For the second time that day, my clothes were taken. This shedding of the House Edris blue was an easier, welcomed loss. I was ushered, along with another human who’d been bid on and bought, to a cavernous bathing room. The air was thick with steam and the clean, sharp scent of cedar. I sponged my body with cold, soapy water, fragranced with rosemary and lavender—scents meant to hide the harsh lye base.
The other young woman in the room trembled visibly, pausing with vacant dread, her fingers brushing through her light brown hair. She was pretty: full, pink lips, soft features, and her sun-kissed skin spoke of precious time spent in the freedom of an open sky rather than the manor’s suffocating walls. She had been one of the favored, perfectly skilled in the art of only approaching when wanted. She had to know that being traded to another house was always a possibility; perhaps she hadn’t let herself think that far. Her fear, palpable and sharp, was a tension I chose not to share.
The traveling clothes we were provided were finer than the House Edris servant clothes: the fabric was woven linen, dense and smooth, offering warmth without the scratch of cheap wool. It was a pale grey dress with simple hem embroidery, worn beneath a heavy, dark slate cloak. It felt like a subtle display of respect to the fae prince who’d claimed me. Or maybe my perception had simply been permanently altered by the hyper-saturated colors and blinding gold of the Feast of Crossing attendees.
The Feast lasted deep into the night, its distant roar and music an irritating pulse beyond the servant quarters. At least it offered me a chance to salvage a few hours of sleep. The temporary magic of the perk-up-powder had fully disappeared the moment I’d washed my face clean, leaving behind a jittery weariness that made my muscles twitch.
A few of us were kept in a locked waiting room—dim with only two candles encased by lamps whose brass surfaces smelled of tarnished metal. We were guarded, just in case someone thought running off was worth the risk, but the lethargic fae guard had none of Dermot’s cold fierceness. It started with two—me and the girl with the sun-kissed skin—and gradually our number grew to eleven. The air grew thick with a collective, silent anxiety, salty with tears.
I recognized a few more of the favorites, but mostly the chosen hadn’t come from the servant quarters. The majority of those traded were humans who had never touched fireplace ashes or scrubbed floors—they’d only lived through the grueling training of lessons. I recognized small, smooth callouses formed by years of plucking harp strings and hours holding quills. The skill and refinement of these humans made them coveted prizes.
The youngest of them was perhaps fourteen; she looked like a doll, her big, alert eyes set into a plump, pretty face framed by hair like raw oats. If she was scared, she didn’t show it; her brown eyes avoided every other human in the room, treating their plainness and desperation like an infectious disease.
A hushed, ragged whisper drifted from the corner near the empty, dust-coated fireplace: “They say Lady Nysa paid with seven hundred pounds of high-grade steel.”
“House Jasper got in a bidding war, I was there,” another human whispered back, his voice tight with a desperate, envious awe. “I heard them offering buckets full of 4-carat tourmaline—enough to bankrupt a lesser house.”
“Lord Decimus traded some secret—I think it has to do with Lord Edris’ third-born.” The sharing of prices was a macabre game, a painful way to measure their terrifying worth.
The numbers shared in whispers were staggering, horrific measurements of a human’s value in the cold currency of the fae realm. My stomach clenched with a frightening numbness as I wondered what price Fionn had been willing to pay to claim me.
Then, another whisper, heavier than the rest: “I heard Prince Fionn bought the harper.”
The doll-like girl with the hair like raw oats moved then. She didn’t look at the speaker, but her head tilted, and her wide eyes swept a brief look over the room that might’ve been curiosity or annoyance at the mention of her price.
I closed my eyes and swallowed a nauseating lump. So she had been that ‘other interest.’ He’d come to the Feast of Crossing to pick up a pretty, entertaining thing, just like the rest of them. The realization was a sharp, final confirmation of my deepest fear: Fionn was a prince first, fae second, and the boy I knew was buried beneath those titles and expectations.
I retreated into the deepest corner, the cold wall pressing against my back, using my heavy travel cloak as a pillow. The rhythmic shuffle of the guard’s pacing footsteps began to lull me toward an uneasy sleep, occasionally stirring when the heavy door groaned open to let another claimed human inside. Others leaned deep into creaking wooden chairs with eyes closed, desperately pretending sleep was an option.
The floor was hard stone, and I allowed the rough surface to add fresh, dirty smudges to my clean clothes. Let me see how Prince Fionn reacts to the disheveled servant he bought—a petty, necessary act of resistance.
The Líadan mask settled over my soul like the slate cloak over my shoulders: heavy, neutral, and cold. I forced the sudden, terrifying hope of Fionn’s intervention into a tight, sealed box. He was a prince. He was fae. The boy who remembered me was history. I had changed, so maybe he had too. Letting myself nurture the hope that he was different was reckless. What if he saw me as nothing more than a poor thing to pity? Worse, if the impression he held in my memory was a lie—a trick or exaggeration designed by a child’s naive mind—the devastation might crush the last remaining bit of me that was Wren.
So I would hold tight to Líadan until there was definitive, undeniable proof to back up my hope. I’d let the numb acceptance of my new ownership keep me safe from the fatal lure of trusting a fae prince.
*
The locked room had no windows, no way to predict when dawn was breaking. The shift in time was brutally imposed upon us by lazy shouts echoing down the stone corridor, urging us to get up, get moving. Fae guards appeared, a squad of cold steel and sweat, to escort us.
Dermot was there. Again, he didn’t notice me. It set my teeth on edge. He’d ripped my soul in half, yet retrieving was just another chore to him. He’d killed Fia to take me back, and here he was letting me go so easily. I mattered so little to House Edris that I’d returned for a single day, the price of Fia’s death. The value of my sister’s life was one day.
I wanted him to look at me, to acknowledge the wreckage he’d left behind. A child’s voice inside me begged me not to; prudent Líadan reminded me what happened when Dermot noticed. But I had something I desperately needed to test: what was my value now, as a human claimed by a fae prince?
As the guards escorted the chosen humans down the final hall, I strategically moved closer to Dermot. My heart pounded. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to happen. I definitely wanted him to see me. But I didn’t have a plan to provoke that acknowledgment.
When we made it out to the courtyard, the large space cluttered with waiting carriages and marked with crests of different fae houses, I knew my time was running out. The morning air was cold, tasting faintly of spring frost and wood-smoke. Dermot was a rigid sentry beside a house crest I recognized—House Jasper. The doll-like girl with oat blonde hair was pointed to an unmarked black carriage, the opposite way of House Jasper’s. A guard spotted me and was about to point me where I needed to go, but I walked by, avoiding him before I could receive the official order—I wasn’t disobeying if I was never told.
I marched toward Dermot, determined that he would look. In spite of my reckless choice, he. did. not. look. He treated me like a moving piece of the background. Dirt crunched as my feet planted hard directly in front of him. Nothing. He was deliberately ignoring the human who’d knelt at his feet only yesterday. Maybe that was the protection being claimed afforded: the right to be beneath his notice.
It hurt too much—the devastation of his complete indifference—to let it go.
“I’m going to destroy you,” I said, my voice low, the threat weakened by a tremor.
The corner of his lip curled, a subtle twist of contempt. His eyes remained fixed over my head, on some distant, empty point. “Your new master is waiting for you, Líadan,” he said, addressing the air.
I reached for him, but he blocked me, the impossibly fast reflexes that had slashed Fia’s torso before I could blink. He moved with a blur of speed that spoke of centuries of lethal training. I twisted in his grip, accepting the jarring pain in my ribs as payment for the move. A flash of panic—he couldn’t damage the prince’s claimed human after all—gave me the chance to slip my finger under his sleeve, now skin-to-skin.
“What does a monster like you love?” I asked, the question a trigger to help guide his mind to the targeted thought quicker. My mind pushed into his, searching for that thing, whatever sick thing a murderer could possibly cherish. Dermot’s mind had walls—not as formidable as Fionn’s, but they were thick—like slabs of iron, making his thoughts indecipherable, blurred, and brief.
But I did find it. That wretched, mountain-and-merlin crest of House Edris. The thing most precious to Dermot was his position as a knight of House Edris, his unshakable loyalty, the only identity he truly possessed.
Dermot jerked his wrist away, the contact broken. A dimple of annoyance beside his brow was the only outward sign of disturbance.
“Your days are numbered as a knight of House Edris,” I vowed, the phrase ringing with the solemnity of a curse.
The focused, precise nature of the threat surprised him. His azure eyes finally locked on me, searching me with genuine, icy alarm—acknowledging me not as an object, but as a threat. I smiled with bitter satisfaction. Somehow, I’d make it so.
Another guard approached us—the one who’d tried to direct me before. “Follow me to Prince Fionn’s carriage,” he demanded. He released a weak compulsion, a pointed jab of will that I could easily resist if I’d wanted. But I’d gotten what I’d needed from Dermot. Willingly, I followed the guard away, feeling Dermot’s suddenly intense, calculating gaze burning into my back the whole way.
The guard led me toward the edges of the courtyard, away from the elaborately crafted, crested carriages—the ones shaped like giant-sized root vegetables or riotous floral designs—stopping instead before a conveyance that was both simple and unforgettable.
The carriage was unembellished, a polished ebony box made with only the functional elements of design. It was hitched to a massive black horse, its muscles stretched taut under an inky sheen. The only hint of its owner’s ethereal quality was the lack of any visible dirt or dust on its mirror-like surface.
The guard held the door open, its latch clicking, punctuating the forced invitation. I stepped up and through the narrow door.
The interior was luxuriously appointed with dark leather that absorbed the meager morning light. The air smelled distinctly of someone’s lavender perfume blended with roasted vanilla and pine. Who knew a prince that looked like the moon given breath would favor the absolute darkness of a black carriage?
The doll-like girl with hair as blonde as oats, the harper, was already seated, her small, stiff body pressed against the far seat. For the first time, her face wasn’t perfectly blank. She wore an expression of clear, biting surprise. Her brown eyes looked me up and down, a rapid, dismissive assessment. Her impression must have disappointed, because a slight downturn of her full lips suggested condescension. She had assumed she was the only newly claimed occupant, the only one special enough to warrant Prince Fionn’s interest.
But she wasn’t the only one in the carriage.
My gaze traveled past her, and my chest seized with surprise.
Seated opposite the harper, cramped into the plush corner, was the last person on the face of the earth I expected to see. The healer from the inn.
He looked exactly as I remembered, dressed in the dark, practical clothes he’d worn beneath his cloak, which now sat folded beside him. His dark hair was tied back, revealing the sharp, intelligent angles of his face, the deep lines around his puffy eyes, now shadowed by the low light. The scent of old wool and medicinal herbs clung to him.
The reality hit me like a physical blow, a sudden, brutal combination of betrayal and confusion. The healer had known the House Edris guards were in town. He’d seen Caius. He’d agreed not to say anything, but standing here, finding him here, it felt very possible he hadn’t kept his word.
I reeled, my body instinctively tensing, ready to fight or flee. But the lesson learned during the Feast of Crossing was a binding chain: Control yourself, Wren. Think before you speak. I couldn’t afford another outburst; I’d already used up my luck confronting Dermot. Letting my anger and devastation show here was too great a risk.
My voice emerged flat, low, and strained. “Did you tell them where to find us?”
The healer met my gaze, his dark eyes unreadable, but steady. “No,” he said.
I was still violently rattled. It was my fault we needed a healer. If he’d told Dermot or another guard he’d seen me… that couldn’t be my fault, too. It couldn’t. Knowing that would shatter the last defense I had against the crushing guilt of Fia’s death. Accepting the healer’s answer—for now—was my only choice.
Without another word, I deliberately chose to sit on the healer’s side of the carriage, but pressed myself into the opposite corner, facing the narrow door. The harper watched the movement with uneasy fascination, clearly resentful of the proximity. The harper. Her composure, her practiced quietude, and her specific skill were a mirror of the future Fia had tried to save me from.
“We’re going to be trapped in here for a few hours together,” the healer said gruffly, his shuffling rocking the carriage. The dark velvet and leather upholstery groaned beneath his shifting weight. “And longer once we get where we’re going. We might as well introduce ourselves.”
I didn’t turn my head. In the small square window in the door, I watched his reflection, distorted by the rising sun and slight imperfections in the glass. He scratched his thick, salt-and-pepper beard, the motion brief and almost nervous when he looked at the harper.
“Galen Baylor,” the healer said.
“I am Eira,” the harper returned politely, her tone unfeeling and unnervingly obedient. Her eyes shifted to me, expectant. The healer’s reflection looked at me the same way.
Through the glare of the morning light, the large, dark outline of a House Edris guard passed the window. He thumped the roof of the carriage, a dull, percussive signal that echoed inside the cabin, and the conveyance lurched violently, resisting the initial pull of the massive black horse. The leather reins creaked loudly. Eira looked out the opposite window, her little nose practically pressed to the glass, a wave of loose oat strands slipping over her small shoulder. We both watched as the carriage was dragged away from the manor, the sound of the ebony wheels grinding over the dry cobbles a promise of distance. For the girl, it was likely the only home she’d ever known. For me…it was too many things, but none of them home.
There was a time I thought I could leave my entire past behind in that place. Even when the nightmares followed me, each year away had added distance. Fia had given me the name Wren to cleave my past cleanly, her blessing to restore my life.
The choice was simple then. I would protect that name until I could cross the Veil and live the life Fia had fought for. Now, standing between my vengeful vow and Fia’s wish for my safety, I knew I couldn’t be Wren.
Wren was the girl who loved, who trusted, and who was now too vulnerable to be trusted with my rage.
Instead of a childhood mask, I would now remake Líadan into whatever I needed her to be to survive the fae prince’s service, fulfill my vow to destroy Dermot, and run to a place the fae would never, ever find me again.
“They called me Líadan,” I said, the name feeling appropriately hard on my tongue.
Eira accepted the name with the same emotionless detachment she’d accepted the healer’s name with. But Galen Baylor was smarter than the broad boor he appeared to be. Fia might’ve mentioned my name when she’d asked for his help. Or maybe he recognized something in me, some flicker of desperation. Another victim of their games—the first thought I’d read when he’d touched my cheek. Wren was a victim. But Líadan was a survivor. And now, an avenger.
“Is that what Prince Fionn calls you?” he asked. The question was a test, a gentle probe.
I watched his blurry reflection, which was now violently jerked by a bump from the carriage wheel. His dark eyes glinted with curiosity, not malice. He was testing my resolve, maybe for my own sake.
“You know His Royal Highness?” Eira asked, her voice flat, the emotionless tone betraying nothing, but I saw the slight curve of her pale brow rise in challenge.
“Don’t most of us who serve the fae know of His Royal Highness?” I returned, unwilling to give my past away for free.
“You didn’t answer,” she accused, her voice tightening with a subtle possessiveness.
“I didn’t,” I agreed.
“Prince Fionn requested me months ago,” Eira said, a hint of pride brightening her eyes, raising her chin. “Many noble houses were moved by my talent.”
I saw myself in her—the raw, desperate need to be chosen for some exceptional quality, the need to win recognition. But she’d made the mistake of desiring that recognition through the envy of other changelings. I’d never fallen for that lie. No one stayed at the top for long. Survivors aimed for third-best—never the target, never the threat.
My elbow pressed into the plush cushioning fitted to the side of the cabin, my palm supporting my aching head, my eyes slowly closing. The low, constant hum of the wheels on the dirt road was comfortingly monotonous.
“Noble fae have been bidding to claim me for a decade,” she continued, a subtle tremor of desperation coloring her voice, the need to be acknowledged now outweighing all caution.
“I’m going to sleep now,” I said, cutting her off, forcing the conversation to end.
“Good idea,” Galen Baylor said, his voice deep and rough. The leather groaned, and he readjusted to find his own sleeping position, each of us leaning outward, curled into the sides to maximize the limited space.
“You’re both going to sleep?” Eira asked, her voice quieter, the sudden silence seeming to frighten her.
We didn’t answer. I was already finding her self-importance grating. I couldn’t imagine what Galen, a man twice my age, thought of her. Maybe he pitied her, too. Another victim.
The carriage was a poor place to sleep, the constant rattling and swaying making true rest challenging. Beady would never be so rough. But it was more restful than the cold floor at House Edris. I woke up on my side once, a thick, scratchy wool coat—Galen’s—under my head. My eyes still shut, I considered being spiteful, returning it, but it was warmer and more comfortable than the stabbing neck-ache my side-lean had caused. So, I fell back asleep, accepting his kindness, pity, or whatever his intentions were. I’d worry about whether he was friend or foe, liar or ally, another day.
*
A sharp, rhythmic rapping on the carriage door dragged me from the depths of a dreamless, heavy sleep.
Waking felt less like rising and more like being dredged through gravel. My body was a map of aches; the stiffness from the cramped carriage had settled into my joints, and the side where Mael had kicked me throbbed with a hot, bruised pulse that stole my breath when I tried to sit up.
The door swung open, admitting a flood of bright, unfiltered midday light. A knight stood there—not one of the blue-clad tormentors of House Edris, but a figure in simple, practical clothes beneath a heavy black cloak.
“Refreshments,” he said, his voice flat but lacking the sneer I had braced myself for. He gestured vaguely to the grassy verge beyond the road. “Time to stretch your legs.”
I blinked, surprised. The fae guards I had known, specifically Dermot, treated human needs as an inconvenient failure of design. This knight’s indifference wasn’t tinged with the cold malice that usually accompanied a command. He simply didn’t care enough to be cruel.
Galen Baylor groaned low in his throat as he shifted, his knees popping audibly. He exited the carriage with a rolling, easy gait, stretching his arms over his head and taking a deep breath of the pine-scented air. He looked relaxed, unbothered, as if he’d made this same journey a hundred times.
Eira followed, her movements fluid and practiced. As soon as her feet touched the grass, her spine straightened, her chin lifted, and her hands clasped demurely in front of her pale grey dress. She looked ready to be summoned, to perform, to be useful.
I climbed out last, grit and exhaustion coating my skin. I tried to mirror Eira’s posture, the instinctive training of my childhood kicking in—stand straight, look pleasant, wait for the order—but my injured side seized, forcing me into a slight, protective hunch. We stood there, Eira and I, two awkward statues, waiting for a command to entertain or serve.
None came.
Instead, a short distance away in a sun-dappled clearing, a picnic was laid out. Two other knights stood near the tree line, their massive black horses grazing on the long grass, their vigilance relaxed but present.
Seated on a thick, woven blanket were Prince Fionn and the woman from the feast—his twin sister. They sat quietly, plates balanced on their knees, picking at a spread that made my stomach roar with treacherous hunger.
It was a modest meal by royal standards—loaves of crusty bread, wedges of hard yellow cheese, cold roast fowl, and bowls of dark berries—but to me, it looked like a banquet. The easy smiles they shared with each other struck me with a stinging pang of memory. I compared the layout to the times Fia and I had eaten on the road: gnawing on stale hardtack, pickled plums, and dried strips of salted meat, counting our copper coins to see if we could afford an apple. I didn’t think I’d miss the meagerness of it, the dust and the hunger, but looking at this casual display of wealth, I felt a bitter resentment. I was reluctantly impressed, and hateful of the fact that royalty managed to travel with a mobile feast while we had starved for our freedom.
Fionn looked up. His violet eyes, framed by those silver lashes, landed on me.
The connection hummed, a low vibration in my skull, but his face was a fortress. His expression was guarded, carefully neutral, giving away nothing of the boy who had once smiled at me, nor the prince who had claimed me to save my life.
“Sit,” he said, gesturing to the empty corners of the blanket. It wasn’t a request, but it lacked the bite of an order.
Eira moved instantly, sinking gracefully to the ground. Galen followed, grabbing a piece of cheese with a grunt of thanks. I lowered myself slowly, biting the inside of my cheek to keep a hiss of pain from escaping as my ribs protested the movement.
Fionn didn’t look at me, but his hand paused over a cluster of grapes. “Heal her, Galen.”
The healer stopped chewing. He wiped his hands on his trousers and looked at me, his dark eyes assessing the way I held my arm tight against my torso.
“I wasn’t sure she’d let me,” Galen admitted, his voice gruff.
Internally, I bristled. I wouldn’t. My pride wanted to snap that I didn’t need their magic, that I could endure Mael’s parting gift on my own. But another sharp intake of breath as I shifted my weight reminded me that pride was a luxury for the uninjured. I needed to be mobile to survive. I needed to be strong to kill Dermot.
I said nothing, merely lifting my arm slightly to expose the bruised ribcage beneath the linen.
Galen moved closer, straightening the small wooden box he’d fixed to a leather strap over his shoulder. He fiddled with his glass phials, mixing another strange mixture. As he began to work, grinding and pouring, I glanced at Fionn.
The prince had turned his attention entirely to his twin, murmuring something low about the road ahead. He was pretending not to watch, feigning total indifference to the servant he had purchased. But the fae seed in my blood buzzed; I could feel the edges of his attention, sharp and heavy, fixed solely on the healing of my side.
“Drink this,” Galen said, thrusting a phial of grayish, viscous liquid toward me. It smelled of horse urine and rotting lemons. “It’ll make sure you’re not bleeding to death internally.”
The nauseating smell suddenly became irrelevant. Fia had spent more time studying with healers than I had, but I knew enough to understand that internal bleeding was often a quiet death sentence for humans. Mortal healers didn’t have the advanced, knitting magic the fae possessed. I hadn’t looked at my side for hours—just a few grimacing glimpses as I sponged myself in the shadowy bathing room—but if a professional healer suspected damage that deep, no horrible smell or stupid pride would stop me.
I took the phial and drank.
It tasted infinitely worse than it smelled. Bitter, metallic, and cloyingly sweet notes were overwhelmed by a biting, pungent foulness that felt like swallowing sludge. It coated the back of my throat, clinging like oil. It took immense will to keep the liquid heading down instead of an upward, violent rejection. My nails dug into my legs through the linen of my skirt, anchoring me against the nausea. I felt instantly feverish, my skin clammy and cold.
“I’ll need to take a proper look once we get to the manor,” Galen said, taking back the empty phial with a satisfied nod.
I shuddered, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. I’d swallowed the disgusting potion; I could manage an examination.
Eira watched the exchange, her eyes wide, clearly wondering what my story was—why a servant was receiving such potent medicine. But she’d been taught well; she curbed her curiosity, offering only a polite, blank stare in front of the royals.
“Will she live, Galen?” the princess asked, a teasing lilt in her soft smile.
The princess’s moonlit beauty looked starkly different in the daylight. Her lips were paler today, stripped of the dramatic crimson paint of the previous night. She wasn’t wearing an elaborate, restrictive gown like the one at the Feast, but rather a practical ensemble designed for the road. She wore fitted trousers of heavy, midnight-black velvet and a coordinating tunic of the same dark material, lavishly embroidered across the cuffs and collar with intricate, swirling patterns of pure silver thread. The look was both opulent and entirely maneuverable, an ensemble that directly echoed her brother’s similarly styled, dark traveling clothes. Her silver-white hair was bound in a single, thick braid woven with glistening silver thread and tiny seed pearls, catching the light like frozen dew.
“Rhos,” Fionn said, saying her name as a low warning, though it was tempered with an undeniable tenderness.
“Don’t fuss so much, Fionn,” the princess said, gently shoving her brother’s chest with a familiarity that spoke of a lifetime of shared secrets. “She’s not that delicate.” Her violet eyes—so much like his, yet sharper, less guarded—locked on me. The assessment was surgical. She wasn’t just checking for injury; she was weighing my threat level to her twin. “Are you?”
“No, Your Royal Highness,” I answered, my voice steady despite the lingering taste of the medicine. “I am not delicate.”
Rhos laughed, the performed sweetness of her court voice lost in a deep, genuine chuckle that tilted her head back toward the sun. She looked at Fionn with a mixture of amusement and fierce, protective pity. “Good luck with that,” she whispered to him, her voice barely audible. She gracefully pressed a blackberry between her teeth.
Fionn didn’t respond to her, but his eyes lingered on me. It was a heavy, physical weight, a touch without contact. I felt the heat of it on my skin, unsettling and intense. I had to drop my gaze first, feigning interest in the grass.
Galen urged me to eat—healing was slower on an empty stomach, or so he insisted. It wasn’t that I was opposed to devouring the delicious food; the smell of freshly baked bread and sharp cheddar was mouthwatering. It was the act of eating while being watched by a predator.
Each bite I took was measured. Don’t look gluttonous, Líadan. The lessons in dining etiquette I once practiced every day were a hollow echo next to the ringing memory of Fia encouraging me to be greedy, to always take more than my share because tomorrow wasn’t promised. It had taken years before I stopped feeling guilty for enjoying the taste of food, for reaching for seconds. Now, swallowing the bread just reminded me that she wasn’t here to share it with.
I still felt Fionn’s eyes turn to observe me every so often. The fae seed in my blood hummed, alerting me to his attention before I even saw it. It made it very difficult not to do the same. I caught myself drawn to watching him—the way his long, pale fingers tore the bread, the silver sweep of his lashes—and was forced to look away whenever he caught me.
He didn’t have the same embarrassment when I caught him. He simply stared, his violet gaze dark and unreadable. I was always the one to look away first, my heart hammering a traitorous rhythm.
A few times, I noticed his twin studying me too, but her gaze was calculating, dissecting the tension between her brother and his new purchase.
Eira might have turned green with envy if she’d had the mind to notice the silent current running between us. She was too preoccupied trying to earn their attention. She wasn’t pushy, but she had offered to recite a poem that captured the clearing’s ambiance, asked if there were any songs Prince Fionn preferred, and implied with a flutter of her lashes that the harp wasn’t her only defining talent.
Mercifully, neither Fionn nor Rhos accepted Eira’s offers to please them. Fionn offered only a polite, dismissive nod, and Rhoswen ignored her entirely. We were able to enjoy an hour of lazy, strange peace.
It made me want to cry.
It was my first moment in days when I wasn’t terrified, exhausted, or frantically plotting my survival. My mind emptied, leaving space for the grief to rush in. I wanted to weep for Fia, for Beady, for our patched wagon. But I couldn’t cry here. I couldn’t let myself break with fae eyes watching. My chest burned with the physical effort of holding the sob in my throat.
Suddenly, the sweet, sharp notes of a silver flute sang out, lilting and lulling a familiar, aching melody.
I looked up. Fionn was playing, his eyes closed, the instrument gleaming against his pale lips.
I was wrong that Caius’s spell with the fiddle was the same. Fionn’s song was nothing like that forced repose; it was liquid moonlight, a sound that bypassed the ears and flowed inside my blood. The tightness in my chest eased, the burning fire of grief cooling into something bearable. My brimming eyelids became heavy, wetting my lashes but not spilling over.
It was like being taken back to that place in an instant. Whether it was the perfection of his soothing tune or some subtle fae charm woven into the notes, a vision of that time took me.
I was back in the abandoned, sunken observatory. The air was frigid, smelling of cold stone, dust, and dried, forgotten herbs. Our small hands pressed over the same sheet music, his patient instruction guiding my clumsy fingers on my stolen flute. Above us, the huge, cracked glass dome was overgrown with climbing moss, allowing the faint, ethereal light of the moon to spill in through green-stained fissures.
I could smell the metallic tang of old glass and the faint, cool scent of sandalwood that always clung to him. When his sleeve had slipped, and I’d seen the ugly, purple bruise on his forearm—evidence of a ‘lesson’ from his cruel brother. He had been so ashamed, trying to hide his weakness. So I had rolled up my sleeve and shown him mine—a matching mark from a cane. I was careful not to remind him that he would be recovered in an hour, his fae blood knitting the skin, while mine would take days to fade to yellow.
He had brought heavy tomes detailing ancient histories of old gods, humans, and fae alike, stories of rebellion and magic that felt more thrilling than any of my minder’s lessons. He read to me in a whisper, his violet eyes shining with a secret rebellion of his own against the cold, beautiful shell of his home.
It was only when I woke up in the jostling carriage, my cheek pressed against the cool glass, that I realized he’d spelled me to sleep.
It should’ve felt violating, to be forced into slumber the way Caius had forced the people at The Holly & Hound. But as the carriage rocked me gently, I felt a profound sense of rest. I was grateful. Foolishly, naively, blissfully grateful for the quiet he had gifted me.