TWO
S parrow Hall resided at the heart of the continent, a barn-like structure nestled in a curve of the Ribbon River.
For years, I’d longed to see the river that fed the borders of all three realms. Now that I was staring at it, I failed to notice the way it curled into fluttering swirls when all I could see was Prince Atakan’s white-blond hair and cruel smile.
Our carriage trundled over a large rock, and my stomach lurched with it.
For three years, I’d tried to rid my mind of the parting words from our first meeting. I’d been unsuccessful. Too many times, I’d woken with my bedsheets stuck to my sweaty limbs from nightmares.
Nightmares of clouds and mist, cloying as I tripped over bones and his laughter gave chase from the inescapable sky.
“Look at me, butter.” Bernie grabbed my chin, taking my eyes away from the sparkling water beyond the carriage window. I scowled, but it melted as she brushed a tendril of hair that’d fallen over the band of braids along my hairline. “I’ll stay with you.”
“Don’t make promises you cannot keep,” I repeated what she’d always told me.
But she was married now. Soon, she would likely have a child of her own. One that was human and would take up all of her time. Besides, I was old enough to take care of myself. I’d learned to stop running from my rooms to hers whenever I woke from another bad dream.
Fear had kept me trapped and alone.
Bernadette couldn’t change anything. I had to marry the faerie who’d warned me that he was just as monstrous as rumors claimed.
And now, it was time to see my betrothed again.
The war between the Unseelie and Seelie was no longer confined to the faerie kingdoms. This visit to the sacred place of peace was not merely a meeting between King Garran and my father, but a celebration.
An imperative show of support and solidarity, my father had said. The bloodthirsty Unseelie Fae would be brought to heel. Strategies to defeat them, constructed closely with the Seelie court over the past few years, were now being implemented.
When I was near, my father liked gentling his words, but I wished he’d just speak plainly.
The entire continent was now at war.
After the first war, the human realm of Nephryn had stayed away from faerie squabbles, and this ongoing feud between their two realms shouldn’t have changed that. But pointing out the obvious was futile. That, and no one wanted my opinion on anything. Not only was I too young but my pointed ears, height, and oddly colored hair reminded them that I was also too inhuman.
Since my betrothal had been inked on parchment, I was tolerated more at court. Though Agatha still preferred that I remain out of sight. I preferred it, too. Especially now. I wanted nothing more than to stay in the carriage or hide in the trees filled with warriors.
Bernie offered me a troubled smile, then helped me out of the carriage despite knowing that, heavily gowned or barely clothed, I had long been able to manage it myself.
During our journey, she’d told me that the Unseelie Fae were now our enemies too, and to be cautious although Sparrow Hall was sacred ground. I’d glared at her before she could begin explaining why.
I might have only been fourteen years of age, but I was no longer blissfully ignorant. She knew I heard a great deal of things many wished I wouldn’t. That I’d learned far more than she or my tutors deigned to teach me.
Such as King Garran being the reason his realm was in need of rescue.
The Seelie kingdom of Ethermore had been under constant attack for years, well before the Unseelie king had discovered his wife’s death. When Queen Kalista fled from him, he’d sent his warriors, most of them beastly shifters, to hunt her down.
Hunts that left many villages and towns aflame or in disarray and many civilians dead. Even in their own kingdom, The Bonelands.
King Garran had supposedly harbored and loved the Unseelie queen. He’d also supposedly killed her when she’d tried to end King Vorx’s wrath by returning to him. Garran kept it hidden for as long as he could, but when Kalista’s fate was exposed, the Unseelie king’s hunts became brutal and vengeful attacks.
As with all faerie tales, the truth sat somewhere within the elaborately twisted dramatics.
Regardless of who was more hideous, Ethermore couldn’t withstand the might of The Bonelands. They needed our soldiers. In return, they would create a permanent alliance with the human kingdom by marrying me to their prince.
Although I now understood the reason for my perilous future, I still didn’t like it. Mostly, I didn’t like that I was powerless to change it. My muddled blood made me a crime my family had tucked out of sight, useless until they’d needed a pawn.
Of course, I wanted peace to reign throughout the continent. I was only half a monster. But I still wished upon every star that they’d find another way to end the Unseelie king’s brutality.
The stench of horse dung and barreled wine stained the spring breeze. I fixed my shawl, clutching the apricot gossamer tight over my chest.
My gown was more fitted than any I’d worn before. As we’d readied ourselves at our last stop and I’d complained ceaselessly, Bernadette had hissed that I was becoming a woman, and the changes were, therefore, necessary.
I failed to see how making it nearly impossible to breathe was necessary. I’d also failed to remind her that I wasn’t human. Not entirely. There was little point when she knew. When everyone knew.
When it was the reason I would one day leave all I’d ever known behind to live among faeries.
The stricken look on my face had made Bernadette laugh. She’d then given me the shawl she’d packed for herself to cover my cleavage.
Fae warriors and our soldiers surrounded the riverside clearing housing Sparrow Hall. In their gold-and-blue garb, they stood in unflinching formation along the tree line and winding dirt road.
Two Seelie warriors stood guard at the towering arched entrance to the hall. They took their time opening the mildewed doors, and I studied their emotionless features. The orange eyes of one and the scar slashing the cheek of the other.
Father had arrived ahead of us. As though he wasn’t dealing with deadly beings, he slouched at the head of the giant banquet table, cheeks mottled from laughter and his crown hanging from a decanter of wine.
King Garran sat at the opposite end. The arched wood ceiling enabled their booming voices to carry easily over the courtiers and generals seated among them and the fiddle players perched upon a platform in the corner of the hall.
Mercifully, Prince Atakan was nowhere to be seen.
The feast drew to a close within minutes of our intentionally late arrival. After a nod from our father, Bernadette left me by the beverage table. “Stay right here. I’ll return soon.”
I didn’t stay.
As more people of influence arrived and the fiddles were joined by pattering beats from small drums, I went outside before the celebrating began in earnest.
The hall stood a short distance from the river. A path of brown stones wended to it from the road choked with wagons and carriages. Tethered horses grazed by the water’s edge.
I visited one of our own, Olive, who sniffed at my cheeks in search of the sweet tart I’d eaten in the hall.
My smile fell, and I loosened my hold on the mare’s neck at the sound of feminine laughter floating downstream. The half-moon brightened as the final hues of dusk faded into night.
But I still saw them.
Two figures huddled together on the grass at the riverbend, concealed from Sparrow Hall beneath a weeping willow. The blond male came into better view when he rolled away from the female fixing her lemon skirts.
Prince Atakan.
More fascinated than scared, I watched across Olive’s patched back as he combed his fingers through his long hair, then buttoned his shirt. His dress coat was tended to next, the night-sky blue brushed roughly to remove any debris collected from the ground.
I needn’t have wondered what they’d been up to.
Though I’d never so much as been kissed, what I’d read and glimpsed in the seldom-used halls of our castle had taught me enough. Plenty enough that when Bernie had attempted to talk to me about sex shortly after I’d reached thirteen, I’d reminded her of all the books she’d let me steal from her chambers.
She’d laughed, tickling me under the chin as she’d said, “Should you find someone to your liking, do remember it’s best to be cautious and keep such matters private, lest it affect your betrothal.”
I hadn’t found anyone to my liking. The boys at court were nothing but spoiled rodents who teased me whenever they could get away with it. The girls weren’t much better, but at least they were somewhat civil to my face.
Even if I had taken an interest in someone, keeping such matters private would merely be to keep from embarrassing my father and earning more of Agatha’s scorn. Faeries did not care for propriety and maintaining one’s innocence for marriage.
To them, sex was as accepted as each new dawn. A way to honor their immortal lives and the twin goddesses who’d gifted them as such.
So Prince Atakan shamelessly fastened his pants as he rose.
He didn’t offer his hand to the female he’d left upon the ground. He stalked toward the river, leaving her to contend with her abundant skirts and her loose bodice on her own.
Absently, I stroked Olive’s neck, then decided to head back to the hall before I was seen, or Bernie came hunting for me.
I wasn’t halfway up the pebbled path when his voice, even smoother now, sank into my back like talons that halted my feet.
“Attempting to sneak a look at what you’ll never have, little thing?”
I shouldn’t have said anything. I should have pretended I hadn’t heard him and walked on.
Instead, I tugged my shawl over my chest and turned.
Eyeing him up and down with intentional slowness, I noted the damp stain on his black pants. “I missed the part where you soiled yourself, it seems.” Smirking, I said, “Pity.”
He didn’t so much as glance down at his pants, though a muscle feathered in his clenched jaw.
He walked past me on the path and stopped.
Turning to him, I inclined my head, then shook it before walking around him. Something warm, perhaps a taste of victory, lightened each step.
Pebbles crunched beneath his boots as he trailed me.
His sweet and smoky oak scent, berried from the female he’d been with, engulfed as if his irritation and ire were flaring his energy. Perhaps it was, for he said with an apathy I remembered far too well, “Been sharpening those tiny claws, I see.”
The reminder of his threat during our first meeting stilled my feet.
He took advantage and stepped before me again.
My stomach dipped.
He was far taller and broader than what I’d seen in my nightmares. And he would be. Three years had passed. Three years of trying to forget my fate. Three years of haunted sleep to remind me that forgetting was useless.
Unfortunately, he was also even more handsome.
His regal cheeks could carve hearts in half, after his lone dimple and pretty blond hair were done tricking them. But it was his eyes, a glowing bronze with crumbs of emerald, that truly ensnared.
Long lashes dipped, rising when his full mouth curved. “Time hasn’t been kind to you, Princess.”
I swallowed thickly. I’d been so unwilling to let him terrify me that it seemed I’d forgotten he could simply upset me.
As if wanting to be sure I’d received the insult, he stomped on my bleating heart. “You’re still a halfling runt.”
“And you’re still an arrogant ass,” I said before I could think better of it. “Who reeks of his own seed.”
I walked around him, not breathing and fearing I wouldn’t make it to the hall.
I did, but it was hardly a mercy.
The hours that followed stretched painfully—spent standing in the shadows while the prince and his faerie friends danced and laughed and continuously looked my way.
My only enjoyment came from watching Atakan attempt to scrub his pants with what looked to be wine.
I made my escape well before midnight and locked myself in the carriage to read while Bernie kept an eye on our outrageously intoxicated father.
But I’d been a fool to believe I’d survived my second encounter with the prince with some morsel of satisfaction.
Something thudded against the carriage floor. A hiss followed as I startled and dropped my book atop the creature.
A two-headed serpent.
I fumbled for the door, only to find it’d been locked from the outside.
Slowly, I pulled my feet up onto the seat while trying to think through the fear.
I’d spent so much time in the woods that my tutor had given me lessons on what to do if I encountered predators. She’d said they could smell fear. To steady my breathing and…
“Don’t panic,” I whispered. Don’t panic, don’t panic, don’t —
The serpent lunged, and I screamed.
Two sets of fangs sank into my ankle.
I screamed and screamed and screamed, so loud that it drowned the laughter from outside the carriage I’d been trapped in.
I shook my leg, but the teeth wouldn’t budge. Knowing the venom would spread dangerously fast if I worsened the wounds, I didn’t try to pull the creature free. I gripped the bars of the window, rattling the steel as I continued to shake my leg and scream.
It was then I saw who’d tossed the serpent through the carriage window.
Hollering echoed, but I fell silent.
Prince Atakan stood next to Olive. He stroked her neck as he lifted a goblet of wine in my direction, then sipped.
Soldiers neared, and he smirked before disappearing into the dark.
I saw nothing more.
The carriage door burst open, and the two-headed serpent released my ankle to turn on the soldiers.
They retreated from the door, the female unsheathing her sword.
I closed my eyes as the venom burned a trail up my leg. As my chest filled with a similar poison—an ire that made me snatch the serpent around the neck and push past the useless soldiers.
I marched down to the water and tossed it.
The serpent writhed in the air before breaking the starlit surface of the river.
Bernadette gaped as she reached me and released her skirts. “Was that a two-headed serpent?” She inspected my face between her hands, then patted my arms. “Are you all right?”
I nodded, although I wasn’t.
Anger and fear and pain drifted into one giant darkness. A darkness that sent me crashing into her, and we both fell to the grass.