10. Keira #2
I turn slowly, expecting to find a huge male warrior in armor hulking over us both, blade drawn.
Instead, there is a small fae woman with huge blue-green eyes, pink-hued cheeks and hair so blond it is practically white.
There is an air of girlish innocence about her that is incredibly disarming.
I glance back at Torin. The color has drained from his face. He takes another step back.
“Oh, Torin, did you think you found another victim to use as your punching bag?” Her voice is musical, and she walks right up to him and slaps his face lightly. Playfully.
He sneers back but doesn’t strike her. “I have no business with you, Sasha.”
“No, not without your guards to back you up. You only ever attack a person who is vulnerable or helpless or outnumbered, like the coward you are.”
She turns her back on him, and my heart stops. I am sure Torin will attack her from behind, but he does nothing.
Sasha loops her arm through mine and leads me away.
“Don’t worry about him. The worst he can do is run away and cry to his mother.
Did you know their family has very little magic?
” She glances over her shoulder and looks him straight in the eye.
“I bet their ears are rounded. They have a lot of human blood, don’t you, Torin?
Take off the golden ear caps and show us.
” She turns back to me. “Odd that they create so much hatred for what they are.”
“I am fucking fae!” Torin’s face turns bright red, but his hand flies to his ear, fingering the meshwork of golden swirls that adorn it and form a peak at its tip. He looks like he will say more, but he turns and stalks off instead, his entire body tight.
Sasha suddenly yanks me through a door, slamming it behind us.
She makes quick work of locking it with a key, then sliding home multiple bolts that span the double doors, barricading us in like she expects an army to arrive with a battering ram.
I let out a long, shuddering breath, but the tension in my body remains. I have no idea who this woman is.
What kind of person makes Torin that afraid?
Sasha finally glances at me. “Are you okay?”
All I can do is nod.
“Come. Sit down. I’ll make you tea.” She leads me to a sunroom and motions for me to take one of the armchairs.
The space is incredible. Two dusty pink velvet couches face each other across a low glass table, but the rest of the space is completely occupied by plants.
Every nook and cranny. There must be a hundred pots on the ground, ferns and broad-leafed shrubs sprouting out of them.
Some are as tall as me, in every shade of green and some blue, broken up with subtle patterns in pinks, reds and purples.
Another dozen pots hang from a paneled glass ceiling, flowering vines cascading out of them. Glass fire orb lanterns in a rainbow of stains send blocks of color across the room. There are shelves everywhere, with more tiny pots on them housing miniature tulips and daffodils.
A small courtyard garden is visible through the floor-to-ceiling windows, crammed with trees, rose bushes and wildflowers, taking up every available space and growing into each other. There is an untamed element to its beauty.
I remember to stop gawking and move a couple of romance books from the nearest couch to take a seat.
Sasha arrives with a silver tea set on a matching tray and places it on the table between us.
Immediately, a fuzzy black puka with long perked ears like a rabbit jumps onto the table and swipes a biscuit.
My host doesn’t even blink at the creature’s presence here.
I glance around wildly as the rest of her pets slowly come out of their hiding places. Another puka climbs the back of my couch and watches me warily from a distance, while a third climbs into Sasha’s lap as she pours the tea.
Tiny purple and green sprites flicker around the plants, while a handful of pixies peer at us from behind broad leaves.
Then a butterfly lands on the tip of my nose and I gasp.
Not at the beauty of the creature, which has a kaleidoscope of colors and patterns across its wings, but at the sheer worth of it.
They only exist naturally in my realm. Its ancestors must have been imported when the portals were opened centuries ago and bred here for generations to produce this one.
Sasha breaks the silence. “Unfortunately, being bullied by Torin is the official initiation in the palace these days. You just need to know how to handle him. It’s a shame you don’t have magic to threaten him with.
” She hands me a cup of dark, aromatic tea.
“I’m Sasha, the Winter Court ambassador and royal hostage. ”
I suck in a sharp breath.
Fae from Winter wouldn’t fare well in this court with Titania as the ruler.
The High Chancellor’s entire reign is built upon blaming others for her shortcomings and every problem the court faces.
Her favorite scapegoat is the Winter Court and the supposed war they are bringing to Spring’s doorstep.
It is the only way she can explain away the corruption and deny its true source.
Her official word is that Winter is transforming the Spring territory at the borders to snowy plains in a land grab.
That they will soon invade. Yet all the fortresses there are kept empty of Spring soldiers.
“Are you in this court alone?” I ask as horror washes through me.
“So, she does speak.” Sasha laughs, then sobers. “Did you hear of what has been happening to my people here on your travels to the palace?”
I wrap my hands tightly around my teacup, leaning into the heat radiating from it. “No, but Aldrin told me?—”
“Aldrin has no idea!” she cuts me off. “I had my own guard here. Friends. But they were taken from me. Now, I am as alone as you are in a hostile court. Do not think that being Aldrin’s mate and the rightful Queen of Spring will benefit you for a single moment.
It puts a target on your back and that of anyone who openly supports you. ”
An awkward silence drags out between us as she frowns into her tea, surely reflecting on how she just did exactly that.
I stand abruptly, scattering butterflies and two puka. “Look, I’m going to leave. I don’t want to worsen your position here.”
Sasha bites her lip, then motions for me to sit. “The damage is already done. I’m the one who chose to help you. I just can’t seem to help myself.”
I gingerly return to the recliner. “Is there any advice you can give on how to survive this palace? I made a bargain with Titania that I would become her prisoner if I were treated as a royal guest, but with the cruelties she showed me on the road—and the threats Torin has made—I don’t know how much protection it offers. ”
Sasha throws back her head and lets out an unhinged laugh. It is not the reaction I expected. My whole body tenses up.
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to laugh, but I can’t help my bitterness.
By the Darkest Realm, I have been living in this nightmare for years.
Decades.” Her hands flutter around her as she speaks, knocking her teacup and sloshing the hot liquid onto her saucer, but she doesn’t notice.
“I am the reason you have no protection under your bargain. I am a royal guest, and the things that tyrant has put me through allow her to do them all to you.”
She shudders, and all I want to do is rush to the couch next to her and put an arm around her shoulders, but I don’t. There is something about the woman that screams she wants distance. Maybe she no longer trusts anyone.
“Titania parades me through the streets in a caged litter with anyone else she can shame from Winter, and the people throw rotten fruit at us,” Sasha continues.
Well, that explains the last few days.
“Sometimes I am dressed like a child and chained at her feet while she holds court. Once she made me attend a ball completely naked, but I covered myself in a gown of snowflakes and she hated that. I was thrown into a cage in the throne room and starved for days as punishment, while Torin kept dumping water on my head to melt the snow, laughing. He is confident when he has his guard to back him up.”
“Gods, I am so sorry you have endured this.” I sit forward in my seat. “And she took your guards?”
A tear runs down her cheek as she wraps her arms around her middle, making herself small.
“My guards, my closest friends, are in the dungeons.” Her eyes flick up to mine.
“You want advice on how to survive the palace? Remember this: sometimes Titania thinks up new and creative humiliations, but mostly she forgets about me. It will be the same for you. If you want to fight her, choose the battles that matter, because she will make you pay tenfold afterward. You can be the little mouse Titania thinks you are, or you can be a Cú Sídhe in disguise. Either way, be sneaky. Be smart.”
A violent shudder runs through me. “And you cannot escape? Surely you have contacts in the Winter Court to help you return home.”
“I choose to stay,” Sasha says quickly.
“Why?”
“Did you not volunteer for this to save someone you love?” she throws back. “I agreed to be a royal hostage because I was desperately looking for someone. He needed me. When I found him, I couldn’t leave. He still needs me.” An expression so haunted crosses her features that I don’t dare ask.
“If I didn’t volunteer for this, Titania was going to kill Aldrin, then kidnap my mother, my sister and my newborn niece, all to hold them over my father’s head,” I offer. “She thinks she can control my entire realm with her threats and abuses, but she has no idea how wrong she is.”
“Aldrin is not dead, then,” Sasha says. “You don’t seem like a widowed mate deep in grief.”
“One day the High Chancellor’s lies will be revealed and they will come back to bite her,” I spit.
“The problem is…” Sasha selects a biscuit from a severely depleted tray, mostly consumed by puka and pixies, and takes a delicate bite.
“She is often contradicted. The accusations she makes are constantly disproven, but nothing sticks to her. The people either follow her blindly, eating up her every word and ignoring the truths that stare them in the face, or they don’t care because they still think she will make them wealthy. ”
“I feared as much.” I huff out a breath.
“Look, Sasha, we have similar interests and the same enemy. Maybe we can work together. No one needs to know about your involvement. I need information on the High Chancellor and on weaknesses in her inner circle that I can exploit. Do you know of any senators I could approach?”
Her eyes widen and she throws up her hands, startling the pixie sitting on her shoulder, braiding a lock of her white hair.
“Whatever you decide to do, don’t trust me, Keira.
As much as I like you, and want to help, you’re the rightful Queen of the Spring Court and I am an ambassador and Princess of Winter.
I will betray you if my king asks it of me.
In truth, the turmoil of Titania’s reign suits us.
It rules Spring out as a true threat, because despite all the hate she spews, she doesn’t make a move against us, and she keeps the soldiers away from our borders because of the corruption there.
I bet she is so overconfident and closed-minded that she hasn’t even bothered putting spies in my court to see what we are doing. ”
I drop the teacup. The delicate porcelain shatters across the ground, spraying amber liquid and tea leaves.
A deep sense of being lost at sea and surrounded by sharks overwhelms me so intensely that I don’t react straight away.
I can’t even breathe as my throat tightens and my body locks up.
It is like I am back in Finan’s clutches, being forced to live out horrors against my will, like marrying that lunatic.
Titania could do anything to me.
Force anything on me.
I drop to the ground and pick up the broken pieces of porcelain with shaking hands, apologizing repeatedly. Sasha is next to me, taking my hands in hers and forcing me to stop and stand with a small smile.
“Don’t worry about it,” she murmurs as her water magic swells across the ground, washing the tea down a drain in the floor. A team of pixies cleans up the broken cup.
I stare into her eyes, blue with moss-green swirls, endless wells of sadness. “For what it’s worth, I truly am sorry you are Titania’s prisoner. When I take my throne as queen, I will release you from that bond.”
Another musical laugh filled with bitterness leaves her. “Oh, sweetheart. I’m not Titania’s prisoner. I’m Aldrin’s prisoner.”