Page 38 of Sapphires and Snakes
I drop my phone beside me and wrap both hands around her. “Why do you ask?”
She shrugs and picks at the breast pocket of my long sleeve shirt. “It just occurred to me.”
I draw mindless patterns on her back and consider the question. No one’s ever thought to ask before, not even Darius. “For a few reasons. Family names are indicative of legacy, especially within the Cardinal Families.”
Her nail catches on the stitching, a thread loosens. “And?”
“It’s more gender neutral.”
Her lips purse, fingers still picking at my shirt. “I’ve heard Darius call you Andy, that’s gender neutral, too.”
“Too familiar. He’s the only one allowed to call me that.”
“No other reason?” Her voice trails off, leading me somewhere.
I squint down at her, but all I can see is the top of her head, the tip of her nose, not her expression. I lift her chin to meet my gaze, my eyes flicking between hers. “What are you trying to ask, princess?”
She affects a nonchalant look and pulls her chin off my finger. Like she wants to avoid my probing gaze. “Just wondering.”
And bears don’t shit in the woods. “Zarina.” My voice is full of censure.
She sighs, nestling back into my chest, and while cute, I suspect it has more to do with not showing me her face than anything else. “I wondered if you changed it to hide from something.”
“Or from someone.” I say the implication out loud.
She shrugs again, the thread she won’t stop picking at almost free of its stitching.
I watch her, the careful avoidance and fake casualness, and tamp down on my annoyance. And confusion. My voice is careful. “Why do you think that?”
“The story about your knee,” she says. Without much thought, like she expected the question.
“You learned about that weeks ago. What’s prompting this now?” I have an idea, given today’s events.
Zarina curls tighter into herself, pulling her hand away from the pocket of my shirt and into the sleeve of her hoodie. “Nothing.”
Caution hardens into frustration. My hands stop their aimless doodling along Zarina’s back and clutch her a bit tighter. “Princess, if you don’t stop lying to me, I might think you’re hiding something.”
She sucks in a breath that expands her whole torso. “Father said something.”
I force my grip to slacken, to bely the cold foreboding sliding down my spine. “What did he say?”
Zarina groans and pushes up to sitting. She rests her legs over my knee, leaning back against the other, and doesn’t look at me. “He said you were a Gallo.”
I throw gratitude out to the universe that she sat up before saying those words. I don’t know how I would’ve hidden the gallop of my heart or the sweat dewing across my palms. As it is, I’m sure she notices the frozen clench of my muscles and the stiffness of my jaw. But I’m not cold. I’m heating up.
Gemma’s words filter back to me, like a fucking prophecy:She’ll find out, you know. They always do.
Zarina finally dares to look at me, to stop avoiding my gaze and meet it instead. Like she wants to study exactly how I react when she asks, “Was he telling the truth?”
I suck in a breath to deny it, to throw her off this scent. She was never supposed to know about my association to her family.It pushes her too close to the truth. But she’s looking at me like she already knows and is waiting for me to either buck up or fuck up.
I lick my lips and admit facts I never wanted her to know. “Partly. I wasn’t made.”
Zarina’s gaze flits over my face, and it takes the entire force of my willpower to keep my body relaxed, my face open and honest. I count my inhales and exhales and keep my breathing steady. Because she can’t know. It would mean the end of… something. Maybe everything. I don’t know.
And I don’t want to find out.
By some miracle, Zarina’s eyes don’t widen in realization. She doesn’t shove off me like I’ve hurt her. Instead, she nods once. Twice. As if she’s accepting that information and it’s okay. We’re okay.