Total pages in book: 162
Estimated words: 165618 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 828(@200wpm)___ 662(@250wpm)___ 552(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 165618 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 828(@200wpm)___ 662(@250wpm)___ 552(@300wpm)
“Don’t say it, mate,” Dad muttered to Manny. “I don’t get it either.”
Mom laughed gaily before saying to Zyra, “Males.” She then clapped and announced, “Cocktails.”
Day drinking.
Excellent.
Once Dad got us sorted with drinks, and we were sitting in one of their seating areas, Mom enthused, “You looked so beautiful last night, Catla.”
“She very much did,” Zyra agreed.
“You both looked beautiful too,” I replied.
“Cat did the Edge proud,” Manny proclaimed.
Oh gods, was I going to blush?
No farging way.
With effort, I beat back the heat in my cheeks while Zyra turned to Mom. “Everyone is saying she’s best dressed from last night,” she bragged about me to my own mother. “Outside of Laura, that is.”
“She’s also taking hits that she wore a Night’s Fallian designer and not an Edgian one,” Dad groused. “Like she hadn’t had a gown sorted for this weeks ago, seeing as it was her best mate’s party.”
Oh crap.
It seemed my parents were also doing that whole social tape thing, checking up on what beings were saying about me.
“You two need to avoid that nonsense,” I stated.
Dad ignored me and turned to Tanyn. “The article on Friday was excellent, but why aren’t you doing more of that?”
Before Tanyn could say anything, I butted in. “The castle has more important things to do than try to spin beings’ minds to like me. And…” I went on quickly, because Dad seemed to be about to say something, “we can’t saturate the media with me. First, I don’t want that attention while I’m settling in. Second, because it would seem weird and possibly like we’re doing what we would be doing, trying to spin beings’ minds to like me. And last, this is early on for Tanyn and me, but for his citizens, it’s brand new. Give it some time.”
I mean…
Yeesh!
Mom leaned Zyra’s way and whispered, “She’s always been very savvy.”
Tanyn smiled into his cocktail.
I turned to my mother. “Chill, Mom. Zyr already likes me.”
Mom looked offended. “I didn’t say she didn’t!”
“Just to confirm, we do,” Zyra announced, then she said to Mom, “And I’m sure she told you we’re refurbishing the citadel. Has she shown you what we’ve done?”
“No,” Mom replied.
Zyra got out her Palm and now it was Mom ooing and aahing over our selections for Sigil.
I sucked back a cocktail I knew Mom had devised and strongarmed Dad into making, because it was high on the fruitiness and low on the alcohol.
I felt Tanyn, sitting next to me, press his shoulder into mine.
I turned to him.
“Never thought I’d have a meet-the-parents,” he said.
Oh gods.
“This is fun,” he finished.
Oh.
Well then.
I relaxed.
Dad and Manny shot the breeze while Mom and Zyra continued to go overboard to demonstrate it was all good, everyone liked each other, and this was all family.
All the while Tanyn and I kicked back and let them.
I leaned in the doorway of my room in Mom and Dad’s house, a room Mom had not touched since I left for college.
I was watching Tanyn wander through it.
There was something affecting about him being in the space where I grew up, hatched all my childhood dreams, pouted when I was having a tantrum, and eventually left to launch into my life, doing this having no idea I one day would be queen.
Sure, I was having mild fantasies of fucking him on my bed.
But mostly, after getting so much of him these last few weeks, I was simply enjoying him experiencing something that was a part of me.
He stopped at a digi-collage of old pictures of Aleksei, turned to me and raised his brows.
“Oh, come on,” I said. “Every female in the Fall had a crush on him. I put that collage together when I was fifteen.”
And added to it when I was sixteen.
More when I was seventeen.
Ahem.
He shook his head, his lips twitching, and moved to a poster of a still life oil painting of flowers and fruits done by Magenna Twirlhammer back in the 1600s.
“It was rare females trained under masters of art back in those days,” I told him. “If they had families with enough influence to pay for them to have spots, the masters would find ways to cow them, bully them, break them or ruin them.” I nodded to the Twirlhammer. “Magenna right away showed signs her talent significantly eclipsed that of her teacher. Due to his jealousy, and because he’d never wanted to take her on in the first place, he did everything he could to thwart her career. She just kept painting. Unfortunately, a sign of the times, he scored more victories than she did, and there are only four of her works still existing today. But now, she’s known as the master, and no one but historians remember his name.”
“This painting is in the Meko Museum in Abyssinia,” he noted.
“I know. I’ve seen it. Five times,” I replied.