Athon
I glared down at his peculiarly elegant handwriting. He was a Fae damned prick even through a letter. I read it once more, and my scowl didn’t decrease any, but I quickly moved to my writing table and flipped the paper over. I snagged a pencil from the drawer and wrote back to my awful soul mate.
Shifter,
Message received. You are an asshole.
Don’t die,
Trixie
I didn’t bother to seal it. The caster-spelled messenger wouldn’t allow anyone else but him to receive it. I simply balled it up like it was a piece of trash and placed it back into the messenger’s mouth.
The lizard’s jaws snapped shut.
I shuddered as it slithered down the side of my castle, blending into the rocks so that I could barely see it. Once it hit the ground, it moved so fast I was no longer able to track it. It was gone within a blink of the eye, traveling back to the monster who’d sent it. I rolled my window shut and latched it with finality.
I stared out at the morning sky for far too long.
When the water was turned off in my bathroom, I rested back against the thick glass and crossed my arms. I glanced at my closet. The thoughts rolling through my head were madness…but I did have enough different clothing items that I could pull it off—plenty of disguises from my younger years.
As much as it pained me, the King of Shifters was my soul mate. I needed to know as much as possible about him. Not just for political reasons, but because we were bound together. And if Ididhappen upon a juicy morsel of concealed royal information in the Shifter Kingdom, it wouldn’t hurt to have it.
My reluctant reasoning was sound.
I needed to go to the Shifter Kingdom.
I needed to watch a challenge. I needed to know exactly what a challenge entailed. Obviously death—a challenge was to the death. But I needed to know the fine details of a challenge to help keep…fuck me…my bloody soul mate alive without lending my power to heal him. If that was even possible for me, I hadn’t the foggiest idea. But I would study tomorrow and apply those lessons toward his future challenges. I was an excellent student, after all.
King Athon was correct on one account in his letter.
This was a shit show that the Fae cursed us with.
I growled under my breath and stalked to my closet.
I needed to be prepared to travel tonight at full dark.
* * *
With my bag packed once more—a disguise fit for an elven merchant tucked inside it—I walked through the grand hallways of my father’s castle. I searched for my king in all the regular places he usually frequented, but I was coming up short. The palace was clean of all the black flower petals now, and, seemingly, also of the King of Elves.
Where in the Fairy was he?
Eventually, I stopped a servant bustling by with an armful of linens. I was reasonably positive he had worked here as long as I had been alive. I couldn’t remember his name for the life of me, though. Shame that. I asked curtly, “Do you know where King Traevon is?”
He dipped low into a formal bow, the bulk of white sheets spilling over his arms onto the floor. “I believe he is in the sparring room, Your Highness. That is where my king and the-man-who-is-not-spoken-of were headed just now.”
“Thank you. What is your name again?”
“Polsha, Your Highness.”
I wouldn’t have guessed that at all.
He looked like a Wylan or a Wyon to me.
“That is all I need, Polsha.”
I waited until he scurried away—with linens now wrinkled and in need of another ironing—before I quickly trotted toward the stairway that led to the lower level of the castle. On silent feet, I rushed down the stairs to the bottom landing. I crept around the corner and held my breath near the sparring room’s entrance, listening closely to the two men already speaking inside.
