“You’re moving again,” Bele said.
I glanced over at her. “No, I’m not.”
“You’re swaying,” Erlina confirmed.
I was?
“Yeah, swaying like you had one too many glasses of wine,” Bele tacked on.
“What are you even doing here?” I asked as Erlina snipped a thread near the curve of my hip. My tone bordered on my mother’s whenever she’d seen me somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be. My earlier happiness at seeing Bele when she arrived with Aios had faded about five hundred remarks ago.
“Making sure you stand still.”
“You haven’t done a good job of that,” Erlina said around the needle she held between her teeth.
I rolled my eyes.
Bele snorted.
“I haven’t moved that much,” I defended.
Erlina’s hands stilled as she looked up at me with dark brown eyes, her brows raised.
“Whatever,” I muttered.
“I have never seen someone as antsy as you.” The dagger flipped into the air once more. “It’s like you havesparaneain your veins instead of blood.”
I frowned. “Sparanea?”
“Yeah, they’re everywhere in the mountains of Sirta, where it’s snowing,” she said, referencing Hanan’s Court. “They’re basically tiny spiders that are really fast and super venomous.”
“What the fuck…?” I whispered, shuddering as my mind immediately began hurling images of tiny spiders crawling around inside me.
“That didn’t help,” Erlina said.
Bele giggled, the sound soft and airy. “Sorry. But, hey, at least I’m not talking about the spiders that are the size of a large dog.”
“Spiders the size of a dog?” I whispered.
“Yeah. They love the wetlands. Freaking huge. Scare the shit out of you when you see them scurrying about. But they don’t bite,” she continued while I decided I no longer had any desire to see more of Iliseeum if those things lived in the rest of the realm. “They’re more scared of you than you should be of them.”
“It is impossiblenotto be afraid of a spider the size of a dog.”
Bele snickered. “Then I probably shouldn’t tell you about the snakes—”
“Please stop talking,” I told her.
The goddess laughed.
Erlina snipped another thread. “It’s okay,” the seamstress said quietly. “You know…if you’re nervous.” She glanced up at me. “Anyone would be.”
“True.” Bele caught the dagger an inch before it plunged into her chest. “It’s not every day that someone is crowned the Consort of the Primal God of Death before a massive crowd made up of gods and Primals.”
I stared at her as she tossed the blade into the air once more. “I hope you drop that dagger, and it ends up in your eye.”
Bele caught it. “And the entirety of Lethe,” she went on. “When I saw Ector earlier, he said that much of the council house was already bursting with people. You know, I’m kind of glad I have to remain behind. That is way too many people.”
My heart hammered. While I was relieved to know that Ector was up and moving about, Iwasmore nervous than I’d thought I would be, and maybe even a little overwhelmed. Okay. A lot overwhelmed, which felt strange considering I had planned for this moment for most of my life. All of this felt surreal, and I doubted the lack of real sleep had anything to do with it.