He rolled his eyes. “I am letting her get to know the real me.”
“No, you’re letting her get to know Prince Charming. She doesn’t need a façade. She needs something real.”
Cillian tilted his head and stared at me for so long I began shifting from foot to foot.
“What?” I snapped.
“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing at all. Well, I must be going now.” He spun on his heel, striding away.
“Where?” I called.
“To come up with a plan to woo my bride,” he called over his shoulder.
CHAPTER 12
Niamh
“So we’re not actually safe here?” Morton asked as we wandered the halls of the castle.
I wasn’t even sure where we were at the moment, but I didn’t particularly care because we were walking across a glass bridge that made it feel like we were gliding on air. From the bridge I could see a waterfall in the distance, tumbling down from high, rocky cliffs. I wondered if the cliffs were part of Fairwitch Isle or outside of it. Then I wondered if we could see outside the invisible barriers or if we could only see what the magic allowed us to see. I tapped my chin, thinking about that lithaguar from yesterday. It had disappeared when it got high enough, so that must mean that just like the outside world couldn’t see in, we couldn’t see out.
“Hello?” Morton’s pink tail waved in front of my face. “Are you listening?”
I turned and continued walking across the glass bridge. “Well, we’re technically safe while we’re here.”
He curled his tail back over my shoulder. “But we could not be here at any moment?”
“Correct,” I said. “From what Cillian said, we have six weeks to make the castle accept us, but it could also disappear us at any time before that.”
“I miss the tower,” Morton whined.
“At least that little fire statue appeared in our room,” I said, thinking about how I’d walked in and noticed how warm the room was, then discovered the little statue of the fire godwitch sitting there in the hearth and realized it must’ve been magical, providing heat. The castle must have liked me if it gave me that little statue to keep me warm.
“A statue isn’t going to do us any good if we could disappear at any moment.”
We left the glass bridge and walked into a hallway full of paintings. I squinted, noticing a painting of all the godwitches flying on dragons through the air. Apparently that was how they traveled, which seemed so odd. Dragons no longer existed, all of them going extinct at some point in the past, though Ashami had once told me there were rumors of dragons hiding deep in the mountains in the north.
The godwitches barely looked human, and I reached out to trace the vines that sprouted from the earth godwitch’s head, the petals that surrounded their black eyes.
My gaze traveled to the painting of a bog. There were many bogs around the continent of Aubergn, and this particular one had a woman with sleek black hair standing on a floating piece of land, green smoke rising around her that matched her skin.
“That looks ominous,” Morton said. “Look at all that green water.”
“And the smoke rising from it.” I shuddered. “That looks like the kind of place where you would definitely go to die.”
“I wonder where it is,” Morton mused.
“Oh that’s the Cragh,” a cheery voice said.
Morton and I shrieked at the same time.
“What was that?” Morton’s head swiveled from side to side.
“Who was that?” I put a hand to my chest.
My heart was still hammering as I turned, coming face-to-face with a painting of a woman with long black hair, smooth skin, and rounded, angular eyes... that stared right at us.
“Hi,” she chirped, and both Morton and I screamed at the same time.
