“I don’t think I will.”No, my life was destined to be lived alone. But if I played my cards right, I could be living alone far from this castle.
With all the unrest in the south, my father planned to send an emissary to the continent to try and smooth things over with King Tarren. A position I was more than qualified—and more than happy—to fill.
If I could only get up the nerve to ask.
Something crashed beside me. My father’s goblet fell onto the small table, spilling greenish-yellow liquid all over the marble surface. The king’s hand flew to his chest, clutching at the gold chain holding his mantle in place.
“Father?” I shot to my feet, watching in horror as he gasped for breath. “Father!” I caught him when he slumped forward. The guards surrounding the dais sprang into action, closing us off from view. The music came to a screeching halt, replaced by harsh whispers and feminine wails.
What could be wrong? The goblet. Had someone poisoned him?
Alrec’s cursing explodedthrough the pounding in my ears. He knocked the guards aside and dropped to his knees, reaching for our father’s limp hand. “What is it? What’s happened?”
I clutched our father closer, clinging to his heavy doublet as if he could save me from the pain lancing through my chest. “I don’t know. He was fine one moment, then he collapsed.”
Alrec shoved me out of the way, taking our father’s body onto his own lap, removing the clasp on the chain, and letting the thick mantle fall to the dais. “What did you say to him? What did you do? You must’ve done something.”
“I didn’t do a blasted thing!”Tears clouded my vision, and I swore I saw a woman with black hair lying next to me, staring at the muraled ceiling through sightless brown eyes. I scrubbed at my face, helplessness washing over me when my father’s prone form came back into focus.
Roisin stood beside Lady Lowri at the foot of the dais, a trembling hand pressed against her lips.
This wasn’t like the last time.
Last time, help had arrived too late.
“Get your mother,” I shouted to Roisin. “Now!”
She turned and ran through the crowd. I had known this day would come but had hoped it would be decades down the line.
It wouldn’t be long before my brother became the King of Vellana.
3
ROISIN
The golden clockin the corner beneath the king’s crest ticked away the seconds like a metronome. I flexed my toes inside too-tight slippers, wishing I was barefoot on the plush rug stretching across the floor in the king’s bedchamber.
It felt surreal seeing such a strong, powerful man age decades in a matter of hours. When we’d arrived at the ball, he’d been in high spirits, greeting myself and my mother with an exuberant hug. Now he lay prone in a massive four-poster bed, his face the same pale shade as the sheets beneath him.
Alrec waited at his father’s bedside, his handsome features schooled into a thoughtful mask as he watched the royal physician examine the king. The stooped old man ignored my mother and I while we waited by the window, bringing item after item out of a black leather bag. The most heinous of them was a cylindrical tube with sharp spikes protruding from the bottom. I wasn’t sure what that was for, but I hoped I wouldn’t have to see the man use it.
Eventually he found a wooden horn fluted on both ends. He pressed one end to the King’s chest and the other to his ear. I held my breath, afraid to make a noise. When he told the king to inhale, the king’s ragged gasp left my knees trembling.
I glanced at my mother, checking to see if she appeared well. There were perhaps a few more wrinkles around her eyes—silver like my own. And the smile lines around her mouth had deepened. Other than that, she appeared the same as she always had. What if I was wrong, though? What if she collapsed out of the blue? It was one thing for her to return to Iodale and another thing entirely to imagine going on without her forever.
The physician moved on to another tool from his bag. This one he used to check the king’s tongue and throat. This sort of medicine was foreign to me. Fae rarely got sick unless they encountered some sort of poison. And by the time one noticed the symptoms, it was usually too late. We could be killed by other means, of course, but if the wounds weren’t fatal, our innate magic healed us before any real damage could be done.There were true immortals among us, ones powerful enough to return from death. But they were few and far between.
Caiman sat on a chair in the corner, elbows resting on his knees as he stared toward the dark shadows above the bed.
“I have never—and would never—dream of kissing someone like you.”
Someone like me. A fae.
The snide comment shouldn’t have stung. I’d heard far worse shouted by the crowds in the city. For some reason, the insults always struck deeper coming from him. I didn’t know why. I should’ve been used to it by now.
The first time I’d come to Vellana, my mother and I had met Alrec and his father for a hunting excursion, and we’d spent a week “getting to know one another.” Meaning Alrec would kill some poor animal and boast about it until the following day when he would kill another. Although he’d been handsome, he’d also been arrogant and, if I was being honest, a little irritating. After our visit, my mother and I traveled to the castle to meet the younger prince and the queen.
Considering Alrec’s personality, I’d had very low expectations. My mother had only smiled as she always did, serenely and with a hit of knowing, and told me to give him a chance. Caiman had been so quiet, sitting on the stairs with a book in his hands. A dark-haired teen with strange eyes who ended up surprising me at every turn. If only I’d known then that those black eyes reflected his black heart.