My gaze flicked to Stryker.
“Why would I still be mad that my own flesh and blood didn’t care that I’d had an assassination attempt on my life?”Stryker asked sarcastically.
Zander groaned. “Of course we cared! We were drowning in our own problems though. Did you think that you were the only one that had a rebellion rise up after you were crowned? I was still training under Cal and helping him fend attacks off weekly.”
Stryker was silent and I wanted to urge them to patch this up, but I knew it was best not to get involved.
Turning, Stryker peered at his brother, giving him a full view of the scar on his face. “Show me the scar that your assassin left?”
Shame crossed Zander’s face and he nodded. “Fine. One of us should have come or helped get reinforcements sent or something. I’m sorry, okay. We were fifteen. Can you get over it?”
I winced at the wording,get over it, and so did Dawn.
She reached for her husband’s hand. “I think Zander means, now that he’s apologized, can you move past it?”
Zander nodded. “That’s what I meant. Come on, Fire Dragon. Forgive me for being a young and overwhelmed jerk of a brother.”
Stryker tried to fight the smile that was threatening to come up but couldn’t. Fire Dragon must be some inside joke and my heart warmed at seeing the brothers’ relationship thaw a little.
“Fine. For now,” Stryker grumbled.
Zander banged his hand on the table in triumph. “I’ve thawed the heart of the cruelest lord in Ethereum.”
Dawn laughed at her husband’s antics and I couldn’t help but enjoy seeing them banter. It made me almost forget our troubles. Almost.
“My heart has thawed,” Stryker agreed. “But not because of you.”
He gave me a look across the table that nearly undid me and I couldn’t help the flash of heat that rushed through me. But thinking of my people back in Faerie, probably dying from the curse, made my smile slip right off my face.
Dawn turned to me with an intense look. “Don’t worry, Aribella. We did it. We found a way to break the curse.”
The breath froze in my lungs even as my heartbeat accelerated.
Then it was true? There was a way to save Faerie that didn’t involve cold-blooded murder.
* * *
We ordered more food for Dawn and Zander and tucked into our dinner while Dawn explained everything. She mentioned some ancient group of fae who had foresight to see the future. They’d told her that rather than just satisfying the curse with an Ethereum lord’s heart every hundred years, there was a way to completely destroy it. But the catch was that each princess had a task to complete before that would happen.
She also explained that the curse had started to bleed into Ethereum, starting with her and Zander’s Northern Kingdom. The magical sickness that afflicted the unseelie we’d come across on the road had started thirty days after she arrived in Ethereum. Exactly when she was no longer able to use her faestone dagger to return to Faerie.
I did the math in my head and realized I’d have about two weeks before the faestone dagger would be useless helping me get home.
“The Wise Ones?” Stryker’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head.
Zander nodded.
Stryker, who was fearful of nothing, appeared concerned.
“Have you met them?” I asked him.
He scoffed. “No way. My grandfather used to tell me stories about them though. They told one of our uncles that he would die in seven days, and he did. They always terrified me.”
They what?
Zander chuckled. “They aren’t that bad.”
“You need to go see them,” Dawn told me, and I turned to look at her.
