How could my life get worse?
Halfling babe, it could get far, far worse.
Tears prick my eyes. I squeeze them shut to clear my vision. I don't know why my alter ego is trying to talk me out of this. Darkan always sounds reasonable, and. . .that's not really my strength.
Juliette smacks Numair upside the head. “Stop saying that. She knows, dummy.”
“Then whhhhhhy. . .”
Males are so whiny.
Boys are whiny,Darkan snaps.
Like I said, males are so whiny.
“Because,” I say, my ravaged voice as cold as my mother's tombstone, “if we don't spring the trap, we don't know what Tybien really wants.”
Juliette stills, looking at me. “She speaks,” she says softly.
“I speak.”
“To who?”
“Dark angel.”
“What? Who? Did you sneak a boyfriend?” she demands in a whisper. “Danon will kill him! Slow, Rinne. Like slow slow.”
“Not a boyfriend.”
Certainly not a boy.Darkan gives a delicate mental sneer.
“Focus,” Numair mutters.
I haven't talked to them for months. Gestures, body language, notes when forced. I can't let words out because as soon as I open my mouth what spills out is nothing as coherent as words. Screams. Baba is scared. They think I'm going mad.
“She lost her mother, Otieno,” Tata Fatma says, speaking in Kikuyu as Baba's kin do when we are alone. “Horribly.”
“And I my wife, horribly.” He takes a deep, ragged breath, smoothing his broken voice. “But this grief—I've never seen its like. It has been two years. Two, Tima.”
“Those Kuthlieles are close. Two golden gods and our fierce little raisin between them. I don't know what you were thinking.”
“You do not tell a High Lord no. You navigate, and survive. I did—do—love Muriel. She was as kind as she could be. She loved Nya and she lost her life for that love.”
Tata pauses a while. “This may be a Fae thing. Let her work through it. Nyawira is ofourclan. She will settle. We can take her back home if she doesn't.”
“Danon would take my head,” Baba says curtly, “if I took his sister to Limuru. He doesn't care that she is my daughter. He sees her as Kuthliele, and so, his. He loves her almost like she is his child. Friend, Guardian, or no, I am mortal and irrelevant.”
“These damn Fae. I told you to stay away from that man when they brought you to the University. And what do you do? Marry his mother. Eh. Nevermind—I do know what you were thinking, but it was not with the brain between your ears.”
“Kindly recall my previous statement.” His tone alters. “Nyawira. Come out, my stealthy one.”
Numair grimaces. “I'm going to be chopped meat if anything bad happens to you girls except I'll still be alive.”
The only reason Juliette doesn't physically demonstrate why that was the stupidest thing to say is because we're supposed to be being quiet. I don't think either of them got the damn memo.
“Both of you shut up.” It's an order, and they both kind of obey, mostly because they want to.
We're crouched behind stacked pallets of rice and spices. Shadows pool like spilled ink between the crates, and somewhere in the darkness water drips with the steady rhythm of a funeral drum. The rice and spice trade used to belong to my House, but Lord Baroun is spiteful and he sucks too, so he yanked our permissions and stole that income source.
