her eyes had turned perpetually glassy. I’d thought it was because of heartache but learned, from overhearing the adults talk, that after Kingston’s failed coup, Addison had consoled Linus’s consort with copious amounts of purple fluff. Now, they spent their days cooped up in my grandmother’s living room, lounging about the velour boudoir, inhaling the hallucinogenic plant, and bonding over their disappointment in men.
“Granddaughter, don’t you look ravishing tonight!” Addison proclaimed much too spiritedly.
Her breath and pale lavender hair reeked of mallow—sweet and pungent with a side of nauseating. I tried to step away, but this would cause me to bump into Remo. I chose the better of two evils and stayed close to my loopy grandmother.
“Doesn’t she, Angelina?” Addison asked.
Angelina’s eyes rolled in their sockets. I wasn’t sure my image was even registering on her pupils, but she cooed and whispered. “Your eyes look violet.” Her nostrils flared. “You even smell purple.”
My grandmother’s eyes widened in wonder. “Oh, but she does!”
Behind her, Nima shook her head, murmuring something into my father’s ear that pulled him away from Silas.
“Addison, you’ve arrived!” He took his mother’s elbow and guided her to the bow-shaped wooden dining table weighted down by the prepared feast. “Why don’t I get you settled?”
Angelina, whose arm was still wrapped around my grandmother’s, stumbled as her feet caught up with my father’s brusque movement.
“Lost her mind when she lost her son, that one.” Gregor grabbed a handful of paprika-flecked panem leaves.
Usually the buttery scent of bread that wafted from the heart-shaped leaves made my stomach growl, but my insides were twisted into too many knots to produce sound. “I’m guessing it would haunt any mother to birth an evil child, and then watch that child be put to death. She did witness the execution, didn’t she?”
Gregor turned his autumn-leaf eyes off the backside of a passing faerie waitress. “We no longer subject families to executions.”
“Your consideration knows no bounds.” I sipped my wine, even though the taste was souring my stomach.
His mouth curved. “Your tongue is as sharp as a quila’s beak, little Amara.”
A warm hand wrapped around my forearm, dimpling the ultraviolet fabric of my dress’s three-quarter sleeves. “Dinner. Come.” Nima pulled me away from Gregor and Remo. “Please don’t anger the wariff, abiwoojin. Your father and he are already not seeing eye-to-eye these days. Which is probably why he wanted you to get engaged . . .” She trailed off, as though considering what she’d just said.
I itched to explain all Iba had told me in the gazebo, but this was neither the time nor was it my place to tell her. He’d share his reasons soon enough. Nima clutched my arm until we reached the banquet table carved from a single calimbor trunk, then went to join Iba at one end.
“Amara.” Iba gestured to the chair beside my grandfather’s and across from Giya’s.
My grandfather rose and wrapped one sun-spotted hand around the copper twig rung, scooting it back for me. “How lucky I am to be seated next to the prettiest girl in Neverra.”
How I adored this man. “I’m the lucky one.”
He tucked my chair in, then regained his seat beside my grandmother, who was fingering one of the adamans blooms tied into bouquets by sprigs of wild chives and scattered down the length of the table.
When she retracted her hand, the petals tinkled. “I still can’t get over the fact that they’re made of glass, and how long have we been living in Neverra, Derek?”
“Almost an Earthly century.” Wonder lined Pappy’s tone.
After my parents’ wedding, Nima sat her father down and explained what she was and where she needed to live. Pappy hadn’t believed her at first, so she’d shown him. Apparently, when he’d popped out of the portal, he’d blacked out. Iba had caught my grandfather as he’d toppled off the thin disk and had lain him on the mossy ground. To make a long story short, when Pappy had come to, he was still convinced it was a dream. It had taken him days of wandering through the land and passing through portals to believe it was real. And then it had taken him almost an entire Earthly year before he’d talked to his girlfriend Milly about the faerie isle.
Oddly enough, Nana Em believed faeries existed right off the bat and had been delighted by the magical land, and had grown even more so when Pappy had asked for her hand on the beach bordering the Pink Sea. Although Pappy and Nana