I wasn’t sure that was a compliment.

I was also fairly certain this was the point at which it became rude if I didn’t ask the Queen of Naenden out onto the dance floor. Which I would have been inclined to do, had her husband not been lurking in the corner.

Everyone in this room was well aware of his reaction to his first wife cheating on him.

It would make history books. It had made history books.

And so had the tiny human standing before me, waiting to be asked to dance.

One waltz was far from cheating, sure, but the King of Naenden seemed like the type to murder anyone who laid a hand on his wife—innocent or not.

I wondered if she was into that.

Even now the King of Naenden sulked in the corner, quieter and less gregarious than his twin by manifold. Well, sulking probably wasn’t the right word. It was more like he was reserving himself, his shoulders tight, his spine rigid, his fire-wick eyes scanning the room as he brought his chalice to his mouth more times than I imagined he actually sipped it. That was something I’d noticed about people who kept to themselves. They were always sipping something, holding something in their hands.

It was almost as if the King of Naenden—

“Kiran doesn’t enjoy crowds. I made him promise me the last dance, though he’d rather be in the gardens,” said the Queen of Naenden, breaking me from my thoughts. When I turned my attention back to her, a girlish smile curved at her lips, as if she had referenced an inside joke I wasn’t a part of.

The smile softened her harsh features, and a barb of guilt panged at my stomach for not noticing it before—the person behind the scars.

This woman, with all her rough edges, her mismatched features, had calmed the fiery torrent and saved a nation’s worth of women with her words alone, and probably a little help from the Old Magic that was rumored to possess her.

I wasn’t sure what I’d expected from the human Queen of Naenden. It wasn’t this.

“If you don’t ask me to dance soon, others will think you find me ugly.”

I blinked.

She blinked back.

“You’re not exactly the source of my hesitation,” I said, shifting my gaze to the hulking monstrosity of a male in the corner. “I’d rather not end up burned to cinders.”

She shrugged. “Yet you risk inciting his wrath should you insult my appearance. You truly are between a boulder and a vat of quicksand, aren’t you?”

I eyed her with suspicion. “Are you sure my dearly betrothed didn’t put you up to this?”

She scanned the room. “Is she the type? If so, perhaps I should leave you be and go dance with her. It seems as if she’s the more fun of the two of you.”

I let out a laugh that bordered on a wheeze. “Ellie Payne? More fun than me? Please don’t torture me with such nonsense.”

I offered my hand, and she took it.

The Queen of Naenden was not a skilled dancer, but she seemed aware of it, because she allowed me to lead.

Which honestly was a bit of relief, after dancing with Valia Nightingale. She’d grown bored of me after the second dance. Or so she said.

She’d probably just gotten irritated with me staring at Ellie and the Naenden prince.

I couldn’t help whose feet I stepped on when I was distracted.

“I misjudged you,” said the queen, as innocently if that were an appropriate entry point into a new conversation.

It was my turn to quirk a brow. “Is that so?”

“Your reputation is rather colorful when it comes to women, yet you hold me as if your life depends on setting a chasm between us.”

Indeed. A baby cow would have had leg room in the gap I’d measured between my body and the Queen of Naenden’s.

“You kind of just say what you think, don’t you?” I said, my gaze immediately flicking to Ellie. I immediately regretted doing so, as I caught a glimpse of the Naenden prince dipping her, her long beautiful neck exposed as she tossed back her head in a delighted laugh.

My dinner soured in my stomach.

She shrugged. “After my accident, my father lost hope that I would ever wed, so he raised me like a ruffian.”

“You mean like a male,” I said.

She laughed. “Yes, like a male. I don’t think he had the energy to sand away the crude edges.”

“He probably secretly liked you how you were and was glad for an excuse not to.”

The Queen of Naenden beamed. “Yes, I imagine so. I’m fond of him myself.”

For the second time tonight, her harsh features seemed to melt away, and I thought I caught a glimpse of the beauty her husband beheld in her. There had been whispers that the human queen had enchanted her husband, bewitched him with that “stolen” magic of hers. I supposed everyone thought it unlikely, if not impossible, for a fae as powerful as the King of Naenden to love a human so disfigured.

Those people were wrong.

Well, mostly.

I had a sneaking suspicion the queen had enchanted her husband, just not in the way everyone else assumed.

She went quiet for a while, and I noted, “My reputation with women might precede me, but I would never dream of coming on to a married woman.”

“Hm,” she said. “And what about coming on to a single woman once you’re married?”

I almost choked.

She shrugged unapologetically. “You can blame my father for the question.”

Again, I glanced at Ellie, her smile like a beacon drawing me to her, yet like the sun in how it stung to watch her dancing with the Naenden prince. “I won’t be unfaithful to my wife. No matter what the papers may claim about me.”

A slight smile curved at the queen’s gnarled lips. “I’m glad to hear it.”

I cocked my head, examining the woman before me. She was younger, far younger, than I’d first realized, the scars aging her face. But if I focused on her features, the ones original to her, I realized she mustn’t have been more than two decades old.

She’d barely surpassed childhood, barely lived a life, yet she’d thrown it away to save her people.

Something stirred in me.