I grinned at him. “There’s nothing to avoid because there’s nothing there.”
Pete sighed and shook his head fondly. “So what boy does he have a crush on, then?” he called out quite loudly to Kevin.
Ryan tensed.
“Don’t know,” Kevin said, tossing me the ball again. “But you can sure as shit bet I’m going to meet him before he takes Sam out. Instill the fear of the gods in him, I will.”
“Your life is so weird,” Pete said to me.
“Right?” I said.
“Hey, Sam,” one of the knights called out. He was handsome in a rugged sort of way, all charm and a wicked glint to his eyes. I thought his name was Nat or Nate. “You ain’t seein’ anyone, right?”
“Right.”
“I could take you out,” he said, looking me up and down. “Show you a good time.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. You, me. Candlelight. See where it goes.”
“I think I have a good idea of where it might go,” I said. “You just licked your lips. Lasciviously.”
“Think of the other things I could lasciviously lick—”
“Get in line,” Ryan snarled at him.
Nat or Nate winked at me and followed orders.
The knights started going through their paces. Ryan called to Pete, but Pete rolled his eyes and waved him off. “I’m retiring in four months,” he said. “I don’t have time to be a part of your weird flirting.”
Ryan sputtered and then fled to the other side of the sparring fields, his knights following and laughing behind his back.
“They think he’s an idiot,” Pete said as he watched them go.
“The knights? Why?”
Pete shrugged. “For what he did to you. They think he made the biggest mistake of his life and give him shit for it. Nobody fucks w
ith Sam of Wilds.”
I gaped at him as he walked away, whistling a jaunty tune.
THE WEEK before the wedding, I was in the gardens with my mother, helping her weed and water her flowers. It was good work, hands dirty and smelling of earth, muscles in my back and arms burning. We were back in the secret parts of the garden, the area where few ever ventured. Ryan and I had been here once, speaking of wishes and stars.
“Mamia loved her flowers,” my mother said, tending to the crocus and the tulips. “She could grow them year-round, even in the snows. She kept a greenhouse, the first of its kind. She built it herself, refusing help from the men and women. She said it was hers, and as the rom baro of our clan, she would lead by example. She understood helping others, but also showing that one could stand on his or her own feet.”
“I’ll meet her one day,” I said.
She smiled at me. “Of course you will. You are a part of her just as much as I am. I may not be allowed back, but you will be.”
“Do you regret it? Choosing Dad over your roma.” Because when all else was stripped away, that is what had happened. Mom had fallen in love outside of her roma—her clan—which was expressly forbidden by gypsy law. She’d been outcast, shunned by her people when her choice had been made clear. She had chosen to follow my father instead of her own people. But my mother was always clear in the fact that there was never animosity after she left, and that her mother had held her tight and whispered in her ear how proud she was of her daughter, how wonderful she thought she was, how sad she was to see her go.
“No,” she said simply. “Not ever.”
“How did you know it was the right thing to do?”
She sat back on her knees, a smidge of dirt on the tip of her nose, a light sheen of sweat on her forehead. I thought she’d never looked more beautiful than she did at that moment.