disjointed beat in the awkward silence. Her skin had never been thinner, nerves pounding right beneath the surface.
Still, the confession was oddly relieving. Like it wasn’t all in her head anymore.
Aaros studied her, incredulous. “I can’t imagine you not being at the top of society’s food chain and the talk of all the parties.” He frowned when she merely shrugged. “You really had no one to whisper secrets to? To pop drinks and laugh with during the late hours of night?”
She supposed she had—tutors and teachers and friends she’d grown close to—but it couldn’t count if none of them had been real. Jack had been real. The only real person in her life, perhaps. But she’d never seen him as just a friend. Friend always seemed too simple a word for what he was to her.
Kallia inhaled deeply, stilling her nerves. “You’re right that I came from a lot, a better life than most.” She looked up at the sky, the sun gone. “It was also emptier than most. I’m glad to have gotten away from it.”
Saying it out loud whispered panic into her heart, as if all the world could hear her secrets, gathering like pearls tightly strung around her neck. Still, she was unwilling to give them up. Even as they choked her.
“What sort of trouble are you running from, Kallia?”
The words flashed through her mind, images of chandeliers and cold mirrors blurring into smoke. Her nightmare of the monster rising above her, joining the shadowy mass that swallowed her whole. “I simply thought it was time for me to leave, and I did.”
“So there is trouble.”
Aaros didn’t glory at how he’d unreeled a confession. And Kallia, for once, wasn’t racked with panic. The truth couldn’t touch her here, not without her permission. “That’s a conversation for another time.”
He fell silent, nodding intently. He’d gotten a sliver. More than she’d intended to give, and more than he’d expected. It was strange, though, to want to give more. There was control in holding everything to oneself, but there was also weight. So much she couldn’t be allowed to feel, for it was better to remain steel. Unbreakable.
“That Demarco fellow, though…” He paused, lightening his tone. “Does this mean I don’t have to mess up his face?”
Kallia whacked him in the arm with a snort. “Don’t you dare. His face looks hard as stone, you’d probably break your fists on it. And I need your hands to be in the best damn shape they can be for tonight.”
The clouds above parted with sunlight, glinting off the frost-edged street curbs and corners. After she nearly slipped on a patch of ice, Aaros looped his elbow easily through hers, tugging her in another direction. “Come on, this way. You’ll get us lost if you keep pretending to know where you’re going.”
“If this city had any damn signs, maybe it’d be easier to navigate and find a tailor.”
“We do have signs.” Aaros let out a smug breath. “You just don’t see them yet.”
“You’re joking.” She peered even harder at the archways and street corners, still bare as when she’d first seen them. “Is this some sort of city magic trick?”
“City knowledge, more like. Look at the architecture, the shapes of windows and gates and any other details. Four suits for four families, remember?” He gestured a hand grandly around him. “Know the suits, and you’ll never get lost.”
Kallia followed his line of vision across the vast spread of square-shaped buildings, their glassy windows and doors all rectangular. She’d never noticed the uniform quality, but now, it was all she could see: the signatures of squares surrounded her entirely, from the shapes of the buildings down to the details engraved upon them.
“When it comes to clothes, there’s nothing really in the Fravardi Fold, that’s for sure,” Aaros murmured before a flash of a smile lit his face. “But I know someone in the Ranza Fold.”
Not like Kallia could do much more than follow his lead. She knew nothing of the city other than what the mayor had briefly spoken of. The family names sparked a familiarity as Aaros hauled them to a grand intersection of what felt like four different versions of Glorian. The square-shaped section they’d walked from marked the Fravardi section, leading into a sector of buildings laced with rusty star-raised gates and pointed windows signifying the Vierra Fold. The Alastor Place peeked out amidst other sharp towering spires like triangles raised to the sky.