A longing, a yearning, washed through my body. If this was Winter’s Realm, I wanted to see it like this. Without snow, the land was able to offer abundance, if only for a short while.Vale’s face had tightened, and I got the sense the tapestry was affecting him as it affected me.
“It is. I’ve never seen our kingdom like this,” he said.
Vale was only a few turns older than me. How long had Winter’s Realm been naught but snow and ice and frost? And why did it strike me as so sad that others did not speak of those days, but the dwarves beneath their mountain remembered openly?
The door creaked open. A servant, a young ruddy-faced dwarf female, rushed into the sitting room carrying amarble tray, heavy with biscuits. She smiled as she set them down, her grin brightening most when it landed on Ronaldo.
His eyebrows knitted together, and he and Lei shared confused glances. Fae did not notice humans. Let alone smile at them as she’d done.
The servant left just as King Tholin strode in. At his side, arm in arm with the king, walked a regal female dwarf with black skin that glowed from within, amber eyes, and a tumble of dark curls down her back. Gold dust sparkled on her high cheekbones, a touch of it on her large nose too, and an elaborate gown stretched over her belly proclaiming she was heavy with child. His wife and queen, I suspected.
Bringing up the rear was a younger version of the king, though with a medium complexion, where the king was very fair. The younger dwarf was tall for his kind and bore an eyepatch over his left eye. The scar running down his face hinted the eye might be gone. If so, it didn’t seem to hinder him. His blue eye was trained on us, his bearing was as strong as a bears, and a battle-axe was strapped to his back.
We stood: The females curtsied, and the males bowed. After everything that we’d been through, everything that had happened, and so many days on the road, the gestures felt foreign, but we were in a palace, under the goodwill of this dwarf king. We needed to act accordingly.
“Please, sit.” King Tholin’s piercing gaze landed on me. We did so, only for the king, the female I presumed to be queen, and the younger male to stop and stand before us. Establishing high ground. “After speaking with some of thepeople in the great hall, it is clear you’ve come quite a long way. Also that you’re more than what you seem.”
I stiffened. How much had they told him about themselves? About me?
They knew I’d been a slave and was now a princess. My true identity remained a secret, though there had been moments, softly spoken words between Vale, Caelo, Anna, and me that others might have caught.
“The other humans assure me that your story is true. That the four of you,” the king gestured to Vale, Caelo, Anna, and I, “rescued them from a fate worse than death. A fate that one of you experienced firsthand.”
I squirmed in my chair.
“This background came as a surprise, as my spies heard you were from a small town in the west, Princess Neve.” Tholin took one chair, the female the other, and the younger dwarf took the last, clearing his throat as he did so.
“Might Mother and I introduce ourselves before you chip away at them, Father?”
The king chuckled. “Observe the niceties.”
The queen’s amber eyes warmed. “Queen Deseana Fellhelm. A pleasure to meet you all.”
We echoed the sentiment, and when I turned my gaze upon the younger dwarf, it was to find that he was already staring at me.
He looked only a few turns older than Vale’s twenty-nine. As fae aged slowly after thirty turns, this made his age difficult to pinpoint, but he surely was not over a century.
“Prince Thordur of House Fellhelm, heir to theKingdom of Dergia.” The prince inclined his head. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
I inclined my head in kind. “We’re thankful for your House’s invitation to see Dergia.”
“One that comes with questions,” the king said. He was not one to be deterred from his interrogation.
“We would expect nothing less.” Vale leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees in a show of relaxation that I’d never manage in this scenario. How did he stay so cool under intense pressure?
“Firstly,” the king crossed one thick leg over his knee, “I need to hear the princess’s story of her life before meeting you, Prince Vale. From her own lips.”
I swallowed. Upon learning that this kingdom was not, in fact, deserted, I’d hoped the king would see us bringing humans here as a good deed. Something Vale and I did out of the goodness of our hearts, which it was, but I could not deny that my past and hatred of Roar drove me too.
“I’m not from the west of this kingdom, but further west.” I didn’t second guess myself because something told me the humans had already told him this part of my past. “I grew up as a blood slave to vampires and escaped two moons past.”
King Tholin nodded. “And you married a prince. Did you hide your truth from Vale?”
“For a while. He knew about my past when I married him, though, and he still vowed to protect me.”
“From?”
“A royal vampire at court. I killed his brother’s child.”
