Chapter 26
Twenty-Six
Ablizzard of lace and tulle puffed from every corner of the bridal store in downtown Sonora. Satin ran from the racks in a blinding waterfall of fabric.
“Wow.” Reyna pretended to shade her eyes. “Should’ve brought my sunglasses.”
Next to her, Cadenza ran her fingers down a length of silk. “Yeah, it’s a little intense. Speaking of intense, the last few days have been…” She lifted a hand.
Reyna snorted. “Yeah. They have been.”
“We haven’t really talked about Ca—” Cadenza stopped herself, and Reyna saw her own denial of her grief reflected in her friend’s face. “We haven’t talked about everything that happened.”
Metal hangers clanked as Reyna rifled through the bridesmaid dresses. She didn’t look up as she answered. “Which ‘everything’ are you referring to?” If we’re gonna dive into this stupid detachment thing of mine, we might as well be specific.
“I know you had a little crush on Canon.” She pressed her lips together. “How are you doing with it?”
Reyna brandished a prom queen nightmare of salmon-colored ruffles, deliberately stalling. “Just so we’re clear, you pick me anything like this and I’m out.”
“If I picked you anything like that, I’d kick myself out. It’s hideous.” Cadenza took the dress and hung it back up, then looked Reyna in the eyes. “I’m serious though. How are you doing?”
Reyna stopped rustling through dresses. Sucked in a long breath through her nose.
Examined the place inside her where her feelings for Canon had been.
She mourned his death. He was a person—or had been.
But she wanted to be mourning him as more than just a person, even if he hadn’t returned her interest. She wanted to be hurting more.
“I’m fine.”
“Reyna—”
“You remember what I told you after I broke up with Noah?”
Cadenza nodded.
“As soon as Canon refused to go through that door with me to help you, whatever I felt for him was gone.” Reyna abandoned any pretense of searching through dresses and dropped into a chair, wishing to whatever gods or Fates that were out there that she weren’t fine.
A lump hardened in her throat, remembering a time of dead coals, a cold forge, and her will broken.
She hadn’t explained this out loud before; she’d never had anyone she could explain it to. Eyes closed, she spoke around the echo of ice and stillness. “I loved a man. He broke my heart.”
It sounded so simple. Those words couldn’t contain the fire she’d felt.
Fueled by the heat of that love, she had created more during that time than she’d ever created before.
None of those pieces had been sold at Columbia.
They’d been too unique, too beautiful for money.
Instead, she’d found people who needed her creations and given them away freely.
Gifts. Like her heart. The tuning fork was the only piece from that time she had left.
It was meant to be a gift for him, to represent all the resonance and potential of their future together.
Turned out he didn’t want that future. Reyna’s fire had died. Not been banked. Died. She’d had to use everything she had already stored in the tuning fork to reignite her will, and afterwards she reclaimed that piece as her own—to represent all the possibility and potential of her future.
But she’d never intended to create that future alone.
“And now, if anyone gets close to doing that again…” She shrugged wearily.
Cadenza sat next to her and squeezed her hand. “And you can’t reclaim those feelings?”
“Not even if I want to. Which I do. At least, at some point. I don’t want to be ‘fine,’ I want to be able to feel that connection, you know? When Canon told us he’d been spying on Drostan, I figured I’d lose whatever I felt for him then. But I didn’t. And I thought, you know, maybe?”
“Maybe it was going to work this time?” Cadenza said softly. “Maybe that heartbreak had finally healed?”
Reyna nodded, swiping her cheeks with the back of her hand. “I mean, what am I if I can’t feel what I want to feel? Some kind of sociopath?”
“No.” Cadenza dug a tissue for her out of her purse. “Not remotely. Reyna, you are amazing.”
Reyna searched her friend’s face, wanting to hope in her words.
“I mean, you forge these incredible, powerful objects with your bare hands,” Cadenza went on.
“You sing, you smith, you’re kind, you’re resourceful—all of this oracle stuff is due to you—you’re the one who found out all the info we needed, on your own, with no frame of reference for your powers.
Reyna”—Cadenza looked her in the eye, her words washing over Reyna like heat from the forge—“you are a wonder.”
Reyna laid her head on Cadenza’s shoulder. “Thanks.”
Cadenza squeezed her shoulders. “Hey, what kind of new best friend would I be if I let you think awful things about yourself, right?”
Reyna laughed and blew her nose. “Well, right now you’re the kind of best friend who got engaged yesterday and needs a wedding dress for tonight. So, we better get shopping.”
“Yeah.” Cadenza snorted. “When you put it like that maybe I’m not such an awesome best friend after all.”
Reyna pulled a face, laughing. “I know, who makes their best friend pick out a maid-of-honor dress on such short notice, right?”
Ten minutes of browsing produced a selection of gowns to try, and the clerk set them up in a changing suite.
“Ok, option number one.” Cadenza swished into place in front of a half circle of mirrors. Six reflections of herself stared back, empty space next to all of them.
Reyna examined Cadenza in the dress and toggled her hand back and forth. “Not bad.”
Cadenza rolled her eyes. “That’s encouraging.” She adjusted the bodice for a better fit and one of the glass beads shattered, slicing her finger.
“Porca miseria,” she cursed, yanking her hand away from the silk to avoid dripping blood on it, while the clerk ran to get a band-aid. Her throat swelled shut, not with earthsong but with simple tears.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” Reyna asked.
She sniffed and slumped onto the bench next to mirrors. “It’s stupid.”
“You’re allowed to be stupid when you try on wedding dresses.” Reyna sat next to her. “It’s one of those things that brings out the stupid in people.”
Cadenza laugh-cried and dove for another tissue from her purse.
“It’s just, downtown Sonora is not where I thought I’d end up buying my wedding dress.
Of all the things to be crying over right now.
” She shook her head at herself. They were so close to freeing Taran from the curse.
Meanwhile, Vasilios and his crazy cultists wanted to kill her, Canon was gone, and Ruairi and Cyrus insisted that the lack of a Crown was killing the planet.
“Where were you thinking you’d get it?” Reyna asked.
Cadenza lifted one shoulder. “Maybe Milano?”
Reyna put an arm around her, her signature shimmery song playing over Cadenza’s shoulders. “Was getting married ever really in your plans?”
“Honestly? No.” She dabbed at her eyes. “Let alone having the wedding within twenty-four hours of getting engaged, or me being the one to propose.”
Reyna took the bandage from the clerk, wrapped up Cadenza’s finger and led her back in front of the mirror. “Yeah, that’s a different way to do it alright.”
Cadenza looked up at her reflection, Reyna filling the space next to her.
“Thanks.”
Reyna pointed at the Band-Aid and echoed Cadenza’s earlier words. “Come on, what kind of maid of honor would I be if I let you bleed all over this pricey thing?”
“No.” Cadenza shook her head. “I mean thank you for being here. However I envisioned—or didn’t envision—my wedding, I knew my mother wouldn’t be in the picture. But I’m glad to have you as my friend.”
“Well, you know.” Reyna smiled and toggled a finger between them. “Us freaky-somehow-connected-to-the-Fates-girls gotta stick together, right?”
“Right.” Cadenza shuffled into the dressing room to switch gowns. “Anyways, who cares where I get the dress? We’ll break this curse, and then Taran and I can take off on our own, wherever we want. Go see all the places we want to see. No curse holding us back, and no Fates pushing us around.”
“Oh, I see how it is,” Reyna called from her own dressing room. “One minute you’re glad I’m here and the next you’re taking off?”
Cadenza scoffed. “You really want to come?” She bustled out to check the second dress in the mirror.
“Are you crazy? With you two all over each other? No, thank you.” She helped Cadenza zip up the dress then turned around. “Here, do mine. Besides, someone has to work on finding a new Crown, if Thomas won’t.”
Cadenza did up the bow in the back of Reyna’s dress. “Why do we have to find a new Crown at all?”
“Were you not listening to Ruairi and Cyrus? The earth is running out of music because there’s no Crown to connect it to the sun. It runs all the way out and it dies. It’s already sick.”
Cadenza shook her head, stubborn. “I’m not going to be part of forcing people into a destiny they didn’t choose. That’s messed up.”
“Ok. I get that, but listen”—Reyna took her by the shoulders, notes jangling through Cadenza—“that production line analogy that Drostan uses? Think about it. It all happens in steps, right? So, what if the earth can be green and growing and thriving because it’s connected to the sun, but no one later takes that green, growing, thriving energy and Spins it into Thread? ”
“I guess so,” Cadenza said. She’d never thought to break the process down like that.
“We need that green, growing part, because I for one would like to live on a functioning planet. We need a new Crown. Which means either Thomas needs to pull his head out—”
“Even if he did, I don’t think the Norroways would work with him,” Cadenza pointed out.