She craned her neck to look up at him. He met her gaze and she swore his softened with something akin to concern, his silver-blue eyes tipped down, teardrops about to fall.
“Why are you being so nice?” she asked.
“If you think I’m nice, you really need to spend time with better people.”
“No, you’re being kind. You’re holding me all close and saying personal things. Do you love me now?”
He answered with a mocking laugh. “You’re really hung up on that, aren’t you?”
Tella gave him a saucy smirk. “I made your heart beat. That practically makes me a Fate.”
“No,” Jacks answered tightly, all hints of humor vanishing. “You’re still very human, and I do not love you.”
His hands went so cold she half expected him to drop her and leave her the same way Legend had. But for some reason Jacks kept her close. His arms stayed around her as he carried her into a sky carriage. It had buttery cushions laced with thick royal-blue trim that matched the curtains lining the oval windows. She wondered if it was the coach they’d first met in, the same tiny box he’d threatened to shove her out of just to see what would happen. She went a little stiffer in his arms at the thought. Even though he was being gentle with her, he was far from kind or safe.
“Did you just remember how much you don’t like me?” he asked.
“I never forgot. I was thinking of the first time we met. Did you know who I was?”
“No.”
“So, you’re just that charming to everyone you meet?”
His hand slowly stroked her arm; his fingers weren’t as icy as before his heart started beating, but they were still cool to the touch. “When I possessed my full powers, I could do the vilest of things. I could speak words far worse than what I said to you in the carriage, and people would still willingly betray their mother or their lover to please me. Although those powers are gone, being heir to a throne has a similar effect.” The eyes that met hers were the color of frost, and as dispassionate as they were unapologetic. “No one likes me, Donatella, but people go along with whatever I say. Sometimes my only form of entertainment is seeing how far I can take things before someone flinches.”
“You really have no feelings at all, do you?”
“I feel.”
“But not like humans?”
“No. It takes far more for me to feel something, and when I do it’s infinitely stronger.” Jacks removed his hand from her arm, but for one splintering moment Tella felt his fingers harden like metal.
When the coach landed at the palace the air was thick with celebratory smoke. Jacks didn’t even ask if Tella’s limbs were working again. He scooped her listless body up once more and carried her from the carriage house as a final brilliant blue firework burst above, raining down sapphire shine over every inch of Elantine’s jeweled palace.
Jacks’s eyes flashed quicksilver in the light with something a little too inhuman to be called sorrow, and yet that was the only word Tella had for it.
“Why aren’t you watching the fireworks with the empress?” she asked.
“Didn’t you hear? Her missing child returned, and Elantine has officially recognized him, which means I’m no longer heir.”
Tella did not feel sorry for him. Jacks’s reign would have been a plague to the entire Meridian Empire. And yet something about the situation stirred up a sense of unease. When Elantine had talked of her lost child earlier that night, it hadn’t sounded as if a mother and child had been reunited. It made Tella think that Elantine’s new heir was an imposter, a pretender who only existed to keep Jacks from the throne.
It should have impressed Tella that the empress had done what she’d needed to protect the Empire from Jacks. But something about it didn’t feel right.
“Don’t faint on me,” Jacks said. “I’d rather not face the wrath of your sister.”
“I’m not faint,” Tella lied. “And, speaking of my sister, you still never told me what she was doing with you the other night in the carriage.”
“Kissing me passionately.”
Tella choked on a breath.
The corner of Jacks’s mouth twitched. “Don’t die on me now. It was a joke. You told your sister that I found your mother, so she wanted me to help her find someone, too.”
This was much better but still disconcerting. “Who was she looking for?”
“Not the boy she’s sitting with right now.” Jacks pivoted slowly in the direction of the stone garden.