I remembered how his vividly blue curtains matched the carpeting. Just a peek of pale skin anywhere down there would be a provocative tease, but a hint of blue? I’d swoon.
“Sure, okay.” I cleared my throat. “I’m guessing your other two brothers are similar in their uniqueness from every other fae?”
“I think Solaris is the most normal. He’s just…blond.” He shrugged. “And Incendis can extinguish himself whenever he wants, but he looks like he’s on fire most of the time.”
“On fire?”
“It’s very dry in Autumn sometimes, so Incendis can control fire in case of lightning storms and such.”
“And you can control water.”
“It floods occasionally.”
I gestured at the lake.
“Oh, no,” the woman said, “that isn’t from flooding. The lake appeared beneath Zebetta’s horse and drowned the poor thing. Murdered it.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “What’s your name?”
“Norena.”
“Bridge. This is the horse that was going back and forth with supplies for Winter, right?”
“We sent supplies?” Hydris asked, sounding surprised.
Norena gave him some stink-eye before looking back at me. “One and the same. They’d sent the poor dear through the barrier a few times before the water just bubbled up under her hooves and sucked her down.” She shook her head mournfully as she gazed through the barrier. “We tried to stop them from letting that human through, but they couldn’t hear us.”
“Milo. His name’s Milo.”
She nodded and said his name, making me think she was going to be the keeper of this story now, too.
“What was the horse’s name?” I had to ask as I thought of Sarosh.
“Dumpling.”
I groaned a little. Poor dear, indeed.
Movement inside Winter caught my eye. The guards who’d gone into the tent with Hydris’s brother and Milo now exited. They went to stand around the fires the remaining guards had created, clearly trying to keep warm. Did that mean Milo was doing okay? Even if he didn’t see me, couldn’t talk to me, I still wanted to make sure he was unharmed.
“Well, well. Look at the little prince way out here without his guard. And us having just been forced to start paying his new taxes. How interesting.”
I turned around to see five men and three women slowly surrounding Hydris, each of them holding scythes and looking like absolute trouble. Hydris was already a couple feet off the ground, his wings fluttering fast.
“What new tax?” he asked.
“What new tax?” one of the women practically snarled. “The one you leveled on our whole village for not producing enough foodstuffs for the crown.”
“We’re grass-growers,” a man hollered.
“You expect us to stop what we’ve been doing for three generations,” another man said, “to start growing food that won’t ripen because your own father cursed your worthless ass?”
Hydris went from concerned to upset in a blink. “My father didn’t curse us. And you can grow what?—”
“We’ll grow whatever we want to grow,” the man interrupted and raised his scythe, “and there’s nothing you can do about it!”
I had to intervene. “Hey, now,” I said as I eased between them to stand with Hydris. “Let’s not let our emotions get away from us.”
Another woman shoved into the group, making a few of the agitators scramble out of the way so as not to stab themselves or each other. Oh, she was very pregnant. And by the fierce expression on her face, having none of this.
