Total pages in book: 159
Estimated words: 144433 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 722(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144433 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 722(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
Shit. A spoiled alien became my favorite person in the space of a few weeks. How the hell did that sneak up on me?
"Don't look now," Lady va'Rin says, turning and pretending to adjust one of the draping, pearl-encrusted sleeves she wears as we stand in the busy receiving hall. "A waiter's coming with food."
"I can handle it," I reply confidently. I'll eat whatever it is with a smile, as long as it gets me in the door. I glance around at the party full of people, all of them intimidating. There are the austere-looking mesakkah with gleaming, metal-covered horns and sweeping robes. Sleek praxiian ladies move past with strands of jewels on their tails, their dresses form-fitting and encrusted with precious metals.
Everyone is very tall. Everyone is also very studiously ignoring us as if we don't exist.
There's no sign of the human bride anywhere, either.
The approaching waiter is one of the red-skinned a'ani, which throws me for a loop, because he looks just like Kazex. He's got no tattoos, though, and the smile he turns in our direction is just barely polite as he extends his food tray toward us.
"Most gracious of you," Lady va'Rin says, humming in her throat as she picks up the hors d'oeuvres from the tray. "What is this?"
I smile brightly at the waiter and reach for an appetizer, only to falter. It looks like a crispy little finger-sized lizard with a toothpick spitted through it.
"Pan-seared venit hatchling," the a'ani says smoothly. "Enjoy."
I take the food even though it's staring back at me, and swallow hard.
"Eat it and pretend like it's amazing," Lady va'Rin whispers as the waiter sweeps away. She smiles graciously at the people milling around us, all of whom continue to ignore us. "And then you have to eat mine, because I'm going to play the pregnancy card and can't eat anything my doctor hasn't approved of."
Son of a bitch. She pats her very pregnant belly and I shove the dead lizard into my mouth, crunching viciously. "Then why'd you take it?" I hiss at her through a mouthful of dry, desiccated, and surprisingly acidic lizard. Ugh. It tastes a bit like an olive that lived under someone's bed for a decade.
"Because we're being polite guests."
Frogshit, as Zhur would say. But then I miss Zhur with a painful intensity. I grab her lizard snack and crunch on it, too. I deliberately avoid breathing through my nose in the hopes of reducing the chance of tasting it. "Deeeelicious. Tastes like chicken."
If chicken tasted like pan-seared lizard, that is. But if I have to eat twenty of the damn things for a chance to see Zhur again, I'm going to do it.
CHAPTER
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEEN
MAEVE
It's a boring party.
At least, it's boring for me and Lady va'Rin, given that no one will talk to us. I pick my teeth with one of the glittery little toothpicks. Something's stuck in my molars, and I don't know if it's a leg from a stuffed rodent, a carapace from a bug, or another one of those terrible dried lizards. All I know is that I've eaten a lot of fancily trussed-up vermin.
I'm not worried about feeling out of place, either. Sure, my dress is plain—a very simple shimmering ombre frock made of a light, soft silk and long, floor-length sleeves. My hair is pulled into a tidy bun and I'm not wearing a stitch of jewelry, which means I stand out amongst this glittering throng. It only took a few moments to realize they were going to ignore the hell out of me, though. They're doing their best to pretend both me and Lady va'Rin don't exist.
And not a glimpse of Zhur, either.
"I'm sorry about the party," Milly whispers to me as she sips from a crystalline goblet of water. "It's a terrible feeling, isn't it?"
"Nah," I say, tossing my toothpick aside. Then I wince, because I'm supposed to be at my best, manners-wise. "Where's your husband, anyhow? I thought he'd be hovering here at your side."
Milly lets out a tiny laugh. "That would be his preference. But I learned that people gravitate toward him to discuss politics and business, and if I'm at his side, they look at me like I'm a wart on his nose. So I let him swan around and I hang out on the fringes and everyone ignores me." She sighs happily and rubs her lower back. "Bliss."
That's the second time she's rubbed her back in the last few minutes. "You want to go sit down somewhere?"
"No one else is sitting—"
"No one else is human," I point out. "They're acting like we don't exist, remember?"
She grimaces. "True. And maybe we can sit for just a minute? The baby is heavy and my feet are killing me." We link arms and I point at a balcony on the far end of the party, and we head in that direction. As we do, I pretend to be very interested in praxiian architecture, since everyone's sweeping their robes and skirts aside as if they're going to get cooties from our presence.