“He’s not our prince,” said Leif, snatching a bruised apple from a bowl on the desk. He bit into it, face falling at the taste, then put it back in the bowl.
“He is if you intend to live in this country. Also, that’s disgusting,” Marai said, indicating the bitten apple. Leif rolled his eyes, removing the fruit from the bowl again, as Marai came to the front of the desk. “Is that the decree?”
Marai recognized Keshel’s curly, smooth handwriting, and someone else’s tidy scrawl. Holfast’s.
“I’m making sure nothing is missed or easy to subvert,” Keshel said, eyes drafting across the page in hungry strokes. Keshel, despite his reluctance to be in Nevandia, enjoyed the task and jurisdiction he’d been given.
“Have you been treated well so far?” Marai asked.
“The servants and guards have avoided us,” said Raife with a shrug. “Keshel’s the one who’s had any contact with humans since the meeting.”
“Holfast, Fenir, and Vorae stayed on the other side of the table. They listened as I spoke,” Keshel said, but his voice seemed hollow. “No one made a move to kill me. So it went fine.”
“Are you comfortable?” Marai pressed, and Kadiatu whirled around to face her.
“Oh, the rooms are amazing! I don’t want to move into a gloomy old cottage,” she said, scrunching up her face comically.
“I’d rather be in my own space, left alone, than feeling eyes on me at all times,” said Thora with a tsk. “I swear, the servants have their ears pressed to the doorways and walls. I feel like an attraction in a circus.”
“How do you know what a circus is like?” asked Aresti.
Thora waved her off. “Keshel’s books.”
Raife sat next to her on the couch. “The guards don’t trust us at all. It’s going to take a long time for everyone to adjust. Us and them.”
Marai wished there wasn’t an us and them, but she knew better than to expect that to change instantaneously.
An hour later, a crisp rap came at the door. None of the fae moved; their luminous eyes were as wide as shining moons. Grumbling, Marai opened the door to reveal a group of kitchen servants holding trays of food.
“D-dinner, milady?” asked one girl with a quivering voice.
Marai stepped back to let them in. The fae got to their feet, backing closer to the walls, and watched attentively until the servants hastened out.
Aresti was the first to the trays. She examined a bowl of wilted leafy vegetables that were supposed to be green, but instead were brown and lackluster. She grimaced. “Are they trying to poison us with this?”
“I already told you that Rayghast is corrupting their lands, ruining their harvests,” Marai said. “You should be thankful to have any food at all.”
“I’m sure this is the best they can do, under the circumstances,” said Kadiatu, sticking her finger in a red sauce. Her face lit up with delight. “Doesn’t taste poisoned.”
“You can’t often taste poison, Kadi,” Leif said under his breath.
Thora frowned. “I doubt they’d try to off us now.” But she still gave the trays a dubious inspection.
Keshel grabbed a porcelain plate and silver utensils, all sporting the Nevandian sunburst crest. He served himself some pork, potatoes, and the wilted greens. The others fell in line behind him and sat around the fire. The food wasn’t terrible, but the pork was thin and gangly, potatoes mealy, and the salad bitter. However, the fae weren’t the kind of people to turn their noses up at anything. Marai knew they were grateful for the meal and the comfortable rooms, despite their hesitancy to trust humans.
The fae wasted nothing, and once everything was eaten, the group dispersed to their rooms for the night. Marai skulked up and down the dark corridor, hoping to run into Ruenen, but he never showed.
Holfast has him busy.
Something about that made Marai somewhat crestfallen. Why? Why was she feeling so glum when things were going remarkably well?
He’s not mine anymore.
Marai closed her eyes and leaned against the wall. Ruenen now had a dozen councilmen to provide him advice. He had hundreds of servants and guards to wait on him, and thousands of subjects to idolize him. He had duties to attend to, people to meet, a war to win. Marai was doomed to blend into the background.
Everything had changed. Their relationship could no longer be what it was . . . whatever it was.
The torches flickered and the castle quieted, settling into slumber. Marai returned to her own room. The refined space was too large for one person. She sat down on the bed, sinking into its plush blankets. Was she worthy of such things? These were the softest sheets she’d ever touched. She had a tended fire in the hearth, warm food in her belly.
Normally, she would have dove under the blankets and fallen straight to sleep, but her mind was awake, tapping against her skull like a child at a windowpane. She paced the rug in front of the fire, her feet bare.
Nosficio would hopefully return tomorrow and bring word from the North. That, at least, was a discussion Marai could participate in. Otherwise, she was completely useless to Ruenen.
She paced and paced until she heard a soft knock, startling her. Marai pulled open the door a crack. Ruenen stood in the hall. The guards patrolled the far end of the hallway, backs turned to Marai’s room.
“I’m sorry, were you asleep?” Ruenen asked in a whisper. Marai shook her head. “Can I come in?”
She opened the door wider to let him pass. Ruenen’s vest was gone and his shirt was untucked. He bit his lower lip as he stood in the center of the room.
“I . . . I can’t sleep.”
“Neither can I,” Marai said, shutting the door carefully so as not to make a sound. Fae, with their pointed ears, had excellent hearing. She didn’t want anyone to know that the prince had come to her room in the middle of the night.
Ruenen raked a hand through his already tousled hair. “Today was . . . it’s been a lot of change.”
Marai didn’t miss the tightness in his voice, the muscles of his shoulders.
“The speech was rousing. You comported yourself with grace and strength. No one else could have done better.”
