out a little. “Damn right, baby girl. Now, put a stop to this drab weather and go get ready.”
Nodding, I slashed the air vertically again, but this time from moss to sky. The raindrops froze before steaming away.
“Amara Wood?” A high-pitched voice carried over the frolicking Pink Sea and through the latticework of the gazebo that stood on the edge of the garden like a lighthouse. “Are you playing with the weather again?”
Iba smiled, and I grinned back.
I peeked through the cage of drosas at the deck of my hovering bungalow where Nana Vee stood with her hands on her hips.
“You better go before Veroli fords the bridge to yell at me for keeping you away.” Iba’s eyes glinted with humor.
Not many people could give Iba an earful, or call him by his first name, but Nana Vee, who’d raised him before she’d raised me, had that privilege.
“Coming!” I stepped out of the gazebo but paused. “Will you tell Nima before dinner?”
Rubbing the back of his neck, Iba glanced at the acre of landscaped shrubs and trees upon which he and my mother had built their cozy nest of glass and stone.
When Iba still hadn’t answered, I asked, “Want me to come with you and hold your hand?”
He chuckled. “I promised Gregor I’d wait until dinner to tell her. He wanted Cat to hear the news at the same time as Faith.”
“Fun times ahead.”
“Oh, yeah. I’ll be the one with the crooked crown and the half-empty bottle of whiskey welded to his palm.”
“Save me some?”
“Hmm. Aren’t you underage?”
I cocked an eloquent eyebrow. “If I’m old enough to get engaged, then surely I’m old enough to drink, don’t you think?”
He relented with a smile. “Fine. Fine.”
“Amara!” This time my name was accompanied by rhythmic thumps against the wooden bridge.
“Uh-oh. She’s coming for me.”
“Better run.”
I spun around and all but smacked into a cluster of tall, green daffos. I pressed away their trumpet-faces, then rounded the thick trunk of a mallow tree, its cloud-like violet crown injecting the air with a treacly scent that turned my stomach. Many fae smoked or ate the purple fluff on a regular basis. Not me. And not even because my parents had warned me against drugs, but because the one time I’d tried mallow, I’d been convinced my skin had grayed and fissured.
“Amara Wood, you are very late.” Nana Vee sounded winded, as though she’d paced my bedroom for hours before plodding over the bridge.
“Yes, Amara Wood. You are very late.” Giya was leaning against the back wall of my bungalow, arms folded in front of a gown made of so many layers of white chiffon she resembled a Glade pearl.
“Dinner’s in thirty minutes. Thirty minutes!” Nana Vee’s red cheeks puffed. “And you aren’t even bathed.”
“I’m sorry. I was talking with Iba.”
Giya’s gray eyes sparked silver in the purple dimness. I could tell she was dying to ask what about but refrained from doing so in front of Nana Vee.
Harrumphing, Veroli cut her eyes to the opposite side of the garden as though ready to march over to my parents’ private rooms and bang on their glass door. If dinner hadn’t been in a half hour, I bet she would’ve done just that. “Your bath must be cold.”
I smiled down at the short fae, whom I considered my grandmother and not my nanny, the same way I considered Pappy’s wife my grandmother, even though I shared no blood with her. I’d never known Nima’s real mother. She’d died long before I was born. Apparently, Gwenelda had siphoned her soul by mistake. Sometimes when Nima watched Giya’s aunt, her wistfulness was so strong it felt almost solid.
I dropped a kiss on top of Nana Vee’s graying hair, which she always kept pinned into a poufy bun. “I’ll warm it up.”
She pivoted, leading the way back across the short bridge and around the deck girdling my bungalow.
Giya fell into step beside me and whispered, “Did you find out what the dinner was about?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
I flicked my gaze toward the lucionaga hovering in their firefly form. “Later.”
She trailed me through my open sash windows and into the bedroom, which had once belonged to her mother but became mine the day I turned twelve. Like my parents’ home, it was fashioned from glass and gossamer-white, but instead of stone, my bungalow was made of lacquered wood and shiny copper.
I plunged my hand into the bath scented with crushed beetle shells and honeysuckle. The water beaded around my fingers and knuckles as