Page 52 of Roma King
I almost slap him. “You bastard! I thought I was going to have to bleach your dead grandmother off my hands!”
The kitchen is flooded from ceiling to floor with a sound I remember well—the sound of Pasha Rivin roaring with laughter. The same sound that echoed in my ears as I fled from the Midnight Fair. “Grave robbery is a real thing, little firefly,” he says. “And Shelta was paranoid, too. She wanted to be able to check on it every once in a while. Thirty years pass, and The Empress remains tucked up, nice and tight, in a safety deposit box. Then, five years ago, Shelta pays a visit to the bank where the card is being held, and…” He trails off.
“It was gone?”
“Gone,” he confirms. “She spent six months trying to find it, and then declared it was all a load of bullshit anyway and everyone was to forget all about it. So that’s what the clan did. And then you come along, and out of nowhere you pull this card from her tarot deck? A card that hasn’t been there in the deck in over three decades, that went missing, just like my grandmother predicted?” He considers something, gentle lines forming in his brow. “This actually explains a lot.”
“How so?”
“Shelta’s being even crazier than normal. On edge.”
“She’s worried about the destruction of your clan, then. And she thinksI’mgoing to be responsible?”
“Probably. But she’s probably more worried about the second part of my grandmother’s prediction, though.”
“The part about the newly crowned king?”
“Mmm.”
“She must really love your king then? If she’s so worried about him.”
The grin on Pasha’s face turns sour. “Personally, I’m not so sure about that, but my mother at leastsaysshe does. See, the king of the Roma is her flesh and blood. He has the misfortune of being her only living son.”
My heart stops dead in my chest. The puzzle pieces fall into place without me even trying. I know I must look pretty dumb with my mouth hanging open and my eyes the size of saucers, but my surprise is a living, breathing thing, and I can’t get a collar on it to rein it in.
“You?” I whisper.
Pasha looks away, his eyes finding the calendar on the refrigerator; he looks genuinely interested in the fact that I have a dental appointment booked next Thursday.
“You’re—”
“I’d prefer it if you didn’t say it,” he rumbles.
But there’s no stopping the words now. They trip from the end of my tongue, colored with disbelief.
“Youare the Roma King.”
20
PASHA
THE ROMA KING
Ican see the shock on her face. The shock and the utter disbelief. She looks like she doesn’t know what to do with herself.
“You’re aking.”
“Apparently. I don’t have much say in the matter. They’re planning on proxy crowning me.”
“You don’t want it?”
“You wouldn’t either, if you knew all the shit that comes with it.” The conflicts and the superstition. The constant responsibilities. The incessant buzzing in your ear, from hundreds upon thousands of people. “The perks just aren’t worth it. I’ve been lucky so far. I haven’t had to deal with most of it.”
“Why? How?”
God, she looks so fucking innocent, with her nose wrinkled and her head tilted to one side like that. My cock throbs, just once. A pointed reminder that it likes the girl sitting across the table and would very much like to find itself buried in that pretty little mouth of hers. I force myself to ignore it. “I was banished. For the last three years.”
“Banished forthreeyears. From your own people?”
