Chapter 2 #2
“Wouldn’t the potatoes explode as soon as they’re shot from the cannons?”
“Specially designed potato cannons,” Rion revised, steering them across the road. She deliberately positioned Eiko along the wagon tracks that evened out the ground, her voice a soft brush of sunshine. “The grass is beginning to wilt. It might snow soon.”
“And why are we wiping out the people of Stonesigh with potatoes?” Eiko asked, after a few minutes of listening to Rion hum along to the birdsong from the creatures who flitted through the rustling trees above them.
“Because they’re stubborn,” Rion answered. “And impossible.”
“But loyal,” Eiko countered.
“Proud,” Rion said.
“Rich.”
“Greedy.”
“Virtuous.”
“You mean prudish,” Rion scolded, pinching her arm.
Eiko chuckled. “Fine, you win.”
They were both uneasy with the changes the Lord of Stonesigh had been making. Subtle and insidious, the adjustments to the laws of Stonesigh were sneaking beneath the doors to their homes in ways they hadn’t expected.
Only last week, the newsrunners had handed out flyers, claiming that “disgusting” and “immoral” behaviour was being allowed to run unchecked through the region.
The flyers, Rion had told her, had included graphic, grotesque, almost deformed-looking men copulating with other men, and women with other women, and the text included various warnings about the dangers these deformed lunatics posed to the innocent children of the mountain.
Lord Erendi had already spent years quietly contaminating the minds of the stoneborn with his purity movement, but it seemed he was no longer content to simply speak his opinions.
He wanted change. Some people were outraged, but they had been slow to react to the rapidly escalating tension, and now it almost seemed too late.
“Hey!” a male voice called before heavy footsteps pounded against the road ahead. “Was hoping I’d catch you two.”
“Speak of the devil,” Rion teased as Ky fell into step on Eiko’s other side, picking up her smaller arm and looping it through his larger one, taking her cane in his spare hand.
He smelled of aromatic tea and buttery bread, and his tunic was thick and soft, better quality than she could ever hope to wear.
“What do you mean?” Ky demanded.
“She’s planning to rain potatoes down on this whole region because of your father,” Eiko told him.
“Potatoes won’t do the trick,” the young lord tittered sternly. “You know what they say. Our heads are hard as rock. We have built-in helmets.”
“Our heads and our hearts,” Eiko agreed. “So you’ll join us?”
“For the potato murders?” he asked. “Absolutely. Count me in. Speaking of murder, will you be my date to dinner tonight?”
“I don’t think I’m your type,” Eiko joked, while her heart thudded inside her chest. Ky was the second-youngest of Lord Erendi’s sons, landing somewhere in the middle of his large brood. The Lord and Lady of Stonesigh would be hosting the royal family for dinner.
Prince Chasin might be there.
Would he have scars?
Would he recognise—no, how could he? It had been pitch-black in the cave, and he had been unconscious when she dragged him out. Besides, that was ten years ago now.
“I thought you were going to skip it to hang out with that guy you were seeing?” Rion’s concerned question burst through Eiko’s spiralling thoughts.
“Yeah, well …” Ky trailed off. “So, what do you say, little Eiko? Be my date? Make me the thirtieth happiest man in—”
“Ky Erendi,” Rion interrupted, an eek of sharpness seeping into her tone. “What happened?”
“He said he’d disown me.” Ky’s body stiffened, though he didn’t break stride. “If I didn’t bring a girl to dinner and stop embarrassing him with my disgusting … behaviour.”
Eiko tripped over nothing, but her two best friends were there to catch her without so much as a pause in their steps.
They walked on quietly, digesting Ky’s words.
She wanted to curse and shout and offer to throw horse dung in his father’s face, but it was nothing Ky hadn’t heard before, and her rage felt useless.
“So the best you could come up with was a dirt-poor blind girl?” she asked dryly, hoping to distract him.
There was a smile in his voice when he answered. “Even blind, you’re still the most beautiful.”
“It’s true,” Rion quickly agreed before Eiko could accuse Ky of lying.
“You’re lying,” Eiko said anyway.
“We aren’t,” Rion insisted. They had taken to trying to drill into her that she was stunning and beautiful and perfect in every possible conceivable way after she drunkenly admitted that she was devastated not to know what she looked like anymore.
“Even when you’re dressed in your brother’s old clothes, I’m like a sack of potatoes next to you,” Rion exaggerated.
“Okay, that’s the fifth time you’ve mentioned potatoes today.” Eiko tried to steer the conversation elsewhere. “Did you skip breakfast?”
It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate their efforts; she just didn’t believe them.
She wasn’t even sure it mattered. She knew there was a painting of her parents hanging in the kitchen, and she remembered the cloud of her mother’s dark hair, the slim line of her nose, the bow of her lips, the soft shadow of her eyes.
Was that what she looked like?
It would be nice to look like her mother. And her grandmother.
That would be nice, but did it matter?
Kaito said her eyes had turned a milky white that day, after her encounter with the Quiet.
She remembered waiting for her sight to come back.
She waited and waited, far longer than Kaito, or Rion, or Ky. But it never happened. Her sight never returned, and the pale opal colour that had taken over the dark of her eyes never faded. In that sense, at least, she would never look like her mother or grandmother.
“Speaking of breakfast—” Ky squeezed her arm. “—how about dinner?”
“Are you sure I won’t get you into even more trouble?”
“How could you possibly do that?” he asked as she tripped over nothing.
Again.
Ren knocked on the door as Eiko attempted to get ready that afternoon.
Two knocks, a pause, another two, a pause, one more.
He always knocked in the same pattern, hesitant and impatient all at once.
Restless but filled with ease. Eiko hurried into the kitchen and yanked open the door, feeling the flush on her cheeks and the anxious flurry of her hair as it settled in disarray around her face.
“Hey—whoa, what are you … wearing?” he asked.
“A dress,” she declared, backing away—and into one of the counters. She rested there, pretending it had been deliberate as she held out her arms. “Does it not look good?”
“Everything looks good on you,” Ren replied, a smirk in his deep voice. “But the dress is backwards.”
Eiko swore beneath her breath, crossing her arms over her chest in a huff.
He eased himself against the front of her body, his big arms caging her against the counter.
She loved the strength of Ren. The warmth of him.
The corded muscles of his arms and back, and the smooth, deep voice that had girls flirting with him wherever he walked.
Or maybe they flirted because of his face.
It certainly wasn’t for his riches. His skin felt rough to her, his jaw firm and stubbled.
His eyes always crinkled in a smile when she tried to trace them.
He lowered his lips to hers in a soft kiss. “Are you dressing up for the Kingsfete?”
“I’m Ky’s date for the dinner.” Her arms loosened, reaching up to twine about his neck. She pulled his head down for another kiss, savouring the scratch of his stubble against her chin and the flex of his fingers at her waist.
This thing between them was tentative, and since he was Kaito’s best friend, it was also a secret.
Her brother would lose his mind if he ever found out.
Still, it wasn’t exactly new. They had been playing this game for two years now.
Two years, and it still felt fragile as a twig holding up against a strong wind.
“Should I be jealous?” Ren murmured against her lips.
“Very,” she assured him. “I’m going to be a lady. Lady Eiko. I only have to murder his older brothers, and then I can be the Lady of Stonesigh.”
He chuckled against her lips, but the sound melted into a groan as her nails caressed his scalp.
“Take this off,” he demanded quietly, deft fingers working the dress to hang from her shoulders.
“Actually,” she gently pushed him away, “I need your help to get it on.”
“Only if I can take it off later.”
“Only if you rip it off later.”
“Eiko,” he groaned.
“It’s Lady Eiko to you,” she teased, drawing a deep laugh from him that she wanted to hold close, cradled to her fluttering heart.
He helped her twist the dress around and lace it up properly before the squeak of Kaito’s bed indicated that he was stretching out to watch her tame her hair.
“Where’s Kaito?” he asked as she sat before the window, brushing the long, riotous curls that fell to her lap.
She loved to sit there with the dying rays of the sun teasing across her cheeks and forehead, waiting for the arrival of the nightjars and their trilling nocturnal song.
Ren always stopped by around this time to make sure her house was full of light before the sun set—but it always was, because Rion always stopped by an hour earlier.
“He said he’d pick up an extra shift today, but he’ll still make the Kingsfete later,” she told him.
“Are you sure you want to go to this dinner?” Ren ventured after a few more moments. “Won’t they be hosting the entire royal family?”
“I doubt they’ll even notice me there,” she reassured him, though his words had sown a little seed of doubt.
What if she did more harm than good?
She gently pushed the thought aside, unfurling to her feet and padding over to the wardrobe. She only had two pairs of shoes. Boots and slippers, both in black. Choices were for people who could see them. She plucked out the slippers and pulled them on.
“How do I look?”
“Like a dream,” he purred. “Come here.”
“Ew, not on my brother’s bed.”