I took a deep breath.
It did nothing to banish the scent of smoke from my nostrils.
Was I imagining things, or were the King of Naenden’s gloved hands smoking?
“Good evening, Your Majesties,” I said, bowing to the couple who skirted the edges of the dance floor.
Queen Asha gave me a welcoming, lopsided grin.
Her husband did not.
“Prince,” he said, eyeing me with suspicion, flecks of amusement in his tone.
Okay, so he could definitely scent me sweating. Great.
“Congratulations on your marriage,” said Queen Asha, winking. Or perhaps she was simply blinking. It was difficult to tell given her missing eye. “It seems my brother-in-law didn’t do too much damage. Though I’m starting to wonder what the two of them discussed at the last ball, given both his and my sister’s dance cards seemed to have been tampered with.”
“Well, you know how those sort of balls go. One always ends up dancing with everyone other than the person they truly want to be dancing with. Anyway, we’re grateful you could attend the wedding on such short notice.”
“Indeed,” the King of Naenden said, lava swirling in his molten eyes. “We’d hardly crossed the threshold of our palace when news arrived that the cancelled wedding hadn’t been cancelled after all. We hardly had the chance to wipe the sand from our shoes before having the privilege of trekking right back into the Sahli.”
Annoyance pricked at my spine, but before I could spit out a retort, Queen Asha turned to her husband, screwed up her brow, and said, “That’s quite a complaint coming from someone who, at one point, planned to send out wedding invitations once every mooncycle.”
I tensed, my shoulders knotting, my feet swerving to face the queen, readying to knock her out of the way of the king’s oncoming blaze of judgment.
But the corner of the king’s mouth just twitched, and he let out a somewhat disarmed chuckle. He glanced down at his tiny wife, and the fire in his eyes seemed to settle into a warm, golden glow. “You make a fair point,” he said, tucking his hands behind his back as I tried to keep my jaw from falling off its hinges. Then his gaze returned to me, embers of amusement flickering in the edges of his irises. “It’s our greatest pleasure to attend your and Princess Elynore’s wedding. I’ve scraped the corners of my mind, but I simply cannot come up with anything I’d rather be doing with my time.”
Queen Asha elbowed him lightly, and his subdued smirk broke into a grin that overtook his entire face.
Fates, the male was good looking. In that unshaven, rugged kind of way that usually had other males (not me, of course) counting how many decades he’d been alive to be able to sport a beard like that.
Not many. Not many at all.
“So,” Asha asked, after she’d stifled her giggles. “What’s the actual reason for rushing the ceremony…” She gestured to the ballroom, to the dozens of dancers swirling about, “when this is certainly not the first night the two of you have called each other male and wife?”
“I…uh…” My tongue scraped the edge of my mouth, as if it thought it would find an answer there. “How did you know?”
She winked. “Sleuth, remember?”
Kiran let out a huff of air. “Nosy, is what she meant to say.”
Asha nodded to my left hand. “Neither of you have taken your gloves off all night. One would think that a happy couple would want to make a display of receiving their marriage tattoos once they entered a fae marriage bargain.” She held out her own hand, showing off the inky swirls of flames that snaked from her hand to her wrist. “Unless, of course, the tattoos were already there.”
Indeed, the ink on my skin seemed to warm at the queen’s mention of it. The etching was a geometric mountain range that marked me as Ellie’s. It had appeared as soon as Ellie and I had entered into the marriage bargain, a matching design inking her hand as well.
“Fine. You caught us.”
Asha leaned over, peering down my glove as I peeled it away from my skin, just enough for her to glimpse the edges of the tattoo.
The king spoke, his voice low and rumbling. “Which brings us back to Asha’s question. What do you want?”
That seemed a bit forward for someone whose wife had come to me seeking information, but whatever. They were right. Initially, I’d intended to travel to Naenden to ask council from Queen Asha regarding Blaise’s condition. But even if I could have discovered anything helpful, I’d have to travel all the way back to Dwellen before the information could be of any use. Besides, what if Queen Asha needed to examine Blaise herself? That was already quite a bit to ask of a queen, placing her in a room with a dangerous magical being. Might as well remove the travel barrier.
“Well, since you’re already here,” I said, to which the king crossed his hands in front of his body this time, squaring his shoulders and looking down upon me like I was the one who hadn’t yet passed my first century. “I thought perhaps we both might possess information that would be mutually beneficial.”
Queen Asha’s expression went stoic, and King Kiran tensed, his ears readjusting, as if to soak in every word.
I wished they wouldn’t look like that, like we were talking about the Fate of the realms, or something equally as abhorrent.
I lowered my voice, thankful that Ellie had selected the loudest set of minstrels in town just for this occasion. “Last time we saw one another, you asked about Madame LeFleur’s mysterious death. Let’s just say we’ve discovered what happened. Well. Sort of. We know who did it. What we’ve yet to understand is how.”
“Go on,” the king drawled, though I thought I sensed a bit of desperation slip through.
“Before I tell you what I know, there’s a condition.”
“Of course there is,” said Kiran, flexing his enormous hands, but Queen Asha absentmindedly slipped her fingers into his, and he calmed.
“The murder happened at the hands of a spirit. A magical parasite of some sort, who took control of a human. If I tell you who she is, I need you to swear not to hurt her.”
The king and queen of Naenden exchanged concerned glances, and it was the shadow of fear in their eyes that had the hairs of my arms standing on end.
“I vow not to harm the host,” said the King of Naenden. Instantly, almost imperceptibly, the aura of the room shifted, signaling the fae curse had set in.
Asha crinkled her brow and extended her hand. As a human, she was capable of lying, unless she made the bargain directly with a fae. Quickly, I grabbed her outstretched arm. “I will bring no harm to the host should you share all the information you know,” she said.
Again, the subtlest of shifts.
Then I told the King and Queen of Naenden everything.
