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“Let’s go find Nico. He can show me how to use this.”
“First you have something else you have to learn,” I tell her.
“Dancing.” She spits out the word like old fish skin.
“My sister loves dancing.” And it’s true—Kai was always begging us to teach her dances.
“Well, I’m not your sister.” She glares up at me.
Holter laughs. “That’s a good thing. But he’s right, Belle. You need to learn how to dance. Grab a ball gown and we’ll start.”
She fingers the gowns on the rack, taking the least decorated of the ones my mother has added into the mix. It’s sky blue. “Don’t you have to change too?”
I shrug. “I know how to dance. Our suits aren’t much different from our everyday clothes.”
“Right, just like human men.” She grabs the gown, scoffs, and bounces angrily off to the adjoining room before I can stop her.
“What did that mean?” Holter’s holding the trident.
“She’s thinking we are practically men from home.”
“In a way, she’s not wrong.”
“We’re nothing like them. Trust me. You may have had some interaction with human men, but I’ve been dealing with them for years.” My breath hitches. This morning I received a forwarded message from Nole, my brother and the governor of Glyden. He’s on theOmicron,but he still gets full daily reports. This one isn’t good. “I’ve had a dispatch from the hospital. Alder is doing better, but he’s not awake. They have no idea when.”
Holter nods. “They contacted me as well. I’m not going to lie. I’m worried. I’ve been worried since we returned to the city. If someone attacked Alder, it’s because of Nico. And after all these years, all the controversial things he’s done, for that to happen now? It has to be because of Belle. She needs more than one guard when we go out again.”
“You really think it was one of our own attacking Alder? That’s not the way we work.”
“Belle said it. Maybe we are becoming more like the humans than we would like to admit.”
I see it all the time on land, people looking out for themselves over their fellow citizens.
“I’m going to go see him tomorrow,” adds Holter. “Sit with him for a while.”
“I’d like to come too.”
Holter shakes his head. “If you come, Belle is going to want to visit too. Family is important to her. And after the Reef Club, we can’t take her out alone. We need more back-up than one of us when we’re out with her. I don’t want anything to distract me from keeping her safe.”
“The hospital isn’t exactly the Reef Club.”
“No, you don’t get it. There’s a buzz in the air. Me taking her out, being ageminae? There’re males out there who never dreamed of having a mate. They were all over her like a war hero.”
“So, a war hero and a war hero went to a club. Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke.” I raise my eyebrows at him.
“It was bad all right, but no joke. I’m surprised we got out of there in one piece. And I wished we hadn’t had to check her little trident at the door.”
“Little, huh?”
“Small enough. It’s actually well-sized for her hand.”
I open the cloth bag and peer inside, before taking it out. It’s the telescoping kind with tines that retract. Gold, of course, and lightly weighted. “Impressive.”
“Yeah, she picked it out herself, with some help from the trident clerk. You should have seen his face when she asked to carry it out.” Holter chuckles.
I hand him the weapon, and he puts it in the bag. But as he does, I catch a glimpse of Annabelle standing in the doorway. My eyes snap to her, and my jaw drops. I thought she looked beautiful this morning. But she looked nothing like this. Her hair is swept up high in a ponytail. The light blue gown on the hanger appeared simple. Nothing to it. On Annabelle’s form, you can see swirls, each one representing a dome. Pale versions of the dome’s colors are represented in the swirls of the dress. But it was mostly gold. The sort of dress that saysI’m open to all. I want to rip it from her shoulders. I want her to be for us only.
“That’s exactly how the clerk looked,” Holter mentions.
