I exhaled through my nose. “What if he doesn’t want to see me? He agreed to guard us in hopes that he’d find his brother, but I got him sent away before he could.”
It’s not as though I hadn’t fantasized about it. Riding a horse into the mountains, sneaking through the tiny town to discover the mines above. Winterlight.
But my imagination blurred the moment I met Pheolix’s eyes. I’d had my chance. I’d lost it.
The corners of her jaw flexed. Her shoulders slackened, though her eyes drilled into me, as though she were dealing with the dumbest person in the world. She crossed her legs and fell to her rump on the floor, nose high and stubborn in the air.
It was the most animated I’d seen my sister in almost a year—and it was that thought that caused my certainty to stumble.
I swallowed. “You won’t go unless I do?”
She continued staring at me with mounting impatience. I raked my eyes with the heel of my palm. Then lowered them to search the newly claimed light in her eyes. “All right,” I said. “All right, fine. I’ll go.”
She smiled. Extended a pinky.
I wrapped it in mine.
We shook.
50
Selena
“To Cressi?”
The young, dark-haired beauty stared at me in surprise.
Cebrinne handed her a purse stuffed with goldfraggs.
“And then wherever you want,” I said, holding up two freedom contracts. The glint of my favorite violet ink shone in my large, loopy signature. “Change clothes with us.”
The two women exchanged glances, deep apprehension in their eyes. “Is this a trick?” the younger one asked.
I turned, allowing Cebrinne to unlace my corset. “No. Your contracts are paid. Your debts to the Velvet Pearl are fulfilled. You just need to board this ship east. Board, arrive, and be free.”
The younger one resembled us more than the other. Her features were sharper, shrewder than the doe-eyed woman to my left. She reached for the documents, but I whipped them away. I didn’t need them realizing they were a lynchpin in a completely separate bid for freedom. We couldn’t afford them to.
“Why Cressi?”
“If you’re not interested,” I said, rolling the signed parchment, “I can return these to your matron.”
The young woman grasped the edge of her hat. Her hair dragged with it as she pulled it away. I couldn’t blame her for the scowl of distrust. To have a ten-year servitude paid and tickets out of the country would have been too good to be true in almost every other circumstance.
But not ours.
The four of us traded clothes in silence. I could almost hear their thoughts, zooming back and forth between them like winged insects, but they didn’t say a word. We’d instructed them to wear men’s clothes and hats, but only the doe-eyed one had. The other had chosen a white dress, powder-blue flowers embroidered along the edges of the skirt and corset, its low-cut bodice the opposite of the inconspicuous garb we’d planned.
Cebrinne shoved the men’s clothes at me.
“No,” I said, grabbing the white dress instead. “You’re the one escaping—” I paused, eyes shifting to the two women. “No.”
She shook the clothes, but I’d already stepped into the open bodice. The two women watched in silence, buttoning each other into our lavish gowns. How ironic that Cebrinne used to let me win all our arguments, and only after she’d lost her voice did she push harder to make me forfeit my side. She waited until I was completely finished, her hand on her hip and her toe tapping the tile floor of the women’s washroom along the eastern marina, teal eyes gouging me with obstinance until I heaved a tortured sigh and yanked my stays loose.
“I’d like to look these contracts over,” the shrewd woman said.
Halfway out of her moon-damned dress, I paused to shove them into her chest. “Go ahead. But these are only copies. They’re not stamped or signed by your matron, nor signed by me. Your legal documents are on the ship with the captain. You can have them when you disembark from Cypria.”
She glared, flicking her gaze to her comrade.
