“Please,” he’d said to Justen. The three of them were in Isla’s private chambers, where Heloise could rest among the white pillows and swaying palm fronds. “This may be her last party. If there’s any way I can let her have a final glimpse . . .”
These aristos sure had their priorities screwed up.
When he was done, Persis was nowhere to be found.
“She left a while ago,” Torin explained. “Actually, I’m relieved. There are things she doesn’t need to see.”
“She’s seen them,” Justen argued, remembering the night Heloise had almost clawed her daughter’s lovely face off. “You can’t keep them from her. And you can’t let her go on like this, either, pretending it’s not happening. Do you know she hasn’t even been tested?”
“Actually,” said Heloise from the chaise, her voice so hard for once, the woman reminded him of her daughter, “we do know that. And I strongly believe she should be given that right. If she is to die like me, then she doesn’t need to know at sixteen.”
Torin didn’t respond, but his lips were pressed in a tight line. Justen could imagine his fear—that both his wife and daughter would die young, leaving him alone in Scintillans. If the Wild Poppy got Tomorrow back, Justen would make sure that never happened.
“She has too much life right now to dampen it with diagnoses,” Heloise went on. “Look at her, young and beautiful and in love!”
Justen looked away. She wasn’t in love. She was playing a game. A silly, stupid game to keep the peace on her island. She deserved more than that.
Torin took his wife’s hand. “I am glad that she found you right now, Justen. You’ve been such a blessing to our family. Such a help to Heloise and, well, I think you’re good for Persis, too. Before you came along, I was so worried for her. She’s too smart for most of the boys in Albion, you know. They won’t ever love a wife as clever as she, even if they’ll take her for the estate. They won’t love her, and she won’t love them, either. She can’t, with a mind like hers. She needs someone who will understand how brilliant she is, and love her for it.”
Justen bit back his bark of laughter. Brilliant? Persis was occasionally witty with a bit of poetry, but—
“It got to the point that I worried this new phase of hers—the parties and the gossip and the dresses—was her way of trying to prove that she wasn’t the smartest woman of her generation. Like she could be the perfect Albian socialite if she tried hard enough. And, God help me, I indulged her in it. I even let her drop out of school, since at least it meant she’d spend more time home with us. I didn’t want the last—” Here Torin broke down.
Heloise drew his hand to her chest. “It’s all right, my love.”
“Persis is very sweet,” Justen said automatically. But “sweet” seemed somehow insufficient to describe her. She was beautiful and fun loving. She was kind and fiery. She’d been there to help him and to comfort him.
She’d even been the one to give him words to use against Vania.
He found he could not agree with Torin. Many men would fall for a woman like Persis. He might, if he didn’t value more seriousness in his partners. Actually, it was quite touching to see a set of parents so smitten with their child that they’d excuse her faults and mistake her for brilliant. He wondered if his own parents would have seen him that way, had they survived. If they would have told him he was forgiven for his mistakes and that he could make restitution for the things he’d done.
“I don’t think sweet’s the word for it.” Heloise sighed, then laughed, as if remembering. “Oh, the arguments I’ve had with that girl. Inappropriate clothing, daredevil stunts on the pali, political debates . . .” She turned to her husband, eyes as lit up as her daughter’s. “Oh, Torin, do you remember that campaign she started in the village when she was seven to change the Blake family flower from frangipani?”
“Yes!” Torin replied, chuckling. “What was it she wanted to change to again?”
Heloise shook her head, trying to recall. “I think . . . it was those poppies. The pua kala? Because they grow wild on the wall by the star cove . . .”
“Right.” Torin nodded, grinning. “Something about how the pua kala was a far more interesting flower—”
“Stronger and more resilient,” his wife said through giggles.
“With a more important history with the ancients as medicine.” Torin threw back his head, laughing. “You ought to appreciate that one, Justen.”
“She’s right,” Justen said slowly. “Pua kala was valued by the ancients for more than its beauty. It was a highly revered plant.” Medicinal and spiny and wild. Useful and dangerous and tough.
Torin shrugged good-naturedly. “And since they’re both yellow and white, we wouldn’t even have to do any redecorating.”
Heloise was laughing so hard, tears were streaming down her cheeks. “But if we’d changed it, whatever symbol would the Wild Poppy use now?”
All laughter stopped. All three of them fell silent.
No. It wasn’t possible. Justen looked at the stunned faces of Persis’s parents. Her rich aristo father, her brilliant reg mother. Both thought that Persis was strong willed and brave and the smartest girl in Albion. They’d raised her to be patriotic and kind, on an estate the farthest south of any in Albion, and they’d given her a swift yacht and a clever sea mink and an education alongside the princess of the island.
But it simply wasn’t possible. He’d been living beside her for nearly two weeks. He knew her well, and more than well enough to know that Persis was too simple, too shallow, too . . .
No.
Justen had met her in Galatea. In disguise. She’d introduced him to the princess, and sat in her throne room. She’d introduced him to Noemi, and visited the refugees at his side. She’d prevented the Albian courtiers from sending out messages on her boat, and then been handed the visitors like she’d know what to do with them. She’d come to find him when he’d been fluttering with the Poppy, then disappeared the moment he was distracted.
She wasn’t the most foolish person in Albion. He was, because he hadn’t seen it before now.
Persis Blake was the Wild Poppy.
HER HIGHNESS PRINCESS REGENT Isla of Albion stood in the middle of her throne room, her head held high, the white swirls of her outrageous gown floating around her of their own accord, powered by tiny, buzzing nanobots. Her white hair was arrayed in enormous wings that shot out from her head. She looked very intimidating.
Torin Blake, however, was standing before her and he did not seem remotely impressed. All he’d been able to ascertain so far was that Persis, along with Andrine, was long gone from the royal court, and possibly from the island altogether. “You will tell me what you and my daughter have been up to,” he stated firmly, “and you will do so right now.”
“Will I?” Isla replied haughtily, looking from Torin to Justen to Heloise. “I think you will watch your tongue in my palace, sir.”
He shook his head. “Don’t you talk like that to me, young lady. You want to launch military operations against Galatea, I’m all for it. You want to use my daughter and my boats and my tenants to sneak around playing spy games, I’ll have something to say about it.”
“Officially,” offered Tero sheepishly, arriving in the room with Kai and Elliot in tow, “it was Persis who used those things, which she technically has the right to, being a Blake and all.”
“Tero!” Isla cried, exasperated.
The gengineer shrugged his shoulders. “What, you think we’re going to get away with denying it? These are the Blakes, Isla, not the Blockings.” But he flinched as he looked at his lord and lady anyway.