29. How do you lose a princess?
HOW DO YOU LOSE A PRINCESS?
JASPER
Three days of breathing room was all I could give Enora before I was back at her door, earlier in the morning than appropriate, ready to face the repercussions of my impulsive actions.
I was ready to grovel on my knees if I had to.
To plead with her. Apologize profusely.
Whatever I needed to do to take a step towards mending these years of damage.
At least three days was somewhere between the no time at all that Maksym had suggested I give her and the stern warning Eilir gave me to stay away from my friend indefinitely so the sprite could see to her education and wellbeing.
Sad, really, that I’d lasted fifteen years without seeing her agonizingly beautiful face, and now, mere days felt like torture.
I refused to let my mind venture into how much worse that feeling was going to get when she became my best friend’s wife and my queen.
That distance might be what finally broke me, but I would ensure the most was made of every moment before.
There was only one issue.
Enora was not answering her door, even after my fourth attempt at knocking.
The young woman I’d known could sleep like the dead, and it was clear time had done little to sway that quality.
I wasn’t sure what drove me to test the door handle, but I was surprised to find it unlocked.
I was even less sure of what drove me to open the door a crack and peer inside.
The warm, russet glow of sunrise had fully washed over Enora’s room through thrown-wide curtains, and her bed held nothing but rumpled sheets.
A beat of unease kicked up in my chest, and I slipped farther into her room on light steps.
The last thing I needed to do was startle her after barging into her personal space without an invitation, but there was no sign of her on the sofa, at the desk, or at the table.
No sound coming from her bathroom either.
“Enora?” I called out. “Are you in?”
Silence.
Well, fuck.
That didn’t bode well.
I hurried over to her terrace door and found it deserted too, save for a lone copy of a text on the dark pantheon discarded on the wrought-iron table.
I fetched it quickly to spare it from an untimely, thunderstorm-driven demise and left it on her bed.
Just to be certain, I checked her bathroom and had no luck.
Enora was gone, and it was only just sunrise.
She hadn’t left her room in days, from what I’d heard.
Not since I less than tactfully laid out the gaping cracks in the carefully constructed image of her father.
Her hero, really. Well, she had apparently seen Maksym sometime later that day, and I’d gathered that hadn’t gone well either, not that I’m entirely confident he would have known either way.
All the more reason for her absence to cause an uncomfortable amount of concern.
I was back in the hall before I knew it, staring down the door of the king who was about to be wholly displeased with me.
I knocked on his door.
Once. Twice.
A third, slightly more desperate time.
“Max?” I hissed-yelled. “Are you up?”
After another couple of knocks, the door swung open.
A vicious amber squint greeted me, framed by bedraggled black hair and a bare, pewter-gray chest littered with bargain marks. “What?” he rasped before clearing his throat. “This had better be good, Jas.”
Suddenly, I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer to my readied question. “Is Enora in there with you?”
Maksym had the audacity to look amused. “Is Enora in my quarters? With me? At sunrise? No, my friend. I am quite unfortunately alone here. Why?”
That didn’t bring me an ounce of relief. “She’s not in her room.”
His amber eyes narrowed as those words took a solid second to wash over him. When they did, he was brushing past and hurrying down the hall.
He mapped the same path I did through Enora’s room—over to the terrace, into the bath, around once more for good measure—before returning on a string of mumbled curses.
“Well, that’s a problem.” Maksym glanced at his bargain-marked palm, running his fingers over the surface. “She isn’t far, but she’s not here. Fuck. Stay put.”
I didn’t get in a single word before Maksym was charging back into his chambers, giving the door a forceful shut behind him.
Well, at least we were both panicking a little.
He reemerged minutes later, fully dressed and looking infinitely more pissed off. “Fucking sprite,” he mumbled. “Refusing to heed my call.”
Well, this was going to be interesting without Eilir.
Sprites had the most incredible ability to locate a person’s makeup of aether as long as they had spent some time around them and forged even the slightest connection. It was something Eilir had done amply with Enora, but we were clearly on our own for the time being.
“It’s fine.” My reassurance came out with little confidence. “Someone is bound to have seen her.”
Maksym regarded me with hefty skepticism and pushed on in silence.
In our brief sweep of the upper halls, precisely no one had encountered our missing princess—not that many were around outside of bleary-eyed guards and maids.
We checked room after room, many of which were only accessible to Maksym (but he insisted they warranted a check), and found ourselves at the atrium lookout with matching furrowed brows.
“You there,” Maksym called out to the sentries posted by the door as he hurried down the stairs in a series of concerning leaps. “Have either of you seen Miss Wynn?”
One shook their helmeted head vehemently.
“No, but uh—” The other cleared their throat. “The last post said she was by an hour or two ago. Went looking for Gallan, apparently, but I haven’t seen either of them.”
This was getting worse by the minute.
Why Enora would go looking for Gallan, I couldn’t fathom.
They’d interacted when she was in the cellblock and a few other times, sure, but I’d never thought it to be in any meaningful way.
And why she’d seek him out so early… I was at a loss, and Maksym clearly was too.
He fixed me with an uneasy look before bidding the sentry goodbye and charging toward the residential halls.
Leaving me, again, to chase after him and his long fucking legs.
We didn’t make it far before Eilir materialized in a wisp of light smoke, and Maksym let out a string of startled curses as he backed into me.
The sprite stretched and yawned, fluttering its wings as it let out a tiny, petulant sigh. “This had better be good, Max. I was having the best sleep.”
“So. Was. I,” Maksym bit back. “We are more than even in that regard, sprite.”
“Oh really?” Eilir chirped. “Even? In what regard are we ever—”
“Both of you, just shut up!” I pinched my brow and let out a heavy sigh. Mina, help me with these two. “Enora is…missing,” I said with an abundance of caution, and Eilir’s attention snapped over to me.
“Missing?” they squeaked. “What do you mean, missing? I can still feel her. She’s…she’s—” The sprite’s right eye twitched. “She’s in Embervale? At…the Wench? Why is she in Embervale and I…I’m not there with her?”
Why Eilir’s face fell so suddenly, and their bottom lip trembled, was something I had no interest in exploring. There was far too much to unpack there, and Maksym was already reaching for my shoulder.
“Your guess is as good as ours,” he huffed.
Eilir made a pained noise and then vanished.
“Here we go,” was my only warning to Maksym before I reached into the planes and stepped us through.
The cobbled streets of Embervale formed beneath our feet, a cacophony of noise swirling around us, and something immediately felt wrong.
“What the fuck,” Maksym muttered.
He had my wholehearted agreement.
I couldn’t recall the last time so many shifters filled the city at sunrise, let alone ones of rank and order, and in such a state of organized chaos. City folk flanked the streets too, sitting on porches and standing in doorways, nursing steaming mugs with their attention turned to the commotion.
Maksym was already trudging through the people—and brushing off the greetings he really needed to acknowledge—once I realized I could recall the last time this scene had played out before me.
I hurried after him, dodging too many damned bodies paying too little attention to where they were going, and received swift confirmation of my fears.
Toward the end of the street, four emaciated bodies were in various stages of being wrapped and prepared for transport while a trio of shifter clergymen presided over them.
“Not again,” Maksym muttered.
Only a few months had passed since the last incident with sick shifters in the city.
That one left two Umbrite children dead and a third horrifically mutilated.
Malakai had given his unwavering word to Maksym that his people would be out in full force, containing and even culling the sick when they had no other choice.
Their efforts to understand what was causing the forced shifts and the sickness that came with them had made little progress over the last year, but Malakai was firm in his commitment.
And, to my incredible dismay, he was prowling across the clearing straight towards us.
“Your Majesty. Mage,” the arrogant shifter lord drawled. “We had a few…slip through the cracks, it seems.”
“You don’t fucking say,” Maksym hissed. “Why in the hell wasn’t I notified already? If we had any civilian—”
“Oh, just take a breath.” Malaki gestured at the golden sky with a flippant wave of his hand.
“Do you see how fucking early it is, Max? You should thank me for not waking you unnecessarily. It was nothing to fret over. The only casualties were my sick men. Your pretty little wife saw that thoroughly handled before there were any problems.”
Between the sudden paling of Maksym’s face and the knot that took hold of my stomach, I wasn’t sure which of us was more likely to be taken out by a strong breeze.
“What?” he exhaled.