used to bang them into shape, others from slopes of pearl that trail tendrils about their jowls like the elegant Moonplumes.
We near a cart that appears to be offering free serves of prepoured Molten Mead, Pyrok going out of his way to snag a mug. “Want one?”
I lift a brow. “Bit early, isn’t it?”
He gives me a look of genuine bafflement before he drains the entire thing in three deep gulps. “To hydrate?” he asks, drying his mouth with the back of his arm as he settles the now-empty mug on the same tray, grabbing another. “Don’t think so. The sun’s fierce this dae. And even if it wasn’t, what better way to break my fast?”
I shake my head, hoping he knows somebody strong enough to scrape him off the pave later, morbidly aware of just how hard it is to get a body his size to budge.
Unless it’s in pieces.
We come to a path that shoots out from the shore and splits three ways, spearing toward a trio of risen platforms, each capped in a dome of shimmering air. Like bubbles large enough to house a small village were blown from beneath the splashing waves, paused midbirth, then solidified.
The domes look empty, my gaze cutting straight through what appears to be simple bulges of distorted air. The noise tells me otherwise, the space around me alive with the deep thump of drums and the drone of stringed instruments coming from ahead. Like the bows are being dragged across my ribs, planting the music inside my chest and making my blood sing.