“Then it might take me a little longer to find it,” I answer out loud.
He stares at me for a long, glowing red moment.
Then he says, “You will accompany me outside.”
He doesn’t wait for me to agree before sweeping out of the room we’re in—which I can barely see as I scurry to follow him and his lantern out of the dark space back into the great hallway,past the altar—apparently built to wed and kill all the real Stone Bride Princesses from Aralysse.
I can barely keep up. In a true feat of not fitting at all, the dress is so small it feels as if I’ll bust through its seams at any moment. But the skirt is so long, I have to pick it up in order to run after him.
He waves a hand above his head in a way that I recognize as minor spell work, and the gigantic black double doors once again open of their own accord.
If not for the new rule, I might have let out another breath of relief before arriving in the courtyard to find...
The coach is gone.
Moist! Moist! Moist!
Meanwhile, I can feel that red-glow stare burning into the back of my head as the Stone Fae King intones, “What now, Princess Seraphyne?”
I sink to the ground in defeat and pound the dirt, sobbing “why me???” until the suns come up,I silently reply.
But I can’t… I can’t give up. I have to get back to my father.
I straighten myself up to my full height (even though it’s still much smaller than his) to declare, “I’ll find the letter. I won’t stop until I find it and prove that?—”
“By Eryx!” He cuts me off with an exasperated huff, and that’s all the warning I get before his taloned hands scoop underneath my pits and he launches us into the sky.
Elephim
SALLIE ROSE
What.
In.
The.
Ever-not-so-loving.
Moons!!!!
I’m flying. Like, actually flying through the frigid night air in my extremely ill-fitting bridal gown.
The Stone Fae King finally gets all that screaming he was asking after earlier. “What are you doing? Where are you taking me?”
And I suppose now’s as good a time as any to mention, “I’m scared of heights!!!”
The wind is ferociously loud this high in the air, and his wings create intermittent thumps that sound like the beating of those extra-large drums the Aralysse military hauls out for ceremonial welcomes.
Yet the Stone Fae King’s smoke-and-splintered-glass voice has no trouble cutting through all that noise to make his answerto all my screaming clearly heard. “If you are not lying, you have nothing to fear. Now stop wiggling, lest I drop you and waste the sacrificial blood due to Eryx.”
Okay, while I give not a fogasia leaf about Eryx, I do rather like the thought of not being dropped to the ground, which is now…
Oh, moons, why did I look??
…very, very, I mean extremely, every-bone-in-my-body-shattering far away.
I squeeze my eyes and swap out my screams for using both hands to grip onto his thick forearms.
