explain it? She could barely understand the feeling herself. “I need to be sensible. I need to do what’s best for Alyssinia.”
“And what about what is best for you?”
“Kissing him is not what’s best for me, either.”
Nettle looked at Aurora in the mirror. “It would only be a kiss.”
But it wouldn’t only be a kiss. Her kisses with Rodric had been only kisses, a detached display that she had to perform. If she kissed Finnegan, it would mean something else. It would mean tasting something that she longed for, going against what destiny had dictated. If she kissed Finnegan, it would not stop with a kiss.
Nettle sighed at her escaping hair and pulled the dragon pin loose, sending her hair falling back across her face. Then she grasped the strands in a twist to fasten up again.
Aurora looked down at the blanket. Blue swirls had been embroidered into the cloth. “We traveled to the waste today,” she said. “I think—I think I might be able to control the dragons.”
“That is a bold theory.”
Aurora nodded.
“I have seen many strange things in my travels, but nothing quite so strange as that.”
“Finnegan said I could use them to regain Alyssinia. To frighten King John away. But . . . I don’t know.”
Nettle was quiet for a long moment. “I do not think that Alyssinia will achieve peace without violence now. But it does not matter what I think. It matters what you think.”
“I don’t know what I think.”
“Then perhaps do nothing until you decide.”
“I don’t have time to do nothing,” Aurora said. That was the worst part of all this, the need for time to process things, to research, when everything was already falling apart. “Alyssinia needs help now.”
“And rushing into things without a plan will not make things better.”
“You said I should rush into kissing Finnegan.”
“It is not rushing if it is what you want to do.”
Aurora traced the pattern on the quilt. Her hair fell in front of her eyes. “I was wrong before,” she said finally. “When I thought I liked somebody.”
“You’re speaking of Tristan?”
She nodded. “I suppose I did like him,” she said. “For a time. I thought—how romantic. Meeting a boy at an inn, watching the city from the roofs . . . how exciting. But it wasn’t at all like that.”
The mattress sank as Nettle sat beside her. “But Finnegan is not like that,” Nettle said.
“He’s not?”
“You wanted Tristan to be romantic, did you not? You wanted him to be the answer to your problems. But Finnegan . . . you did not like him. You did not want his help. And yet now you have spent time with him, you have these feelings for him. It is different, do you not think?”
“I suppose it is,” Aurora said. But she still could not let herself give in to it. She needed to help Alyssinia. That was her first priority. She could not get distracted with another boy, after the trouble caused by true loves and rebels and her own mixed-up fate.
“Have you heard anything about Tristan?” she said. “Any hints that he’s here?”
“I’ve seen nothing, Aurora. If he is here, I do not think he wishes to be found.”
Aurora let her head fall against Nettle’s shoulder. Would she prefer for Tristan to be here, safe, or fighting in Petrichor? She did not know. And the day had been too exhausting to figure it out now. “What have you seen?” she said instead. “On your travels? What was the strangest thing?”
“Well,” Nettle said. “In one kingdom, there was a princess who slept for over a hundred years before being awoken with a kiss. That was rather strange.” Aurora laughed, and Nettle leaned back, resting her head against the wall. “Let me see,” she said. “There is a city-state in the northeast where all disputes are settled with games of chess. There are people who live in the mountains who believe that they are at risk of suffocating if they go near the sea, because the air will be too thick and heavy. There is a deadly desert near Palir, and people run across it for days, for fun. Just to say that they have done so. But still, Princess. I believe that your story is by far the strangest.”
“I would like to see them someday,” Aurora said. “The things in the other stories.”
“You will,” Nettle said. “You already are.” She combed the ends of Aurora’s hair with her hands. “Shall I pin your hair up for you?”