“Can you believe this?” Cedrych said, interrupting my silent reverie. He was skimming through the daily scrolls, the salacious tabloid that passed for news in his homeland. I had a messenger fetch them from the harbor each morning. The news was a day or two old by the time it reached me but still relevant.
“Tell me what I am to believe,” I said, noting the furrow of his brow and the unhappy jut of his lower lip. Who was I going to have to destroy in his name?
“They’re saying they have an eyewitness account of a fight between us at an elvish tavern, which can only be that night you stopped me from trying to leave. The headline is, ‘Fae Prince Unleashes Famous Temper on His Elvish Warden.’ That’s preposterous. I didn’t even raise my voice at you.”
He looked so adorably affronted that I couldn’t help but tease him. “They got the warden bit right.”
His brow lowered even further. “It says there are rumors that I’m threatening to dissolve the betrothal. The nerve of them. Doesn’t that bother you?” He glanced over, incensed for us both.
“It doesn’t bother me as much as if it were actually true,” I replied, though I did wonder if his mother might be feeding the narrative.
A smile tugged at his lips. “Of course, I wouldn’t. That would be terribly rude. The article then goes on to speculate on what other unfortunate royal might have me.”
“None, I’m sure,” I quipped but the idea of it caused me some distress.
“I would certainly make them regret it.” He stood straighter, inflamed by a sudden passion, then seemed to remember I was still watching him. “I only meant to say I’ve become accustomed to your company, my lord.”
“And I to yours, Your Highness,” I said with an easy smile. We’d come a long way since he attempted to flee, even as his skin still bore the fading bruises from my cane. Every night I coated them with salve to help with healing, and each time I contemplated sinking deep into his flesh and owning him from within.
Patience, Mercier, patience.
Cedrych went on to regale me with other news from the fae realm, a mix of guild reports and pure propaganda.The Wyn Gazette,our elvish counterpart, had published a feature on Prince Cedrych complete with a lovely commissioned portrait of us both that I now had hanging in my study. Economists predicted the union would only strengthen elvish trade, and merchants were pleased about our duty-free trade passage to the Northern Realm. It seemed only the Keepers were averse to our betrothal, and their opinion was rooted in small-minded tribalism, something I hoped would fade as our society became more educated and diverse.
Cedrych then asked, “Have you always read the daily scrolls?”
“I like to stay abreast of news in the other realms,” I admitted, which obviously included the royal family.
“You must have thought me a terrible person. They’ve never been kind to me, you know. Godfried is a saint and my younger brother is their darling and I’m the incorrigible rake, which is laughable because I’ve only ever been with one person. Well, two now.”
He lowered his head as a deep blush crawled up his neck and colored his cheeks. So fetching.
“If I am not worthy of you, then I am at least very lucky,” I told him.
I caught a flash of his shy grin before he hid behind the paper again. “You are worthy,” he said, very quietly.
Gods, I was doomed.
I tookCedrych on a tour of the mines, which were highly mechanized to preserve the health of our workers, many of whom were dwarves who had a longstanding colony in elvish lands and ancestral ties to the mines themselves. Then we visited the plant where metals were extracted from the ore through a process called smelting, and finally, to the forge where the majority of our weapons were made. We elvish had a legion of highly skilled metalworkers who crafted everything from jewelry to kitchenware to complex machinery, but I suspected Cedrych was most interested in our blades, so that was where we focused our attention.
“Elvish weapons are hand-crafted by master bladesmiths rather than produced using the more industrialized method of metalcasting,” said our tour guide for the day, an elder dwarf named Oryn, who’d retired from the mines but still enjoyed giving tours to visitors and school children.
“They are remarkable,” Cedrych said, eyes wide and taking it all in.
One such master bladesmith named Levolor held our attention as he struck his hammer against the steel in a hypnotizing rhythm, sending sparks of light dancing across the anvil. Our forge and furnaces were not fueled by coal or wood, but by our enchanted flame that burned eternal. It was the same flame that illuminated my fortress, heated elvish homes, and fueled our machinery, a marvel of the Isle of Wyn.
Surrounding the smithy were samples of his work, an assortment of swords and daggers meticulously crafted fromexquisite materials, showcasing the elvish love for beauty and functionality. Precious gems, polished minerals, and finely detailed metals were in abundance here. Our bladesmiths shaped the metal and our sorcerers gave the pieces the finer details and flourishes we elvish were known for, but the strength of our trade came from the quality of the metals themselves; in this case, pure elvish steel.
Cedrych had a beloved sword already, so I bought him a fine steel dagger that had caught his eye and would fit nicely inside his boot. The blade was straight as an arrow’s shaft, and the hilt was engraved with our motto, translated from elvish:when surrounded, trust the blade.
I presented it to him over breakfast the next morning, and it took a long moment for him to respond. “For me?”
“I saw you eyeing it in the bladesmith’s forge,” I said simply.
He pulled the dagger from its sheath and read aloud from the elvish phrasing. He’d been learning my ancestral language as well.
“When surrounded, trust the blade. Are you a bloodthirsty people?” he asked.
“We are a defensive people. The blade is a last resort,” I told him.
