Maybe I don’t like this king after all. Maybe I won’t follow Mama’s advice and give him what he wants. Not when he’s looking at me like a gremel who caught a pixie.
I lay my packages inside the wagon, then climb up without taking the king’s hand. I’m almost inside when my damned slippery shoes slide off the step, and I fall.
Strong arms wrap around me, and the king hefts me as if I weigh nothing more than an air sprite.
“Careful, my consort.” His voice rumbles through me, and he clutches me tight to his chest.
Spires, he’s even more perfect up close like this. And his hair is so golden, just like his eyes. None in the night realm have ever been so blessed as the day king. High fae through and through, he’s everything about them I hate. But when he glances at my lips, something heats inside me. I push it down.
“I’d rather have fallen.” I push against him, but he doesn’t let me go.
“Drop her, my lord,” his second-in-command says.
“And injure her before I’ve enjoyed her fully?” The king presses his lips to my hair. “I think not.” He sets me inside the wagon—well, I suppose they call it a carriage—then closes the door, his gaze still on me through the window.
I sit on one of the gaudy pillows in the most unladylike way I can.
The king laughs and strides away as I look around and feel the velvets and satins that they use as simple upholstery, not finery. Mama would give her best apron to sew such soft and supple fabrics.
Mama. I bite my lip to keep from crying. She told me to be strong. I will. And hopefully, someday soon, I’ll come back to her with my arms full of every fabric and thread she’s ever dreamed of.
I settle in as the carriage begins to roll away from my home, from the only friends and family I’ve ever known. Leaning back against the comfortable pillows, I close my eyes as the procession marches steadily toward my uncertain future. The king’s golden eyes flash through my mind, the way his lips quirk in amusement. I bat those thoughts away. I’m only a toy to him. A changeling to enjoy and discard. The high fae have done this for millennia, trading changelings between them, using them and then tossing them aside. I’ll be used up soon enough, I tell myself, and then I can return to my velvety soft night and the silver moon. I’ll be older, perhaps even wiser, though Mama would probably dispute that. But when Solano tires of me, I’ll slip away and dance with the nymphs and witches again, safe in the light of the moon with no cares beyond tomorrow’s darning pile and no day king lording over me with addictive touches and heated looks.
6
Solano
“Distracted, my lord?” Brock keeps his eyes on the road ahead, but I’d be a fool to think he wasn’t observing me.
“No.” I watch the fireflies and glowing wisps in the trees on either side of the road. The dense wood is home to so many foreign creatures that I find myself too wrapped up in wonder to carry on much conversation. It doesn’t help that I keep glancing back at the carriage and wondering what the changeling inside is doing or thinking.
“Good. A distracted king is a terrible ruler.” He nods to himself. “We have more important matters than the changeling behind us.”
“Such as?” I know far too well the troubles in the day realm, but my leading question will give Brock a chance to blow off whatever head of steam he’s been building during this trip.
“First of all, you broke the law between our realms by choosing only one changeling.”
I wave that concern away. “Next?”
“The seekers.”
“Yes, they’re a nuisance for Daylanders who brave the night realm. Next?”
“The lords and ladies of your court who conspire against you and seek to place an unseelie pretender upon your throne.”
“Varan will never sit on any throne, especially not in the Daylands. He’d be better off trying to take King Sigrid’s realm than mine.”
“But Sigrid has a son of his own, an heir.”
“I know.” I met him once when I was still a youngling. He was young, too, and strong. His silver eyes missed nothing, though his father was particularly hard on him from what I recall. “But Eraldon hasn’t been seen in ages.”
“Murdered by Sigrid. The old king can’t have anyone challenging him for his throne.” He glances at me. “Perhaps you could take a lesson there.”
I shake my head. “I’m not having Varan killed. He’s my brother.”
Brock scowls. “You should at the very least kick him out of court, my lord.”
“I know.” We’ve been over this so many times that I can already hear the same arguments in his voice. “What else?”
