“You do know how.” He cupped his hand over hers.
She stared at his bare skin against her bare skin. In seventeen years, she had never held a boy’s hand. In Glas Ddir such a thing was treason. Her body thrilled to his touch. Was it because her skin had always been sheathed in gloves? Or was there something special about Quin’s flesh against hers, some alchemy of chemistry and desire?
His fingertips were warm.
“You don’t hate me anymore,” she said.
“I’ve never hated you. Not even for a second.”
A sulfyr stick winked to life in her brain. She’d guessed—correctly—that her body was intimately attuned to the bodies of others. The prince’s chilly fingers, his frozen gales.
Quin’s words to his parents the night before the wedding came back to her: She is dangerous. You won’t deny it.
She had correlated the temperature to the wrong emotion. The constant frostbite she’d felt in Quin’s presence wasn’t hatred.
It was fear.
“You’ve been afraid of me,” she said slowly.
“Yes. But not anymore.”
He brought her hand to his lips. His mouth was both soft and scorching as he kissed each fingertip. She wondered if, when he removed his hand, he would leave five small craters.
“I’ve wanted to do this forever,” he murmured. “Ever since you came to the Kaer. I dreamed about peeling off your gloves. I was dying to know what your hands looked like. They’re even more beautiful than I imagined.”
Mia went cold with fear. Was she enthralling him?
She pulled back. “How do you know I’m not . . .”
Before she could finish her thought, her eyes caught movement beneath them.
A village spilled onto the uneven red rocks, shapes and colors bustling on the shores of the blue lake.
They had made it to Refúj.
Chapter 33
A Little Head Magic
THE FIRST THING MIA noticed when the balloon touched down was that the earth was softer than she’d imagined. A good thing, too, since her landing skills left much to be desired.
The balloon smashed into the ground, the bucket tipping, and Quin slammed into her, the two of them nearly pitching over the side as they clutched whatever they could get their hands on, which happened to be each other.
Mia realized they were not alone.
A group of girls stood in a circle, watching them.
Their hair was coiled into intricate puffs and twists, their skin fawn and mahogany and black as onyx, their arms gloveless. Some wore long, loose-fitting linens dyed white and tan; others wore smart trousers cropped at the shin.
“Tie her up,” said an older woman with glossy black hair wrapped in a brilliant purple scarf. Mia flinched as a curvy girl with jewels in her nose stepped forward. But the girl reached for the balloon, not Mia. She grabbed the rope and tethered it to a metal hoop in the ground. The balloon listed once more, then stilled.
The girls did not offer to help as Quin and Mia disembarked. They hefted themselves out of the bucket and onto the ground, their feet sinking pleasingly into the earth. The igneous rock of the volqano had been crushed and pulverized, a million years of chaos resulting in a bank of soft red sand.
“Bhenvenj Refúj.” The woman’s voice was richly accented as she waved them forward. “Come, come. Please make yourself a home.”
Mia had never been greeted in such a way. Please make yourself a home.
The woman in purple didn’t seem particularly interested in them. She was already instructing the girls to repack the torches with kindling.
“I’m sorry,” Mia said. “We’re not quite sure where to . . .”
“Refúj.”
“But shouldn’t we . . .”
The woman muttered something in a language Mia didn’t understand. She gestured to the right. “The merqad! Go, go.”
She seemed eager to get rid of them. Mia and Quin, bewildered, plodded off in the direction she had pointed.
Strange-looking trees flanked the path, a genus Mia didn’t recognize. Unlike the graceful swyn, these were shorter, gnarled, and dappled with gray spots, like the hands of an old witch.
Mia heard the low hum of voices ahead. They’d seen movement on the lakeshore as they descended, a diorama of commotion and wheeling dots of color. Now she spotted a yellow tent flap rippling in the breeze.
“My Fojuen is abysmal,” Quin said, “but I take it merqad means ‘market’?”
Mia nodded. As the footpath opened onto a small sandy circle ringed with food stalls, she expected to see something akin to the dull river markets she was used to—and she found nothing of the sort.
The merqad was an explosion of scents and colors. Roasted meat, sweet wine, tangy fruit juices, bitter teas, and freshly baked bread spiced the air. Rows of orange and yellow tents leaned into one another, stalls cobbled together out of tarps and timber, as girls in bright leggings, trousers, and long flowing skirts spun down the avenues. A girl of twelve or thirteen sped by in a three-wheeled wicker chair, racing a group of her friends. She laughed as she shot past them, her brown forehead shining from exertion as she twisted the hand crank, her dark umber skin luminous with sweat and happiness.
A brood of fat chickens burst out of a tent, clucking as they scampered across Mia’s feet. She jumped back, startled, and knocked into a trio of older girls who had gathered a few feet away. They giggled and whispered something to each other. Were they looking at Quin?
He was looking at them, too. Mia felt a twinge of jealousy.
“Come on.” She grabbed his arm, sticky-warm heat radiating off his skin. That was one emotion she knew she had correlated correctly: desire was hot.
“Look at that.” Quin licked his lips. “Is that not the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?”
The prince was staring at a gigantic bird leg roasting on a spit.
Mia was experiencing her own kind of hunger. She was still tired from healing the prince, bone weary from her run up the mountain, and faint from her leap into the waterfall—or at least, she should have been these things. But ever since she’d drawn herself out of the Salted Sea, a warm bliss had cocooned her. She couldn’t explain it. For once, she didn’t want to.
Mia the Scientist slapped Mia the Gwyrach on the cheek. Warm bliss was treacherous. So was not being able to explain a bodily sensation. And wasn’t it all a little too good to be true? Her mother’s map led them to exactly the right Fojuen island, where a red balloon led them to safe haven, otherwise known as Refúj. If she still had any good sense, she’d say they were being lured into a trap.
But it didn’t feel like a trap. That was the thing. This didn’t make her skin crawl the way she’d felt as they wandered into Tristan’s lair in the forest.
It felt like coming home.
“Quin?” She’d lost him. “Quin!”
She spotted him a ways down the avenue, moving slowly toward the turkey leg. A circle of women knitting yarn in dazzling colors clucked as he walked past. The prince was definitely attracting attention, and Mia wasn’t sure how concerned she should be. Was he safe here? Was she?
“Quin!” she hissed, but he either didn’t hear or pretended not to. At every stall he passed, girls stopped and stared. Mia had a revelation.
She’d yet to see a single man.
Was that possible? In the river markets she’d been to with her mother, Glasddiran women were always escorted by a man. “To keep the good women of the river kingdom safe,” claimed King Ronan.
But the merqad in Refúj was only girls and women, and everyone seemed perfectly safe. Mia’s instincts were warring with her reason, blood pooling in her toes, leading her to something, or someone, she was sure of it.
“Veraktu.”
She felt a sharp tug and spun around. A stooped older woman had Mia’s shirt balled up in her bare fist. Her puffy silver twists were gathered into a knot, her skin a rich, weathered sepia, creased like a piece of parchment paper lovingly folded and unfolded over many years. Her face told a story.