Scavenge the Stars (Scavenge the Stars #1)(70)

“And I agree with him. Maybe tomorrow, if it’s warmer.”

If we still have a garden then.

She huffed but didn’t argue further as she nibbled at her egg bun. Cayo smiled despite the tightness of his chest, happy just to have his sister up and talking.

The countess watched the exchange with fascination. He suddenly wondered if she had any siblings. He burned to ask her questions, to put away his worry and his indecision and merely focus on a girl he wanted to know more about.

A foot kicked him softly under the table. Soria pointedly looked at the teapot between them, then at the countess’s nearly empty cup. Since they no longer had servers for this sort of thing, Cayo stood to pour the countess fresh tea, accidentally spilling some when he pulled the spout away. Cursing, he wiped it up as Soria sighed and shook her head. The countess tamped down a smile.

“So, ah.” Cayo wasn’t particularly hungry, but he took a rice noodle pancake and began tearing it into pieces on his plate. “What’s this about another party?”

“It sounds amazing,” Soria said with a dreamy sigh. “It’ll be on a ship and catered by Kastille’s. They make the best cakes. And the theme of it is—”

“Gambling,” the countess finished with another thin smile.

Cayo stopped tearing at his pancake. There was a stiffness in the countess that he hadn’t seen before, a wholly different persona than the girl he had raced in the inlet. She looked at him with weight behind her dark eyes, as if she also bore a knowledge too heavy to hold on her own.

“Soria,” he said softly, “you should go back to bed.”

“But I feel fine.”

“If you want a walk in the garden later, I want you to be rested for it.”

Soria rolled her eyes and got up from the table, giving the countess a small curtsy before heading toward the stairs.

Once they were alone and out of earshot, Cayo faced the countess again.

“I know your secret,” she said without preamble.

Cayo’s heart tripped. The theme of her next party was no coincidence; she must have figured out, somehow, that he was embroiled with the Slum King, that he had drained his family’s coffers, that—

“Who would have guessed that the young Lord Mercado was engaged to the Slum King’s daughter?”

The words were a punch to the solar plexus, leaving Cayo winded. He stared at Yamaa with an open mouth. When she did nothing but stare back, he desperately reached for his voice.

“How…How do you know that?” he croaked.

“All information can be bought, for the right price.” She winced, as if hating the words even as she spoke them. As if she were quoting someone she disliked. “I happened to be curious about you, and one thing led to another.”

Although the engagement with Romara was far and away the least of his troubles, the fact that Yamaa now knew—even before his father knew!—filled him with a strange sense of shame. He realized then, in that moment, that he cared far more about what she thought of him than he had initially guessed.

“So.” She laced her fingers together on the tabletop. “How exactly did that relationship start?”

“It’s not a relationship,” he growled. “It isn’t like that.”

“Don’t tell me it’s a marriage of convenience? Because somehow I don’t find the idea of marrying a criminal very convenient.”

He sighed and rubbed his face. There were too many voices crowding inside him, whispering his fears and doubts in continuous loops, all pressed and cramped together so that he felt as short of breath as Soria.

Eventually he dropped his hands, also dropping all his masks, so that when he looked at the countess, he was merely Cayo and nothing more.

“Let’s take a walk,” he said.



He didn’t dress in his best suit, but he did put some care into his outfit of soft breeches and a light blue shirt, over which he pulled on his long coat. Yamaa was a bit understated today as well, wrapped in a simple dress of dove gray with embroidered leaves around the hem. She wrapped a shawl about her shoulders and nodded for him to lead the way.

Cayo didn’t have a destination in mind; they didn’t need one. He just needed to get away from the manor, from the possibility of his father coming home early and interacting with the countess. For some reason, he wanted to keep them as far from each other as possible.

“You’ve probably heard the rumors about me,” Cayo said as they walked down the long, winding road leading to the manor. “You must have, considering you called me a drunken playboy.”

Was that a hint of a blush he saw, or were her cheeks merely warming from the exercise? “I may have heard a rumor or two, yes. Including that you liked to frequent the tables. I didn’t know for certain if that was true until recently.”

“Well, it used to be true. That used to be my life: gambling dens and countless drinks and getting good-luck kisses from strangers. I suppose that was my way of creating freedom—overindulgence, addiction, not bothering to think about the consequences of what I was doing.” He looked up at the pearlescent sky, hands in his pockets. A sea breeze was coming in off the bay, cool and sweet. Beside him, Yamaa hugged her shawl tighter around her. “It made everything seem simpler. And all I wanted was for things to be simple.”