She was in no way prepared for what she saw.
Five boys stood atop the bar. Despite the early hour, they were in varying degrees of inebriation, holding assorted bottles and tankards and, by all appearances, dancing—or making a valiant go of it, anyway—to a chorus of whistles from the girls below. Not a single boy was wearing a shirt. All the shirts in Refúj had apparently taken refuge someplace else.
Domeniq was one of the five, his rugged brown torso chiseled into eight discrete sections.
She gulped. Make that ten.
If what he’d said were true, this was a decent percentage of the male population of the island (not counting the grandfathers). But then she realized boy number five wasn’t actually a resident of Refúj.
He was Quin, Son of Clan Killian. Maker of Breakfasts, Discarder of Shirts.
The well-defined planes of Quin’s stomach glistened with sweat as he tipped back a flask, chugged the murky liquid inside, and wiped his mouth on his arm.
“I just drank a sqorpion!” he yelled. “And glass!” The crowd cheered.
Mia was astonished. How long had she been lost in her mother’s book? Surely not long enough for Quin to get this intoxicated. Her eyes combed his smooth golden body, which until now she had seen only in snips and slivers, peeking through his shirt or masked by sulfyric bubbles. He was more perfect than any of her anatomy plates, flawless symmetry and long, lean lines.
She hardly recognized him. How was this the same boy with whom she had fled the Kaer? To say Quin’s transformation was complete would be an understatement: the curmudgeonly ice prince was now charming a pack of lusty Dujia, slugging back glass-and-sqorpion liquor, and dancing on a bar. He wasn’t a very good dancer, but she was impressed by the effort.
She was also furious.
They’d been in Refúj one day, which as it turned out was plenty of time to have her whole life smashed to powder. Her mother had magic. Her parents had never been in love, or if they had, it was twisted, built on lies and secrets. Everything Mia had ever learned or studied about the Gwyrach had been a lie—and she still hadn’t found her mother’s murderer.
Couldn’t Quin see how much she was hurting? Why didn’t he care?
You didn’t let him, said a nagging little voice. You shut him out. You wanted him to leave you alone, so he did.
One of the girls shouted something, and Domeniq threw back his head and laughed. He whispered something into the prince’s ear. Quin blushed.
The boys were easy with one another. Comfortable. Like friends, but with a touch of something more. Mia could feel it: the crackling energy in the air. How had she failed to notice? She thought of the heat when she was standing between them in the Biqhotz, or the way Quin had looked longingly into the pub—the first place they had seen men in Refúj.
Suddenly she was encased in a loneliness so deep it surprised her. Was she really that naive? Had Quin ever been interested in her at all? Perhaps he was interested in boys, just like Dom. Which was fine. Of course it was fine. But she had begun to open her heart to someone, only to have him open his heart to another. Once again, she had proven she knew nothing, absolutely nothing about the human heart.
The heart as a bodily organ, she understood perfectly. Chordae tendineae, atrioventricular valves, papillary muscles: check, check, check. What she couldn’t grasp were the mechanics of desire, of love. What was it made of? Did it coagulate in the bloodstream? Get pumped through the arteries? Love, passion, desire—they all seemed readily available to other people but continued to evade her. Just when she thought she’d grabbed hold of them, they wriggled away, swam just out of reach.
The human heart held four hollow chambers inside it. Anatomists had once believed the spirit of the gods flowed freely between the four hollows. It was only by careful, patient scrutiny that scientists had debunked these myths, reducing the body to a collection of rules and theorems, pieces and parts. There were no gods inside the human heart. Only suffering. Loss. Loneliness. And sometimes nothing at all.
In her darker moments, Mia wondered if she’d been mismade. Did her heart hold more than four empty chambers? Was it more hollow than full?
“Mia!” Quin saw her and clambered down from the bar, pulling his shirt back over his head as he approached. His face was flushed, his hair appealingly mussed. Mia fought the urge to reach out and run her fingers through his curls. “I didn’t see you come in.”
“I think maybe we should talk,” she said.
Chapter 48
Everything You Thought You Knew
DUJIA MILLED ABOUT THE merqad as Mia led Quin down the avenues, searching for a quiet place to talk. The prince wasn’t stumbling in the slightest, which meant he wasn’t nearly as drunk as he’d appeared in the tavern. Why would he pretend? They passed the abandoned stall where Mia had been sitting minutes earlier, now filled with two older women in an amorous embrace.
“Not here,” Mia said, taking Quin by the arm. She barreled past the tents and stalls until she found herself on the narrow footpath winding out of the merqad. Had it only been a day since she and Quin arrived in Refúj? It was hard to believe. She marched past the gnarled, spotted trees, and she was almost to where they’d landed in the red balloon when Quin stopped her.
“Mia,” he said, “what is going on?”
She didn’t understand all the emotions teeming inside her, so she reached for the one she recognized.
“I can’t stay here. My sister is in danger, and I’m going back.”
“Like I said, I’m happy to go with you. I just needed—”
“To drink and dance?” Her words were laced with anger. “My entire life is going up in flames, but I’m glad you’ve found time to throw back some sqorpion liquor. Is it just Dom’s company you prefer over mine, or boys in general?”
“I prefer whom I prefer. Girls. Boys.” Quin set his jaw. “What are we really talking about here? It seems to me we’re pretending to have one conversation but really having another.”
“You would know. Prince Quin, Master of the Pretending Arts.”
He studied her, a swarm of complicated emotions flickering across his face. Behind him, she thought she saw the red balloon in the distance, descending slowly toward Refúj.
“You feel like I betrayed you,” Quin said.
“It’s not about being betrayed! Or maybe it is.” She let out a huff of breath. “Look, I don’t mean to blame you. I’m trying to stay clear in my head. It’s just . . . I can’t tell what’s real and what’s pretend anymore. I don’t know if you care about me . . .”
“I care about you, Mia.”
“. . . or if you’re just pretending. I don’t want to be lied to anymore. Everything I’ve ever been told was a lie. For the past three years I have had only one ambition: to find the Gwyrach who killed my mother. I came here to Refúj, thinking I would find her, but I found Dujia, not Gwyrach. Instead of demons, I found angels. I don’t know anything anymore. I don’t know who hurt her, Quin.”
She blinked back tears. “If I could find who did it . . . if I could put this to rest . . .”
“Perhaps there’s something you’re missing. Something that happened the night she died. She had no wounds when your father brought her to the Kaer. She looked like she was sleeping. But perhaps he—”
“What did you just say?”
Mia had gone as still and quiet as a tomb. A worm of an epiphany slithered across her neck.
“I only meant,” Quin said, “that perhaps there’s something you’re missing.”
“You said she looked like she was sleeping.”
He held her gaze. All the cold she’d once felt oozing off him came rushing back, coating her skin in frostbite. The sun bathed her shoulders in balmy warmth, and yet she felt as if she were buried under frozen earth.
“You saw my mother.”
He yanked a nervous hand through his curls. “I don’t see why that should concern you. I was there in the crypt when the guards brought her body, yes. But it isn’t as if I—”