“She’s fine and back at the Hallowed Palace.”
I gasp. “Why would she do that?” I risked everything to get her away from Charming, and she immediately runs back into his arms the second I meet my doom? I thought more of her.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Charming got the biggest chewing out in front of the Hallows’ highest and finest. It was epic. She went back to the library to research about the Lady of the Lake to save you.”
Of course she did. My big-brained, super-smart sister wouldn’t sit at the edge of the lake and cry like any other maiden. She took the diurnal by the balls while putting an idiot prince in his place, and if he dared to get in her way, he would have only himself to blame.
“And the knights?”
The genie stops snooping and turns to face me. He folds his arms and raises an eyebrow. “Furious.”
I gulp. “At me?”
“At you, the previous Lady, Charming, the Idols. Basically, all fairy folk.”
The mirror man shimmers back into existence, but he’s got his eyes squeezed closed. “Oh, Lady Daphne, you are the most fair in all the ocean.”
“You can’t see me, so how could you know?”
“It’s a feeling. Are you decent?”
I glance down at myself to check all my clothing is in place. “I am.”
He opens one eye to be on the safe side, before relaxing as he opens both. “I can confirm you are indeed the most fair in the ocean.”
When I’m being compared to sea witches, it doesn’t exactly bring me a sense of accomplishment. But there was that one woman, Aphrodite. Nobody was fairer than her.
“Back to my knights,” I say, before we spend the entire night debating who is the fairest. I don’t care about where I sit on the beauty pecking order, so long as they find me the prettiest.
“Oh, I have a message from Norman,” the mirror man declares.
I frown. “Norman?”
“The dark, broody older one.”
“Nash.”
“That’s what I said. Anyway, he says this display of idiocy will result in your pleasure a hundredfold.”
A hundred fold of pleasure? Sign me up for fairy-tale disasters every diurnal.
“Wait, no.” The mirror man frowns and raises his eyes up like he’s trying to remember. “Not pleasure. Punishment.”
That is definitely more like Nash. However, I would accept the punishment in exchange for my freedom.
“The dragon says not to fall for any slimy merman, or he will eradicate them all.”
Aww, Theo.
“The scary one, Herbert, wants to understand how long he can look forward to a chaos-free existence.”
Hart loves my chaos. Deep, deep,deepdown.
“And the other one, Mally, says he has your scarf and your sausage. Hurry back before he gifts them to another maiden.”
I gasp. The sausage tease was a step too far. Mal was literally trying to torture me. “He wouldn’t dare.”
The mirror man blinks at me. “Should I relay that?”
