“Of course, Your Majesty,” the prince replied, then added as if trying the word out loud, “Mother.”
“And where is your mated one?” The queen slid a glance along our line, finding Dawn among us. “Ah, there you are, my dear.” She reached a hand to her. “It is…um, comforting to find you by my son’s side.”
Looking slightly stunned, Dawn bowed to the queen. “It’s an honor to welcome you to Teneris, Your Majesty. How was your journey?”
“Terrible,” the queen complained, threading her arm through Dawn’s. She then leaned with her other hand on her son’s forearm. “Please tell me you two have a comfortable chaise for me to rest on. I prefer a chaise over floor cushions lately. It’s much easier to get up from.”
“Of course, Your Majesty,” Dawn assured her. “We have everything ready, and if anything is not to your liking, please let me know.”
“I most definitely will.” The queen allowed Dawn and the prince to lead her into the palace, escorted by her numerous entourage of courtiers to the accompaniment of the parade music and welcoming cheers from the crowd.
Lucia stayed behind with us.
I grabbed her hand, then quickly introduced her to Ciana, “Lucia arrived to Prince Rha’ssaraiwith us, but we all got separated on that hill by the temple while trying to escape. Now…” I turned to Lucia. “How in the world did you end up in Queen Abeille’s litter today?”
She grinned. “It’s a long story.”
“Is there a short version? Because I don’t think I can wait until we have more time to catch up properly.”
“Sure. I guess.” She shrugged, tossing a red curl away from her face in a gesture I remembered well. “So, I didn’t particularly want to go through the portal and end up in our old world again. Things weren’t going so great for me there. I only agreed to escape because all of you wanted to go, and I didn’t want to hold anyone back. But then, on the hill, I was in no rush to jump through that thing that cut Kostya in half.”
“What?” I stared at her in shock. “What happened to Kostya?”
She waved a hand. “Never mind. It’s too gross anyway. The point is that I didn’t jump through the portal. I hoped that Prince Rha’s guards would grab me and take me back to Teneris. But it was the queen’s men who ended up catching me instead. They brought me to Kalmena. And thesaraithere was really a mess, I have to tell you. Everyone was just drinking wine and fucking all day.”
“Really?” I glanced back at Timur quickly.
That made sense, considering the odd behavior of our Kalmena clients who had access to the queen’ssaraiand the emotion of the inebriated humans.
“Yeah, sounds fun, doesn’t it?” Lucia grimaced. “But it got old pretty fast for me. I tried to escape, got caught, tried to fight, and bit off a guard’s nose.”
“You did w-what?” I stuttered, convinced I misheard her.
She rolled her eyes. “He had a long nose, it got in my way, okay? No big deal. He’s a fae, it grew back already, even longer than before, if you ask me. Anyway, they brought me to the queen for her to decide what to do with me. Normally, I think I’d be labeled as dangerous and difficult, and they would’ve put me down like a rabid dog. But apparently, the queen had connected to a Joy Vessel before. Only once, mind you. Believe it or not, she has asaraiwith two dozen humans run by her stupid council, and she hadn’t even tasted any of her own humans’ joy. The only one she’d ever connected to was Dawn.”
“Dawn?” Ciana and I gasped at once.
“Yep. The queen said that Dawn was the one who convinced her to spare Prince Rha’s life at the end, though she didn’t even realize it when it happened. The queen saw Dawn’s love for Prince Rha when they connected. She recognized the fear and the ache of that emotion. But there was also joy she didn’t know before. Despite Rha being sentenced to death, Dawn’s love for him still gave her joy, something the queen never thought could come from love. So, she wondered if that was what love meant for all humans and wanted to see if it’d be true for me too. I laughed in her face and told her there is no love in me, that’s for damn sure. With my knack for attracting assholes, I’d die a happy woman if I never saw any of my ex-boyfriends again. But I told her that if she wanted to see me happy or even joyful, then she shouldn’t send me back to hersaraiagain. And in exchange,I’d show her all the things that make me happy. So she kept me in her rooms.”
“Did she make you her favorite?” I asked.
Lucia nodded causally. “I guess, if that’s what people call it. But all I do is just keep her company. You know, she’s just an old woman. She doesn’t have much time left in this world, and she spent so much of her life mourning what she’s lost that she failed to see what she still had. The queen is a smart woman. She just preferred to live in the past. I guess it’s hard to recover from grief if you can never feel happiness to balance it out. So, I tried to cheer her up. Over the past month, we’ve tried many things I always wanted to do but never had the time or money before.”
“Like what things?” Ciana asked.
“We did pottery, painting, sculpture. I tried to learn how to crochet, but that went nowhere.” Lucia laughed. “Knitting also got me so irritated, the queen forbade anyone to bring yarn into the palace ever again. But the baking went well. We’ve made sugar cookies several times now. She insists on reading. But I wish they had better books here. Since the shadow fae don’t read for pleasure, all their reading material is so fucking boring. Oh, do you know where I could get a pet? Something cute and fluffy, like a rabbit or a cat maybe? The queen only has those killer bees for pets right now. I’m so afraid of them, I refuse to go into the room where she keeps them. The cat could stay with us while we read. Petting it would help her relax too, I think.”
“Prince Rha’s cat Zala is going to have kittens soon,” Timur chimed in unexpectedly.
“The prince has a cat?” I gaped at him. “And he showed her to you?”
“How do you know about the kittens?” Ciana asked.
He looked slightly uncomfortable under everyone’s sudden attention.
“I saw the cat during my visit to Prince Rha’s palace before our attack on Ashgate. She was pregnant then,” he muttered, sinking deeper into the shadows from his hood.
I smiled, looking forward to meeting the new kittens, then met Timur’s knowing gaze.
