Tall, dark hair, deeply tanned skin, and expressive green eyes. That was Princess Luciana. The worst? She was known for being soft-spoken and demure, the absolute opposite of me.
He’d once told me he didn’t do any wooing unless it was of a certain licentious variety. In fact, he said something along the lines of ‘the only wooing I do doesn’t involve clothes.’
I didn’t know why that particular falsehood made me grit my teeth, considering the others, like say—escorting me to a city that didn’t exist.
“All right, the lamb is being sent to the orphanage—Calamity, where are you going?” Agnes asked as I made my way past her.
“To brush my hair,” I replied to the girls’ amusement. And then to add number seventy-three to my ‘Reasons I Hate Weston’ list: being a lying liar about not wooing women who wear clothes.
In Symbia, there was often a saying that passed from the elders’ mouths to the ears of the young:
‘Never tarry in the southern port, for what will befall you is a bad sort.’
Considering I’d only lived here for six months, it was easy to pretend that I hadn’t become aware of the dangers of walking deep into the harbor, where ships docked to unload.
How sailors had a slightly higher set of morals than their captains—who had none. And how walking that close to a vessel known for carrying slaves, with a body that would sell for a hundred silvers in any auction on a bad night, was too tempting to those whose minds revolved around greed.
I was definitely aware of the danger—Henry had warned me himself in a deep voice. I thought he was trying to appear as a man so that I would listen. But he should’ve known I wouldn’t have listened either way. I just needed to get out of that house, away from the future that was closing in on me.
I wasn’t supposed to leave the house after dark or without permission from Agnes. But I always had a problem with rules. Following them, that is. The wards on my windows didn’t work to keep me in, and I took advantage of it often.
The rules were so that we didn’t draw attention to what the Royal Affair truly was: a Sisterhood residence for girls before they were sworn in.
All of the women who worked at the brothel were oblivious to us. The wards around the residence somehow blanked their minds from trying to figure out what our purpose there was. Though it didn’t work to keep men from noticing you, and after you were spotted, well, you were told to do the job as to not draw unnecessary attention to a ‘whore’ who didn’t want to whore. I usually just stayed upstairs for that very reason.
I pulled my hood further over my head as I walked down the dock; the lanterns hanging from iron hooks extinguished with a hiss as I passed them.
When I got a clear look at the dimly lit port and the dark water, I froze. An icy shiver danced under my skin, sending goose bumps to the surface.
The white of a sail was bright in the night. The black T in the middle a formidable presence—and it was only a simple letter. Titan. I’d never seen one of their ships docked here, and never thought I would. Everyone knew Maxim and the Titans were not on good terms. I’d learned firsthand.
But there was no way that Maxim didn’t know; he had this city locked down. No one entered or left without a thorough checking over at the front gates or here at the port. Untouchables stood in line in groups of four, watching the unloading of goods.
“And where do you think you’re going, missus?”
The scratchy voice came from my right, and I turned to look at an older man: short, gray beard with a pipe to his lips, sitting cross-legged in a dilapidated dinghy tied up to the dock.
He nodded toward the harbor. “Wouldn’t go any further were I you. Bad sort o’er there.”
I gazed absently at the waving Titan sail, anger, uncertainty, settling under my skin. My voice was soft, musing. “Maybe I’m one of them.”
He scoffed. “Missus, you ain’t like them; they ain’t normal. Been raised a certain way. Besides, even if you were, you don’t got the mechanics to be one of ‘um.”
I let out a bitter laugh. “And you know me so well?”
“Yer a woman. Don’t got the ire in you that men do.”
I don’t know. I felt ire, all right.
But I only said, “‘S’pose you’re right,” because he didn’t know. He didn’t know what I had dreamed, what I had seen or heard. What I was.
“Now be a good girl, and help an achin’ old man out.” He held his hat out for me, and I frowned before digging in my cloak and dropping a few coins in it.
“Thank you, missus. ‘Bout out of smoke.”
I glanced at him disapprovingly.
A figure caught in the corner of my eye, and my heart beat like a drum as I watched him walk out onto the deck of the ship. A rush of uncertainty flooded me, and the visceral fear sparked some anger in my chest.