4. Isla
4
ISLA
T he hallway is crawling with Faerie and sprite sentries.
Technically, the sprites fly, but the rest of them prowl the long blue runner flecked with tufted snowflakes, or stand very still, with their backs plastered to giant, lustrous pilasters that seem carved from ice. The recessed wall behind me also looks scooped out of a snowbank, but a graze reveals it’s stone. I suppose that no amount of magic could keep an ice castle from melting.
Really not the time to ponder the architecture of Konstantin’s castle, I think.
Will there be a good time, though? Perhaps while everyone is at the Jubilee, I could take a covert tour.
Though I’m no criminal—at least, not in a premeditative manner—a tremor darts up my spine when one of the guards bracketing the alcove across from me glances my way. My anxiety disperses after I ascertain that my glamour endures.
I start to creep forward but come to a standstill when a sprite hisses, “Crow incoming.”
My heart hurdles into my throat. Could the miniscule winged being have detected me?
When faces pivot in the opposite direction, I blow out a breath. How serendipitous that…
I back up. Slam into something hard and hot and…oh…shit. I whirl and watch in horror as the luminous sphere wobbles on its shallow pedestal. I smack my palms against the scorching surface to steady it, and Holy Mother of Crows…
Though not quite as agonizing as the time I tried to cook breakfast for my parents and handled a cast-iron skillet without heat-proof gloves, blisters still bubble on my palms. But the burns become the least of my problems when I spy the bloody smear on the lucent surface.
Pulse blaring, I swipe my sleeve against the glass, succeeding only in spreading the stain and singeing another patch of skin. I suddenly abhor these decorative orbs with all my might. Especially when my name detonates between my skull.
I tuck my chin into my neck and clinch my lids. And this is when, Isla Ríhbiadh is reduced to a puny black bird.
Isla? my father grits out once more. You’re in —the soft crack of a neck, or of knuckles, stokes my anxiety— Glace?
Without recalling my invisibility, I turn to face him. He might not be able to see me, but I have no doubt he knows exactly where I stand.
Hinges suddenly groan. I assume he called my mother through their mind link, but it’s the door beside him that opens.
“I’m ready for that word you wanted before the festivities, Ríhbiadh,” Konstantin says, his pale fingers fastening platinum buttons up a jacket that gleams like the surface of our Lucin canals at first light.
My father pays his fellow monarch no mind, but I do. I focus on him instead of on the man currently heaving smoke like a chimney in the midst of winter. Though Konstantin’s wiped off the blood, his bottom lip, nose, and ears remain visibly battered.
“ Vizosh ! Your face!” The quick snatch of air that accompanies a sprite’s outcry redirects my father’s glower. “I’ll fetch the royal healer immediately.”
Konstantin dismisses his guard’s suggestion with a flick of his fingers and a quiet, “I’m fine, Borat.”
As he smooths his jacket sleeves, tugging on the cuffs of the black shirt beneath, my father inspects him from pointed ears to smooth chin.
“What the bloody skies happened to you, Korol?”
Konstantin secures the last button on his stand-up collar. “Slipped in my steam bath.”
His answer startles me. Then again, feigning clumsiness lends him more gravitas than admitting he was struck by a girl. Faeries are proud like that. Crows, too, for that matter.
My father’s slow perusal of Konstantin’s various injuries leads me to think he has no delusion that the floor is to blame, but does he think I may be at fault? I hope not, for that would lead him to wonder what I was doing inside the king’s steam chamber, which isn’t a conversation I’d like to have.
Konstantin steps aside to let my father through. “After you.” When Dádhi doesn’t budge, the Glacin King tips his head to the side and prompts him, using his first name this time. “Lorcan?”
My father’s jaw shifts from side to side. “I’ve just received wonderful news from home.”
The snort that slots past my lips carries many stares in my direction. Where Konstantin doesn’t seem the slightest bit surprised by my enduring presence, his guards’ bearings run the gamut from disbelief to anxiety.
“My mother was feeling better, so my daughter has decided to join us. I hope that’s not a bother?” Dádhi sounds desperate for Konstantin to tell him that it very much is a bother.
“The more the merrier,” Konstantin replies with a smarmy smile. “Has she already arrived?”
Bastard knows full well that I have.
“She has.” After a beat, my name grinds past my father’s lips like chalk against slate. “Since you’re here, why don’t you show yourself to our host?”
If only I could access the pack link while in skin to inform my father that I’m not all that presentable at the moment. Alas, Crows, unlike Serpents, need to be in feathers to talk without sound to our leader.
I slip on my boots, then lift my palm to my sigil but hold still when a new voice cuts through the tense air.
“Pardon me. Coming through.” Did my mother pick up on the disturbance, or did my father beckon her?
I should be wholly focused on her expression—to gauge the level of trouble I’m in—but as the guards part around her like foam, it’s her dress that grabs my attention. It had seemed so bulky when Phoeppa had unveiled it, proclaiming it was his finest work yet, but worn, the black velvet shot through with gold sequins appears as weightless as the night sky over Luce.
“I heard Arin made a miraculous recovery,” she says, cutting in seamlessly.
I don’t reply that there was nothing miraculous about it since Shoshair wasn’t sick to begin with. I would never put my parents on the spot like that. Behind closed doors, though, I intend to bring up their little subterfuge.
“Yes. And guess who’s already arrived, mo khrá?” my father grumbles.
“Do try to contain your excitement, Dádhi,” I reply, finally dismissing my spell.
Though Shabbins aren’t strangers to Glace, considering the amount of bulging eyes, I fathom the Northerners aren’t all that used to our spellcasting.
A nerve tweaks Mádhi’s lids as I approach and slide my cheek against hers in greeting. After showing my father some love, his elbows finally unjam.
“Contrary to what you may think,” he murmurs in Crow, “I’m always glad to see you, ínon.”
The anxiety riding me since I carried Shoshair from Luce to Shabbe finally begins to disband.
That is, until my mother flicks a lock of my humid hair behind my shoulder. “What happened to your neck?”
Shit. Fuck. Shit.
I rub the purplish skin, keeping my eyes from straying to Konstantin. Funny how I’d wanted my parents to notice it before.
That was before, though. “I, um, was blinded by the snow and ran headfirst into a ship mast.”
“Poor ship. Did it sink?” My mother’s sprightly tone makes it clear that she did not buy my fib.
Unlike Mádhi, there’s nothing remotely spry about my father’s timbre when he growls, Your bruise wouldn’t have anything to do with the Faerie King’s various injuries, now, would it?
I pop out a hopefully very convincing, “Nope.”
The way my father’s lids squeeze has me thinking he isn’t convinced. If he touched a hair on your body, so help me, Mórrígan, I will ? —
“It was an unfortunate run-in with a ship mast,” I say. “Entirely accidental. You know how distracted I can get when I fly.”
My mother suddenly gasps. “What happened to your face, Konstantin?”
“Slipped in his steam bath,” my father replies, barely separating his lips. “All these inanimate objects besting supernaturals today.”
My teeth sink into my lower lip just as Konstantin says, “My sister will come fetch me at any moment. If you want a private audience with me before dawn, it best be now.”
The Ice King is either the most intrepid male alive or the most oblivious. Who, in their right mind, would offer to lock themselves in an enclosed space with a seething royal capable of transforming many parts of himself into the single metal that can end a Faerie’s life?
“Actually, I need a word with you and Mádhi, Dádhi. A very urgent word.” To Konstantin, I say, “It was a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Vizosh.”
The way Konstantin’s eyes scrape over my face tells me that meeting me was the furthest thing from pleasurable for him. And, yes, arguably, it wasn’t the best moment, but would it kill him to return the sentiment for conviviality’s sake?
“Congratulations on twenty-five years,” I add.
Konstantin’s cool-gray eyes glance against mine before skipping to his guards. “Fetch Salom.” And then he’s pivoting on his heel and disappearing inside his quarters.
Not even a, Thank you, Isla, or a, Welcome to Glace. Enjoy the amenities! Did I imagine his earlier garrulousness?
My mother hooks her arm through mine and sweeps me down the blue runner, my father hot on our heels.
Once we’ve left the knot of guards and sprites behind, she murmurs, “A mast? Really, laenath ?”
Between the ages of six and fourteen, every time my mother would refer to me as baby , I’d beg her to find another term of endearment, but now, I don’t perceive it as a reminder of my youth; only as a reminder of her maternal affection.
“You know how clumsy I can be.” I eye the vaulted hallway that’s so white it makes me feel as though I’m traveling through some creature’s rib cage.
“You’re many things, but clumsy isn’t one of them.” She covers my hand with hers. “Can we get the real story now?”
Even though I may tell them the truth eventually, I choose to counter their question with a question of my own. “Right after you tell me the real story behind Shoshair’s abrupt illness.”
My mother’s pink eyes flare, while my father’s yellow ones taper. When their gazes lock and hold, I fathom they’re carrying a little aside. How I wish I could be a fly on the wall of their minds.
To think I’m about to get a connection of my own tonight… Unless they bolt me in their suite with magic?
Their grave miens suggest they just might. “How horrid is my mate?”
“Your… what ?” Mádhi squawks.
“My fated mate.”
My mother blinks so fast I half expect her to generate a breeze. “ Mate ?”
I stick my thumb out in my father’s direction, then point to her. “You know…that thing the two of you are to each other.” My humor is lost on my mother, whose complexion has gone from sun-kissed to sun-bleached.
“What your mother is trying to say, khráach ”— oh , the inflection he puts on his favored term of endearment for me: darling —“…is: What. Fucking. Mate?”
I come to a standstill. “The one I meet here tonight.”
Between gnashed teeth, he asks, “Do tell us who fed you this…lie?”