Twenty-Five
Tessa
Two days passed before the wind died. We took turns sleeping, rotating among guard duty by the door, snacking on what we could, bathing in the cold water that ran down from a hole in the ceiling every day, and resting as best we could. Still, I couldn’t sleep for more than a couple hours at a time. Every time I began to doze, the screaming wind jolted me awake.
Toryn seemed to be able to track the passing of the hours. On the third morning we’d been holed up in the room, the thunderous sounds faded so suddenly, it almost felt like a dream that they’d ever existed.
Kalen, who had been doing his pacing, yanked open the door and walked into the hallway. The rest of us followed close behind him. The corridor was a wreck. Carpets and tapestries were shredded. Chunks of broken wood littered the ground, along with a few piles of stone here and there that had somehow chipped off the walls.
Other than that, excruciating silence was our only answer until noise exploded all around us. Cheers echoed through the castle as the court celebrated the end of another deadly storm.
* * *
The rest of the day passed quickly. We joined the storm fae in their efforts to clean up. We cleared away the debris, boarded up holes, and replaced tapestries with freshly woven ones. The Queen’s Shadow circled past once to check on us, but we didn’t see the queen herself until that night.
The Great Hall was packed full for the nightly feast. After days spent trapped inside their rooms, the storm fae of Gailfean were eager to drink and eat the night away and celebrate their continued survival. A dozen tables were crammed inside, and hundreds of fae filled the benches. Booming laughter, clinking glasses, and the enthusiastic scraping of knives against plates echoed through the cavernous room. And just above it all, at her private table on the elevated dais, the queen watched.
She had invited us to join her, though she’d hardly gifted us with a word since we’d sat at her table. I was sandwiched between Toryn, who sat beside his mother, and Nellie. Kalen and Fenella were further down the table with Caedmon, who had kept his mouth shut since the argument. We all faced forward, looking down at the feast.
“Your people are happy here, my son,” the queen murmured on Toryn’s other side.
“Of course they are. They survived, and now they’re being fed until they burst,” he said. “Anyone would be happy in this situation.”
“Except you.”
“I’m glad everyone is safe. I take it there were no casualties?”
I watched as she slid her gaze sideways. “Only one was wounded. The guard who attempted to stop you from leaving your rooms.”
“We didn’t wound him.” He gave her a tense smile in return. “Besides, just as we told him, we aren’t prisoners in this castle. I am the prince. We wanted to have a quick wander before the winds shook the halls. It was our last chance to stretch our legs. And we were glad of it when the storm lasted for days.”
“If you’re going to throw around your title, you need to do something to back it up, my dear son. Either you’re a prince or you’re not. Which is it?”
Nellie suddenly coughed, a hacking, jagged sound that made several of the fae at a nearby table stop eating and stare.
“You all right?” I asked, worry flickering through me. Oberon had always warned us about disease, but the mortals of Teine had never endured it. Illness had never ravaged our bodies or left us weak in our beds. That only happened due to exhaustion after all the toiling in the fields—exhaustion and fear.
But Oberon’s protective barrier was gone now. Out here, in the real world, we were susceptible to light knew what, and I’d been so focused on violent threats—shadowfiends, storms, the gods raining destruction on our heads—that I’d forgotten all about disease. The fae did not need to worry about it, of course, but we mortals did.
Nellie’s eyes watered, and she leaned forward to speak around me. “Queen Tatiana, Toryn has told me so much about your healing powers. This cough, it sounds like illness, does it not? Can you help?”
I frowned.
The queen’s brows arched into a thin line on her smooth forehead. “Yes. Although I have to say, I’m surprised he mentioned that to you. He hasn’t acknowledged my healing magic in years.”
“I just thought she should understand the irony of your power,” he replied with a tight smile. “You’re so keen for your children to destroy each other. Meanwhile, you have the magic to heal us all.”
“Healing?” I did not glance at the queen’s onyx necklace, though I’d noted it when we joined the table. As always, she wore it this night. “That’s a unique gift.”
It was so achingly familiar to the power Oberon had possessed with his gemstone necklace. He had only been able to extend lives and provide protection to the mortals because Andromeda’s essence had been split in two, and he controlled the half with the power to heal. So where did the queen gain this kind of magic? Could that gemstone necklace hold another piece of Andromeda instead of a different god? The thought made my knees turn to jelly.
Queen Tatiana merely smiled. “Indeed.”
Nellie coughed again, louder this time. “A unique gift, one I will sorely need if this is some kind of human disease. Or could the storm have made me ill, Your Grace?”
Toryn stood, his chair scraping against the stone. He took Nellie’s hand and pulled her to her feet. “Let me take you back to your room. I’m sure I can find a tonic that will help—”
“Nonsense,” the queen snapped. She quickly stood and offered her hand to Nellie. “Come with me. I will make sure you’re all sorted out.”
