King Grath stood and thumped a staff against the floor to quiet the buzz. Even my breath stilled.
“I have summoned the council to get justice for the kidnapping and torture of Princess Isay by the court of Felroth and discuss lifting the feeding mandate from the court of Vindica,” Grath announced, looking at each individual group solemnly until he faced the shadowed mess where the emotion-feeders stood, and his lip curved outward in a snarl.
If he ever had good enough relations with Felroth to sleep with Karmuth’s mother, his dislike for them had grown over the years.
“From what I see, your princess is perfectly fine. If ever she was kidnapped, it does not show,” a low growl came from the midst of the shadows. King Rothian, I presumed. “It is outrageous you’d seek justice for something that’s obviously a farce. This gathering is a waste of all of our time.”
“Shut it, Rothian. It is easy to find out if Grath is lying.” An ethereal calm filled me as the new voice spoke up.
A Hessian covered in a light pastel garment that floated around him as he took a step closer to the throne gave the shadows a distasteful glance before his eyes travelled to me. Tenderness softened his hard, edged features into an attractive sight.
His eyes studied me as if he intended to memorise every aspect, even the way I shifted closer to Karmuth under his attention. That must’ve been Prince Nefari.
“Princess Isay,” my father addressed me as if my title was the most natural thing in the world. To him I suppose it was, since he knew all along he was my father. I’d been a princess long before people started calling me that. “Would you like to join me here below, please, so that we can get to the bottom of this?”
Pressing my lips tight to stop myself from biting at the lower one, I searched his glowing figure for any semblance to what I saw in the mirror. I’ve obviously gotten my hair and eyes from my mother, but the shape of his nose was familiar to me, so was the half-smile on his face.
“This will not hurt you,” Prince Nefari assured me.
I looked to my mother, who nodded in encouragement, and Karmuth, who squeezed my hand one last time before he let go of it. Hesitantly, I took a step closer to the fae beckoning me. I only made it off the podium when another fae spoke up.
“May I suggest that the reading is done by someone not related to the princess?”
I froze in my steps at the authority in that voice. I’d heard that voice exiling me and my mother from Elverstone not too long ago.
“I suppose that means you’re excluding me, my father, and my aunts, yourself, and your daughters. Who then would you like to proceed with?” Nefari’s voice held a cold undertone as he turned toward the King of Elverstone. “Certainly, you don’t wish for the reading to be done by a Felrothian?”
I would have not understood the exchange had my mother not filled me in on my family tree just hours ago.
King Ilario was old, and he looked like it. Fae aged barely noticeably, and a few centuries old fae didn’t look much older than those only several decades old. More than a millennia later, my grandfather’s face wrinkled up in just the right places to portray both laugh lines and frowns that were part of his responsibility-filled lifestyle. Surrounded by a greenish hue that was easier to look at than my father’s glow and much better than the darkness of King Rothian, he did not look threatening. His words, however, did not put him on my side.
I darted my eyes between the three represented courts. Closer now, I could make out a looming shape inside the darkness of Felroth, and it was sneering at me.
“No Felrothian can execute an accurate reading,” another Hessian spoke up, his voice smooth like Nefari’s but not as biting.
He wasn’t insulting the Felrothians, just stating a fact. He also looked like Nefari with his blond cropped hair and blue eyes, a shade darker than Karmuth’s. That was King Neprion, also my grandfather.
He added, “I do not trust the interpreter you brought along.”
King Illario’s interpreter, the only fae in his party apparently not related to me, did not appear offended as if it had been decided long before they arrived that he would be so easily dismissed.
I thought Hessia and Elverstone were getting along. It had sounded that way from my mother’s story, but they were definitely not getting along now. King Ilario had intended to bring the question of my heritage up, and only substituting one eligible option among the fae he brought to do the reading should his concern be taken seriously.
What he meant to achieve by it was anyone’s guess. Withholding information? Being the one to control the meeting? Had he planned on somehow using this gathering in his own interest?
He had no love for me, that’s for sure.
“And I do not trust your son,” King Ilario pointed out.
“Would anyone care to explain the holdup?” Rothian gritted his teeth. “I don’t care who does the bloody reading as long as it doesn’t take up more of my time.”
“You should care more,” King Ilario said. “For a father to make a reading on his daughter is never impartial. For the same reasons none of my family may execute the task.”
Shock flickered across King Rothian’s features, and he appeared less nonchalant then. Way less nonchalant. Shrouded in darkness, he looked worried. “What you’re saying is that you’ve committed treason by keeping an inter-courts child a secret from the rest of the courts. A royal child.”
“If you think that’s brought our courts closer together, you’re wrong,” Prince Nefari countered calmly. “If anything, we’ve never stood more divided.”
“It was agreed upon to prohibit such relations and yet I stand before a Vindican king mated to a naturel with a daughter that is more mixed than anyone alive should be allowed to be. This meeting should be held about your crimes, not mine.”
“If you think your court has not committed the same treason, you are blind to your subjects’ misbehaving and should be dethroned as we speak,” Grath’s angry voice boomed over the rest in the throne room.
How dare he put Karmuth in the middle of this! How dare he use his own son as a weapon!
“My court does not sleep with an enemy!” King Rothian shouted.
I took a step back. I wanted to go back to Karmuth, but I didn’t want to draw more attention to either of us. I was unfamiliar with the proceedings of dealing with mixed-blood fae, but it didn’t sound like anything I’d enjoy going through.
Looking back at Karmuth made me realise he held no such high self-preservation. While his eyes were narrowed and lips drawn into a tight line, the tension in his body suggested he was barely holding himself back his anger. He would place himself between me and anything that might harm me without hesitation.
“Interesting, because I could have sworn my mother was a Felrothian,” Karmuth drawled out as he stepped off the podium to join me between the raging courts.
I saw him sharing eye contact with Grath before he moved and disliked my stepfather a little bit more than before. How I managed to hate him and yet consider him better than the rest of the royals was beyond me.
“I’ve got her skills to prove it,” he continued, “as do I have the skills of my Vindican father and Hessian grandfather. I’m proof that your court has faltered at least twice. We are not here to question the bloodlines, Your Majesty. We are indeed here to shed light into your court’s crimes. Our court’s, if I may be so forward.”
“What are you doing?” I hissed.
While it comforted me greatly to not be standing on my own against these bickering fools, I didn’t want my ease to come from the account of his welfare.
