I took a moment to try to gather the days and weeks and realized with a start that it must have been exactly one moon’s cycle to the day.
I hadn’t thought of my faestone dagger in so long, but I realized my window to return to Faerie had passed. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Obviously I wanted to save my people, but I didn’t want to leave Stryker.
When I told Dawn and the others how long it had been, Dawn and Zander exchanged a weighted look.
“Exactly when the sickness broke out in our kingdom as well,” Dawn said.
“It’s the curse, isn’t it?” I asked, and she nodded solemnly.
Looking around, my eyes welled with tears when I took in all the affected fae. Fae whom I now considered my own people.
I followed Stryker to the fallen unseelie fae nearest us and gasped when I saw that there were black veins shooting out from their eyes and running down their neck.
Stryker looked at Zander. “What do I do?”
Zander sighed. “We need the blood witch, brother. The faster we can get these princesses to see the Wise Ones and complete their task, the sooner we can destroy the curse and restore our land.”
Chapter 25
We spent the rest of the night helping the people of Easteria who’d been hit by the curse which everyone kept referring to as the plague. We delivered hot meals to families that were affected in the city, helped carry unseelie who were too sick to walk on their own back to their homes, and brought those who were completely unconscious to the medical ward in the castle. Just like in the Northern Kingdom, it seemed like the unseelie with the strongest magic were hit the hardest.
By the time 5 a.m. rolled around we finally headed back to the castle and passed out. We went back to my old room and Stryker slept next to me because his sleeping quarters now had a giant hole in the wall. Yes, there were many other vacant rooms in the castle he could have taken, but neither one of us felt comfortable being separated right now. When I awoke, there was a note on my pillow.
Meet me in the kitchen.
-S
The kitchen? Was the staff out sick and he needed me to cook again?
I got up to brush my teeth and put on a light blue sundress. Stepping out into the hall I passed through the dining room hoping to see Dawn and any of the others, but it was empty. It was later in the morning since we all got in at such a late hour so they were probably still sleeping.
I pushed the door to the kitchen open and paused when I saw Stryker in an apron with flour up to his elbows and chocolate on his chin.
The counter was strewn with various baking supplies including dirty plates, eggshells, a bottle of oil and about thirty small plates each one holding a weird lumpy chocolate dessert.
I burst into laughter and Stryker spun.
“What are doing? If you were hungry you should have woken me. I would have made you something,” I told him.
There was a seriousness in his gaze that wiped the smile off my face.
“Hey,” he said nervously.
“Hey?” I called back with a smile and stepped forward to wipe the chocolate off his chin and plant a kiss on his lips. “What are you doing?”
He cleared his throat. “I know how much you like chocolate cake.”
I smiled. “You do?”
He nodded. “You ordered my staff to bring you chocolate cake instead of mush, and then I heard how you literally licked the plate clean when I had the cook’s chocolate fudge cake delivered you to.”
I coughed out an embarrassed half laugh and ducked my head. I had licked the plate clean. So unprincess-like.
Reaching forward, Stryker placed two fingers under my chin and lifted my face so that he could look into my eyes. What I saw in his gaze took my breath away. Love. Shining so brightly from his gaze that it was unmistakable. “I wanted to make you something you’d enjoy,” he finished.
My heart exploded with adoration in that moment. “And so you wanted to learn?”
He nodded, grabbing something on the counter behind him that he’d been concealing. It was a small four-inch round chocolate cake. It looked to be two tiers with the upmost tier kind of sliding off and the icing was hastily done but when my gaze landed on the giant decoration on top, I gasped.
