This was so weird. We had suspicions that each princess of Faerie was the mate of an Ethereum lord, but that meant Adrien was currently engaged to the wrong person. Talk about awkward.
“What did you just say?” Adrien said, just as his fiancée stepped back into the room with two cups of tea.
“Here you are. Your special tea.” She placed a cup before him and he smiled up at her. “Thank you, darling.”
Then he looked at all of us. “I was having a horrible time sleeping and Elisana made me a custom tea. It’s really helped. I don’t even dream anymore.”
I frowned, sharing a glance with Stryker but said nothing. That was kind of weird, right? Not to dream?
“I fancy myself as an herbalist. In another life I would have studied and became a physician,” she said and sat back next to Adrien, watching him keenly.
He picked up the tea and took a long sip and she relaxed a little. I didn’t like her but it wasn’t my place to say anything about it, and she was being nicer this time than the last, so maybe she’d grow on me.
We ate the rest of the meal in relative silence; anytime someone tried to speak to Elisana, she gave one-word answers and had something of a weird vibe. This was a family dinner and although they were engaged, no one really knew her and she was kind of standoffish, so it had created an awkward aura to what should have been a wonderful meal.
Stryker cleared his throat, patting his belly. “Thank you for the lovely dinner, Aribella.”
Everyone chorused his kind words and then Stryker glanced over at Elisana.
“I don’t mean to be rude, Elisana, but I need to speak with my brothers privately about matters of state.”
Elisana bristled, peering at me as if wondering why I got to stay, but I looked away and then she stood. “Of course,” she snipped.
Adrien stiffened, looking slightly uncomfortable as she left the room.
“Sorry, brother, but I don’t know her,” Stryker said flatly.
Adrien frowned. “She’s the woman I am to marry.”
Stryker swallowed hard. “And I’m happy for you, if you’re happy, but until you are married I would like to keep what we are about to tell you private. For the sake of our realm as well as Faerie.”
Adrien looked at the door Elisana had gone out of one more time and then nodded.
Dawn reached under the table and pulled out a bag. She hefted it on top and opened it to reveal the Shadow Heart.
“I had to go and see the Wise Ones—”
“The Wise Ones?” Adrien gasped.
Dawn and I then went into a ten-minute explanation about both of our experiences with them and how the Wise Ones had given us each a clue on how to hopefully destroy the curse and fix both of our lands. Without killing one of them. Then we told them that we wanted to contact a blood witch to see if she could help us get a message to the Winter Court princess to not kill anyone.
“You want to bring a blood witch here?” Stryker growled.
“We running out of options and time,” Dawn reminded him.
The dining hall door opened and one of the guards stumbled in looking ashen. Stryker stood so fast his chair nearly fell over. “What’s wrong? Are the rebels back?”
“No, my lord … but the plague that has infected the Northern Kingdom is now here,” he said.
It wasn’t a plague, it was a curse, and now it was here. My heart sank.
Zander leapt to his feet as well and we all ran outside.
The streets had turned to celebration after we’d won the battle, but something was wrong. People were laying prone on the floor and others were trying to tend to them.
“Oh no. It’s spreading,” Dawn whimpered and then looked to me. “How long have you been in Ethereum?”
How longhadI been here? I’d stopped keeping track of the days weeks ago. It felt like I’d both been here forever and also just arrived.
