Nellie coughed, and I knew I should feel embarrassed, but I just turned to Fenella with a smile.
“That sounds boring,” I said.
Toryn chuckled from where he strode ahead of us at the front of our party, but the laughter quickly died as the looming oak doors came into view. They were partly open this morning, and the sounds of murmuring voices and clinking dishes drifted toward us. Light beamed in from overhead skylights, filling the space with morning sun.
Toryn swallowed and opened the doors wider. Inside, a few wooden tables sat in a row. Finely dressed storm fae crowded the benches placed beside the tables, and crystal trays held an array of food the fae were ladling onto their plates. My stomach grumbled at the sight and scent of so much food—we’d been surviving on stale bread, dried shadowfiend meat, and soups made from boiled shadow-grass. Here, the storm fae had fried eggs, crispy bacon, glistening strips of potatoes that looked like they’d been fried, roasted tomatoes, and bowls upon bowls of fruit.
“Apples,” Nellie whispered. “So many apples.”
Queen Tatiana stood and motioned us over to the head table, which she shared with five other fae. We piled in on the bench across from her, and several maidservants hurried in with plates that had been warmed in the oven.
“Please dig in,” Queen Tatiana said in a pleasant enough voice, quite the contrast to the viciousness she’d shown us on our arrival. “Make yourselves athome.” Her eyes flicked to Toryn down the row.
Ah.
As I filled my plate, Queen Tatiana introduced us to her companions. They were a family come to visit from Dalvar, a coastal port city on the far eastern side of Aesir. A lord and lady and their three grown children, all with brilliant silver hair. I quietly observed them, searching for any sign of that eerie darkness I’d felt from the other storm fae, but everything about them seemed normal. If anything, they were unexpectedly normal. Their tunics were emerald green and embroidered with fine gold thread along the collars, but the material was standard cotton instead of more expensive silk. And by the nervous glances they kept giving their queen, I didn’t think they were used to being in her company like this.
“Lord Byrne here,” Queen Tatiana said with a wicked glint in her eye, “was just telling me the most interesting story. Weren’t you, Lord Byrne?”
Kalen, who sat beside me, took a long, slow bite of his eggs while Lord Byrne fiddled uneasily with his fork.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” the lord said in a quiet voice I could barely hear over the din of the Great Hall. “There’ve been encounters with strange creatures in the harbor, you see. They destroyed two of our ships a couple months past. Killed every fae on board. We’d never seen anything like it.”
I sat up a little straighter. Strange beasts? “What did they look like?” I couldn’t help but ask. “Did they resemble a scorpion?”
He shook his head. “Oh, no. Giant octopuses, more like, with spikes on each and every tentacle.”
I fought the urge to shudder.
Toryn put down his fork and frowned. “A giant octopus? But we haven’t even seen a normal octopus in our waters in centuries. We thought they’d died out.”
“We?” Tatiana’s teeth flashed as delight flashed in her eyes. “Ourwaters? Toryn, my love, it sounds as though your heart is more with us than you’d like me to believe.”
Sighing, Toryn stood. He glared down at his mother as a muscle worked in his jaw. “This is some sort of trick of yours, isn’t it? You bring a lord in front of me who has an impossible problem to make me want to step in and help. But I can only do that if this realm is mine, right? If I take my position as your heir. I won’t do it, Mother. I will not murder my brother.”
The lord sucked in a breath and paled.
And with that, Toryn stalked out of the Great Hall without another word or even a parting glance over his shoulder. A moment passed in strained silence. Nellie dropped her napkin beside her plate and clutched my shoulder.
“I’m going to go speak with him,” she whispered to me.
“You do not need to whisper on my behalf, girl,” the queen said with a roll of her eyes. “I am not a weakling mortal who can’t hear words spoken right in front of me.”
Nellie’s face reddened, but she didn’t take the bait like I would have. Instead, she climbed over the bench and followed Toryn out the door. I was not my sister, though.
I turned back to the queen with narrowed eyes. “I wonder why the gods deemed it necessary to give the fae enhanced hearing. Perhaps it was because they realized you wouldn’t be able to survive without it.”
The table went eerily silent. Caedmon coughed.
But Tatiana just laughed even as the lord beside her grew paler. “Oberon told me a great deal of what he did to you silly Teine mortals. All those tales he wove of the world beyond the Bridge to Death. Funny how you still believe them, even after being free of him. The gods did not give the fae our gifts, girl. They’ve been ours since the dawning of time.”
I found that hard to believe. “You’re right. Oberon did lie to us, but I’d be careful assuming you know much more than we lowly Teine mortals do, especially when it comes to the gods.”
Tension thrummed through the Great Hall, and as the queen set her glittering eyes on me, I noticed the voices from the other tables had hushed, too. But that wasn’t the only thing I noticed. The anger inside me was scraping against my skin, desperate to reach out and slice that wicked smile off Tatiana’s face. I’d been so focused on the queen and Toryn and my sister and the weird humming down my spine, I’d forgotten to rein myself in—rein that darkness in. I fisted my hands and forced it back down, but the darkness did not like that.
Queen Tatiana gripped her knife and shoved it into a fried potato slice. “I know who you are, Tessa Baran of Teine. Oberon told me a great deal about you and your attempt to kill him in his own castle.”
A few gasps peppered the air, and I tried not to wince beneath the weight of a hundred stares.
