FIVE
J angling and clacking had me turning away from the driver waiting by the open carriage door.
“Are you half asleep?” With a small trunk in her hands, Bernadette hurried to the carriage. “You’ve forgotten almost all of your favorite belongings.”
My heart sank.
She should’ve known—but of course she didn’t. She should’ve known that anything soft would not survive in a castle of blades and thorns.
I’d packed clothing, a small collection of books, and a tiny velvet pouch my father gifted me last night. Taking more than I needed would only give the Ethermore royals more insight into my weaknesses.
It would only give me more to lose should any of them tamper with my belongings.
But I didn’t tell Bernie that. I took the trunk from her and handed it to the drivers, then chewed my lip as they stored it in the carriage. I would need to pay them to return it home. Better that than explain to Bernadette and cause her to worry more than she already was.
“Now…” She clasped my hands. “You will write to me as soon as you get there, and I’ll see you soon for your welcoming ball, then again for the wedding.”
“I’ll start writing before I even arrive.”
Her eyes followed mine to our father’s ivory tower. He’d already said his goodbyes to me. His guilt wouldn’t allow for coddling.
“He worries for you,” Bernie said.
Rather than say I understood, I just nodded. As much as I loved our father, he was sending me into a nest of vipers, and that fact wasn’t newly discovered. He’d always known, and he’d traded me like a smudged jewel regardless.
I was nothing but assurance that the Seelie Fae would not move against my father now that their foes had been detained, and a guarantee that we had their support against any threats for years to come. Diluting the Ethermore line with our own was a transaction of peace via combined power.
Yet this journey had been postponed once already—Garran’s excuse being that his kingdom needed to recuperate and grieve after years of violence.
I hadn’t minded. But as the months had dwindled by, my father certainly had. He’d returned from a meeting just last week, stating the kingdom of Ethermore was now ready to welcome me.
I didn’t believe they would ever be ready to welcome a halfling into their royal home. I believed they would have postponed again and again, if it weren’t for whatever threats my father had dealt.
But I was postponing, too—by declining to be vanished and opting to travel.
I freed my hands from Bernie’s and rubbed her growing stomach. “Remember,” I said sternly, “drink more water than tea.”
“Yes, yes.” Her exasperation left as her mouth wobbled. She pinched her lips between her teeth, then threw her arms around me and whispered, “You remember the plan.”
Her plan wasn’t exactly a plan. But it made her feel better to think it was. To believe that all I had to do was send word, and she’d create a reason to be vanished to Cloud Castle to see me at once.
I returned her hug, tears burning. I refused to let her see them, so I held her tighter until the threat retreated.
“Most of all,” she rasped, “don’t let this make you forget you are loved.”
Shadows crawled across the carriage floor.
I traced each one and watched them rise and meld into the black paint of the ceiling. Sleep came only during the hours spent trundling through the woods, across mountains, and wending along village roads speckled with curious citizens.
I could never sleep when the drivers did.
Instead, I wrote stories in the dirt by the fire as creatures bayed within trees that grew more barren the farther north we traveled. I made plans for scenarios that may never transpire while stroking the tiny scars on my inner ankle, a lifelong gift from a prince and a two-headed serpent.
Continuously, I recalled my father’s farewell the evening before we’d departed.
“My Mildred,” he’d sighed more than said, seated upon the lilac linen of my bed. “Your mother never wanted you to live among the Fae.”
Most would call it a terrible betrayal, his long affair with a faerie tailor, if it weren’t for the ever-spinning wheel of lovers my father entertained himself with.
“Your young life would have been miserable at best and deadly at worst. You know this.”
I had known that. It had taken some years to wholly realize the nature of those we shared this magical continent with, but I’d understood even before meeting my rotten future husband.
“I believe Elorna knew what would befall her, as she made me promise to keep you.” My father’s hand had swallowed mine, large and smooth. He’d never wielded a weapon. Despite the Fae royals’ high regard for combat, he’d always claimed mortal royalty had no need. “Even now that you’re grown, she wouldn’t want this. She wouldn’t want me to give you to him, and it troubles me deeply to think of what she’d say.” He’d squeezed my hand. “But as much as we both wish differently, you cannot spend your long life hiding in this castle.”
At that moment, I’d recalled every one of Agatha’s spiteful comments about our people never accepting a faerie, even a half faerie, as their princess, let alone their ruler. It might have been said to wound me, but she’d still spoken true.
Though knowing my father hadn’t wanted me to leave, seeing the remorse ashine in his cloudy eyes… It would have been the perfect time to beg him to stop this. To give me more time.
To keep me safe.
But it would’ve been futile. The deal had been made a decade ago, the contract already withering with age.
Instead, I’d said, “It cannot be changed. Only survived.”
The king had said nothing for the longest time. His hand had left mine, and I’d expected he’d leave.
He hadn’t. From his pocket, he’d procured a small velvet bag. “Elorna wanted you to have this.”
I frowned at it. “What is it?”
“A featherbone gifted to her by her mother. She never told me what it does, just that it’s an heirloom.” His ruddy cheeks had puffed as he’d sighed and placed the bag in my hand. “Evidently, it’s time for you to have it.”
With the exception of keeping it on my person as a weapon to stab the prince’s pretty eyes, I wasn’t sure what use a piece of bone had.
Even so, it hadn’t left the pocket of my velvet coat. I’d chosen one of Bernadette’s, an emerald green to match that of the bag. When I arrived at Cloud Castle, I would keep it there—safely hidden in the pocket.
My fingers rubbed the velvet bag and prodded carefully at the thin bone within.
I didn’t dare remove it. I might not have trusted it was good for much, but I trusted the feeling that warned to leave it alone until I understood its importance.
During the nights that dawdled into sleepy days, it became a companion of sorts.
The drivers weren’t too interested in talking to me. Our staff seldom had been, either. I used to fear it was because of what I was until Bernie had informed me it was because of who I was. I’d argued that they’d indulged me when I’d been small.
She’d given me a look that said I’d proven her point.
Faerie or human, I was now a grown princess. A princess promised to a court of beings far more frightful than my dour moods and haunting presence.
Often, it seemed as if the drivers had forgotten I was the reason for their journey. Sprawled across the leather seat of the carriage, I’d stare at the stars through the window, listening to their ramblings and inhaling the fruity smoke puffed from their pipes.
Heavy rainfall turned the last two days of the journey into three, as we were forced to shelter during a cluster of storms.
By the time the Sky Mountains came into view beneath the gray skies, I was almost relieved to see them.
It was here.
The moment I’d been dreading for ten years had arrived.
It was time to face it rather than fear it, and pray to both faerie goddesses that I could make it something more than a cage.