As I watched my uncle’s inked forearms, I wondered if I’d be like Nima—able to use the dust—or like the rest of the Hunters—merely a storage unit. I’d come close to seizing a Seelie’s dust once, but Sook had beat me to it, slashing his skin and exposing his blood. That was how we Hunters magnetized wita. Our iron-rich blood attracted the dust and trapped it in the form of dark whorls.
Lost in thought, I’d missed Remo walking up to me.
“The Cauldron has arrived, Amara,” he gritted out, as though my name were the most detestable word in the Faeli language. Considering amara meant love, I bet it was painful for Remo to utter.
I glanced at his proffered arm. “What? Not Trifecta?”
His pupils distended, almost entirely obliterating the gold surrounding them. Was he worried someone might ask the meaning of his unpleasant nickname, which he employed as a substitute for freak? He raised his arm higher as though to hurry me to take it. I shot him an icy smile, scanned the pavilion until I spotted the black cauldron hovering between Gregor, Iba, and Nima. Refusing my future fiancé’s escort, I strode toward the vessel of fae essences that magically materialized for betrothals and weddings.
Remo’s boots banged against the copper floor, the weight of his anger striking the nape of my neck. Not only had I openly demeaned him by refusing his arm, but I’d done so in front of his fellow lucionaga.
Go me.
When I reached my parents, Nima who hadn’t spoken a single word since her arrival, broke away from Iba and clutched my elbow. “I need a minute with my daughter.” She towed me away from the men and the Cauldron spitting up glittery tendrils of smoke, her fingers cool and firm. When we were far from prying ears, she threaded a fugitive tendril of hair back into my braided crown. “Why?”
One tiny, loaded word.
“Because Iba asked this of me.”
“Why would he ask you to . . . to . . .?” One of her eyes spasmed from the mixture of worry and annoyance she was surely trying to contain before the clouds she’d called forth ripped.
I placed my hand over hers. “It’s okay, Nima.”
“Okay? How is it okay that you’re being forced to tie your essence with a boy you don’t love?” Her eye twitched again, her thick black lashes flapping. “You don’t love him, do you, abiwoojin?”
“Skies, no.”
Lightning slit the sky, this time cleaving the steel clouds. Raindrops fell in droves, clapping the flat copper roof like mallets.
“But it’s just an engagement, Nima, not a wedding.”
Her eyes darted toward Iba, who watched us steadily, even though he was discussing something with Gregor and Remo.
“Did you marry the man you were engaged to?” I whispered just as Faith stomped toward us, curly red hair bouncing violently against her shoulders.
“I object,” she bellowed over the deafening cacophony of my mother’s anguish, “and I’m guessing you do too, Catori.”
Nima schooled her features back into her sovereign’s mask. “I might not be fond of the union, but I trust our king’s judgment, as should you.”
Faith set her hands on her waist, crinkling the emerald satin of her floor-length gown. “The king is your husband. Of course you’d trust his judgment.”
Nima seemed to grow a few inches taller than the full head she already had on Faith. “Everything my husband does, he does for Neverra.”
“Well, I don’t want my son marrying into a family of murderers.” Spittle flew from Faith’s mouth, smacked Nima’s chin.
“Murderers?” Nima growled. “Because your family’s so much better? Would you like a list of the fae and humans your father snuffed out?”
“How dare you compare what he does to what you did! My father punishes criminals.” Faith poked Nima’s collarbone, right under Stella’s captive dust. “You killed my mother! An innocent!”
“Your mother was not innocent. When are you going to take off those ridiculous rose-colored goggles of yours and see her for the viper she was?”
“Stop lying.”
“I never lied.” Nima balled her hands into tight fists. “Besides, you didn’t even like her!”
“That’s not the point!”
I grabbed one of Nima’s fists, trying to pry her fingers apart, but they seemed fashioned from steel. I beseeched Iba with a frantic look, and he soared toward us, Silas in tow. The draca wound his hands around his wife’s biceps and eased her away.
“Daughter, please behave.” Although Gregor’s tone was dulcet, it was sharp. “Now, can we please get on with this union? I wouldn’t want the Cauldron to