It’s…exciting.
Lightness bubbles up in my chest like a sunburst. As the palace and its gardens blur by us, sounds and sensations warping, I laugh for the first time since Jae’s murder.
The rushing comes to a stop, my body snapping into shape once more, slamming together. We stumble into a dark hallway. Lilacatches me before I can fall. Her skin feels warm and a little damp, but she stands strong. I right myself, hands patting my body.
“Am I okay?” I gasp.
“Do you feel okay?”
“Everything’s where it should be. I don’t feel like I’ve…died?”
Lila laughs. “You haven’t! You’ve merely been reassembled.”
“How? How can the rings do that?”
Lila shrugs, grinning. “They’re imbued with Reign magic.”
Holding up my hand, I gawk at the object. Such a small band, and yet it grants so much power.
My mind spins with the possibilities; if the ring can borrow abilities from the most powerful House in Amyria, what else can it do? And why can’t faeries just wear jewelry to level the playing field?
The same reason we must take a blood oath before we wear them. The same reason we remain weighed down in debt while the High Fae stay unmarked. Somewhere between the dawn of the fae and now, someone has invented equity. And only the disadvantaged do not know about it.
“I know,” Lila says suddenly, softly.
“Apologies,” I manage, vision blurring.
“Never apologize for feeling.”
It’s nice to see. Friendship, in a place like this.
I stare at her for a moment, perhaps seeing her for the first time. “How lonely it must be to carry this knowledge around, unable to share it with anyone.”
Lila smooths down imaginary wrinkles from her gold pants. She raises her chin, dazzling me with a smile, the corners of her eyes glistening.
“Now there’s you,” she says. “But we both don’t want to be late.” She beckons me down the hall, coming upon a bronze door. “Oh—something else. I do not know what it was like in Illusion, but when we’re in the rooms, never say anything you don’t want them to hear. Because they will hear it.”
I nod, swallowing. “Understood.”
“Even in the servants’ halls we need to be careful. Now, are we ready?”
I’m not, but I force a smile. “Let’s do this.”
She grabs the handle and swings it open.
Chapter Fourteen
We walk into a smallprivate library, a contrast to the grandeur I had expected. Leather chairs cluster around twin stone fireplaces that flank the room. A round table stands in the center, a cloth draped over its top. Rows and rows of books are crammed into shelves that run along the walls. I manage my basic letters and have always been jealous when Kassandra gets lost for hours in dense, scratched-up novels.
“Tonight, we’ll just need to set the table for two.” Lila crosses the room to the bookshelf on the opposite wall and takes out plates from cabinets built above the shelves.
“Who’s dining tonight?”
“The king and the advisor. You’ll feel them coming.”
I retrieve silverware, crystal cups, and napkins, stunned at their weight and richness of details. The plates are not glass, nor the napkins cotton as they are in the House of Illusion.
“What is this material?” I ask, centering a plate.
