" KEEP MY HEART WITH MY DOGS, KEEP MY CAR IN THE YARD "
O knows restless.
She is restless. Has been since the day she was born—the moment, even, when she stretched her legs out to the ground for the first time and felt every atom in the earth shift underneath her weight. There has been no stopping. No loitering; no rest. Houses are not made for girls like her, or engagement rings, or grave plots. (The only thing that comes close to holding her down is Andi.) O is not even sure she’s caught her breath since the day, so many years ago, that finding Tuchulcha on the Oasis shore knocked the wind out of her and forced her to a standstill.
O knows restless, and she sees it in Hagar Ieshan’s topaz-yellow eyes.
She stiffens at the word—princess—and O grins, wolfishly. There is nothing dampening her self-satisfaction; she doesn’t even care to suppress the wild gleam in her eyes. (It is the bright, terrible glance of a girl who knows she has hit her mark, found the chink in the armor, pressed the buttons just right. Somewhere between calculation and death-or-glory.) Instead her ash-dark mouth curves into a sly smile, and when Hagar turns toward her, O’s gaze does not move, but remains warm and dark against the princesses’ copper skin.
And there is a moment that O feels almost like she’s traveled back in time. (This has always been a weakness. On the beach in winter, Andi could have killed her; should have, maybe. But it did not seem to matter when their eyes met, when the girl spoke, and O's cynicism is nothing next to her overgrown desire.) The world, though sunlit, seems to darken; her pulse is beginning to pick up speed; her eyes flicker all over Hagar’s face, and for a heartbeat she feels dazed, intimidated—drawn back to the days not so long ago when a chance encounter on the street was enough to knock her off-kilter.
It’s almost enough to embarrass her. But when her focus sharpens, she sees that Hagar is doing just the same thing—staring with a vacant look and a cat’s smile, her eyes a weight on O’s slender shoulders—and that, at least, soothes her sudden self-consciousness.
O smiles again. She tosses a buckeye-brown curl away from her shoulder, just-controlled enough to leave the third eye uncovered.
“Hmm.” The look of thoughtfulness that crosses her face then is genuine. She glances around the marketplace—packed shoulder to shoulder with vendors and buyers, so many necks glinting with bright gold—and purses her lips for a moment. Her eyes travel from Hagar to the markets and back coolly; it is a gaze heavy with daring and intent.
“Well,” O says finally, slyly, “You do look quite good in purple. Perhaps something to match.”
