Chapter 171: It’s a Trout, We’re Not Related

Blair walked the length of the table.

Past the first card. The second. Jasper watched her go and didn’t say a word. Caleb watched her come the whole way.

She stopped at the place beside his, at the far end, as far from Jasper as the table allowed. The card sat on the plate. Blair.

She turned it face down and sat.

Behind her, the glass breathed cold against her bare shoulders. She had put her back to the water. She didn’t turn around.

Jasper laughed. He stood, picked up his wineglass and his covered plate, and came down the table after her. He took the chair directly across from her, flicked its card onto the floor without reading it, and sat.

"Much better," he said. "I hate shouting at dinner."

From there he faced the water. And her.

Under the table, something cool touched her ankle. His bare foot. It slid an inch up the inside of her calf, and stopped there.

Blair tucked her feet under her chair. Across the table, Jasper only smiled into his wine.

"Hi," Caleb said again, quieter. "Sorry. I already said hi. It’s just been a while since I talked to anyone who isn’t him." He glanced down the table. "No offense."

"None taken."

Under the table, Caleb’s knee wouldn’t stop bouncing. The chain ticked against the chair leg with it. ℯℯ𝑙.

"He’s a really good cook," Caleb told her, in the urgent voice of someone pointing out a fire exit. "Like, really good. I’ve gained weight. There’s a bathroom. The chain reaches. I measured."

"Caleb."

"Sorry."

Jasper lifted the lid off the dish between them. A whole fish lay on a bed of lemon and herbs, its silver skin crisped gold.

Caleb looked at the fish. Then at Jasper.

"Isn’t that... I mean. For you. Isn’t that kind of—"

"It’s a trout," Jasper said. "We’re not related."

He served Caleb first, then Blair, lifting the flesh off the bone in one clean piece. He didn’t serve himself. His own plate kept its silver cover, and he didn’t lift it.

Caleb ate like a man who had decided tomorrow was a rumor.

Blair folded her hands in her lap.

Jasper watched her not eat. He propped his chin on his hand.

"Somebody told you not to eat my food."

She didn’t answer.

"Not the puppy. The puppy would have told you not to come." He tilted his head, and the pearls in his hair slid. Then his smile went slow and pleased. "Oh. The prince."

Blair kept her face still. It didn’t seem to matter.

"He warned you about me. That’s sweet." He picked up his wine. "Tell him I don’t poison things. Poison ruins the taste."

Caleb stopped chewing.

"Not yours," Jasper told him kindly. "Eat."

Caleb swallowed with visible effort.

"What do you want?" Blair said.

"You asked me that already."

"You didn’t answer."

"No, I didn’t." He set the glass down, and for the first time all night he looked at her without smiling. "Fine. A trade. A secret for a secret, true ones only. For every true thing you tell me tonight, Caleb keeps a toe."

"I have ten," Caleb said faintly. "For the record." He had pulled both feet in under his chair.

"I’ll go first," Jasper said, "since you look like you’re about to run for an elevator that doesn’t work."

"Can I go to the bathroom for this part?"

"No."

"He was a woman when we met," Caleb told Blair. "Just so you know."

"I was gorgeous," Jasper said.

"You were gorgeous," Caleb agreed miserably.

Jasper leaned back in his chair. "You remember the woods."

The cat beastman in the dirt. The blood up to his wrists. The skull she’d tripped over.

"You kicked me," he said.

"You were eating someone."

"I was hungry." Caleb made a small noise. Jasper ignored it.

Blair said nothing.

"You eat meat, don’t you?" Jasper questioned. "How do you know it was never one of us?" He tipped his glass toward her plate. "To me, he was no different from a fat cow."

Caleb set his fork down. His hand was shaking.

"You knew what I was. Ghoul Fish. Beautiful monsters, hunted until there weren’t any left. That’s what the books say, isn’t it?"

"Yes."

"The books are polite." He turned his glass by the stem. "Nobody hunted us. The Crown signed an order. The rivers were drained, and anything with the wrong teeth went into a pit. The eggs too."

The room was very quiet. Even the light in the water seemed to hold still.

"The Crown," Blair said.

"The old queen. She still signs things, you know. Behind her son." He smiled at her again, and it didn’t reach anything. "Your prince’s grandmother."

"Does he know?"

"He knows his grandmother. He doesn’t know me." Jasper shrugged one shoulder, and the silk slid. "The Silvers lived because we’re pretty. Pretty things go in tanks. In ballrooms. In somebody’s lobby. The entire academy thinks I’m a betta fish." He sounded fond. "We’ve been decorations ever since."

His eyes went past her shoulder, to the water at her back. Then back to her.

What he looks at.

Blair didn’t turn around.

"Why tell me?"

"Because now you could kill me." He said it like the weather. "One word in the right ear and they’d come back to finish the job. On me, and on whatever’s left." He leaned across the table. "Doesn’t that feel nice? Now we’re even."

"Oh no," Caleb whispered. "I know that now. I didn’t want to know that."

Jasper reached across and took her hand. He turned her palm up and laid it flat against the side of his throat.

Under her fingers, his skin changed.

Scales rose along his neck, small and cool and smooth as the inside of a shell. They caught the water light and threw it back. Blue, then silver, then a flush of pink. Almost the color of the dress.

Blair didn’t move her hand.

"Last of our kind," Jasper said softly. His pulse beat under her fingertips, slow and unhurried. Hers wasn’t. "Mostly."

He held her hand there a moment longer than he needed to. Then he let go, and the scales sank back into skin as if they’d never been there.

"Your turn, sweetheart."

Blair pulled her hand into her lap. Her fingers were cold.

She waited for What are you?

"In the lobby, after I pushed you to those beastmen," Jasper said, "what happened?"

She opened her mouth and closed it again.

The beastmen. The hands. The noise. Then nothing, and then Daemus.

"I don’t remember," she said.

It was true. She watched him decide that it was.

Something changed in his face.

"You really don’t," he said.

Behind her, very softly, something touched the glass.