The second thread related to the rebels. The rebellion had claimed that they followed the true heir. Who was that? A Falk bastard? Someone pretending to be so? I didn’t know, but their potential presence made me both curious and hesitant.
And yet, I was here, with a king trying to ally with me. Of course, he did so because he wished for something too. That was how alliances went. They were a give and a take.
“You’re right, King Tholin,” I answered finally, careful with my words. “We’d be happy to leave here with four finezupriandaggers from Dergia.”
“Everyone who sees them will ask about their maker,” Vale added.
“The mystery you withhold will infuriate them,” the king chuckled.
“That it will.” I set my spoon down, and my bowl was swept away.
“Prince Vale, you’ll have to give specifications for the blades,” Prince Thordur said, and the pair leapt into a conversation about sizes and hilts and whatnot.
Vale began speaking of weapons, but I was more entranced by how his face lit up. Every gleam in his eye and grin as he, the king, the queen, and the heir of Dergia spoke of daggers and steel. My heart stuttered when his dark gaze turned upon me and he winked.
My cheeks grew warm, and my chest tightened. I looked down as my plate bearing some type of roasted bird and root vegetable landed on the table.
“You two are quite a handsome couple,” Princess Bavirra leaned closer, and the candlelight made the gold dust on her cheekbones glitter beautifully. I made a note to ask for a tin of the dust before we left. “I’m envious.”
“Thank you,” I said, pleased to have someone to focus on other than my husband, who apparently turned me into a maiden at the least expected times. “Are you courting at all?”
“Father wishes it, but Mother says to take my time, and I’m not ready to seriously court. I’m only twenty-nine turns, after all. I’d like adventure before I worry about love.”
The human blood slaves I’d grown up with would have thought otherwise, but their lives were short and fraught with fear. When you had centuries to live, why rush into any relationship, let alone marriage?
That was unless you were about to lose your head for killing a vampire prince—likeme.
Down the table, the triplets set to laughing again. This time, Anna did too. I looked past the princess and found Caelo beaming. He looked too proud of himself, and I was dying to hear the joke, but the princess spoke again.
“What was it like, traveling here? Especially with so many humans in your care? Did you run into trouble?”
It struck me that the princess didn’t just want adventure under the mountain, or in the small territory surrounding their mountain kingdom. She wantedout.Wanted to see the wider Winter’s Realm.
I leapt into the story of the nøkken, glazing over why Vale and I had walked away from the camp, though by the gleam in her eyes, she understood all too well.
When I finished, she looked saddened. “I’m so sorry for your losses.”
“I am too. I failed them.”
“You didn’t,” she said, “so many of them are here, in a kingdom unlike any other fae kingdom. They’re safe now.”
I smiled softly before taking a bite of the roasted bird and chewing. The events of the day and so much socializing was wearing on me.
The princess ate too, before leaning close once again. “Also, not to be too nosey, but I got the feeling in your story that you and your prince have had little alone time?”
“How astute of you.”
She grinned, and I felt as though I was back in Avaldenn with Saga before she pulled me into a clandestine game of nuchi with other ladies of the realm. A sharp pang cut through me, unexpectedly, though it shouldn’t have been. I missed the princess and Sayyida—Marit and the Baliksisters too. They were the first people in Avaldenn to show me friendship. In the case of Saga and Sayyida, they’d even accepted my past. Or what I’d known of it then. Now I knew so much more, though I expected their reactions to finding out I was a lost princess would be similar to when they discovered I’d been a blood slave.
“Well, I have a place you two might want to go.” The raven-haired princess curled a finger as her voice dropped into a whisper. “It will offer you privacy and a beautiful view, but you can’t tell anyone else about it. Promise?”
I shot a glance across the table at Vale, still engrossed in talks with the king and Prince Thordur. A grin spread across my face as I turned back to the princess. “Promise.”
Chapter 10
NEVE
“We have a perfectly suitable room in which to be alone together,” Vale muttered, his eyes closed at my request as I guided him.
