Page 41 of Crowned By the Fae King

"Actually?" I said, lips twitching with good humor. "I think it kind of is."

Prophets & Miracles

Unsurprisingly, dinner was a tense affair. Two hours wasn't really all that much time, when it came right down to it; there were probably still courtiers dangling from the mountain in tree roots, and the people who were able to attend were all shaken. Even the people who hadn't rated being present for the gift presentations looked spooked. Rumor traveled fast, and the gory scene would be easy to go look at if you were bold enough.

Luckily, the event wasn't a milling-around kind. We spent four hours sitting in fancy chairs, eating tiny servings of the fae version of haute cuisine, with every wary eye on Cass.

The strain of all those eyes on him left every muscle down my back tight. Cass kept iron hold of his command over his body, breathing with regimented care and forbidding our bodies from dumping adrenaline into our veins. The contrast of the stress and the lack of hormonal stress response left me antsy, but it was better than a display of pique. At least Cass just looked grim instead of like a loose cannon.

That wasn't to say it was a particularly good impression. The enormous banquet hall managed to be oppressive, the light from the many lamps not chasing away the shadows and the music sounding tinny, like the players were trapped behind glass. I caught Danica suppressing grimaces a couple times as she tried bites of food, too. Either the cooks had been too freaked-out to do well, or Cass' stress was affecting even the food in the palace.

It tasted good to me, but that was no guarantee of anything. I'd been eating rations at an illegal mine for seven months, spent six weeks starving in the forest, and had no idea what fae cuisine was supposed to taste like. Maybe all the spices were wrong, or something.

Nobody wanted to spend the witching hours hanging out with the guy who'd shredded a war-dragon while casually ignoring being incinerated, so we didn't have to stay late after all. Cass got to meditate for an hour before bed, I got to take a bubble bath, and we both passed out without Cass needing to knock us out with healing magic.

I woke up and puttered around while Cass took a quick morning shower and had another meditation session. It was a pleasant experience; I got the sense he was affecting me more, not less, but the result was that I felt centered and calm, and the constant susurrus of the Court quieted to a gentle murmur.

The two of us headed out together in a much better mood than the day before. Cass was even smiling, not just at jokes or anything, but the sort of constant slight smile people wear when they're having a good day. It left a fluttery feeling in my chest. If it hadn't been entirely undignified, I would have been skipping down the hall.

Unfortunately, breakfast was not to be. Cass and I made it all the way down the hallway out of the royal residences and into the main body of the palace before the Royal Seneschal appeared out of nowhere and beelined towards us. Given that she was easily five foot ten and built like a fertility statue, that was no small feat. She must have been lying in wait for Cass.

"Your Majesties," she said, giving us a bow with her hand over her heart. "Though I know you must surely be weary of trials, I must lay another at your feet. The worshippers…" Disgust flickered across her face. "They have become insistent."

Cass rubbed at his temples with one hand. "How insistent, Hierarch Paloma?" he asked, sounding weary. "Surely the death of one dragon isn't anything compared to the ascension. I'd prefer not to bow to their interpretation of events, nor give them the satisfaction of having become too loud to ignore."

"It wasn't the dragon." She glanced pointedly towards a knot of loitering courtiers, and then at me. "Perhaps we could discuss this in a more discreet location?"

"Of course," Cass said smoothly, with the sort of tone of someone who wanted to do anything but that. He didn't even touch the stone wall; it merely parted, revealing a bleak hallway with a brightly-lit round sitting-room beyond. "If you will, hierarch?"

Paloma smiled, in the tight way of angry women facing dangerous men, and walked through the doorway.

I followed her before Cass could make that decision for me. His wings chimed from his surprise, the feathers slicking down into a blade, but he didn't try to stop me, and he didn't say anything about it. He followed me in, and when I took a lounging seat on one of the two brocade couches, he stood behind me like a bodyguard and set his hands on the back of it.

The door closed behind him, leaving us ensconced in a room surrounded entirely by bedrock. It was a pretty place, if a bit claustrophobic; octagonal instead of truly round, with frescos on each wall of a pastoral landscape viewed through arches, as if we were in a gazebo instead of entombed in the palace. Aside from the two couches, there was a carved coffee table between them and torch-shaped sconces in each corner of the room.

The only other decoration was a single globe-shaped lamp dangling from the domed ceiling. This secret room had to have been designed exactly for this purpose: a place guaranteed to be free of listening ears and prying eyes, accessible only by the Monarch.

I bet there's secret sex rooms, too, I thought, examining the place with fascination. Upkeep had to be a pain in the ass. It wasn't like the maids had easy access. Probably only Cass knew how many of these little rooms there even were.

The Seneschal took the seat across from us, which was probably a power move. I'd gotten the vibe that she didn't really like Cass, and she wasn't doing anything to correct that opinion. "Her Majesty likely doesn't need to be present for this discussion," she said smoothly, directing her smile solely at my soulmate.

"Quyen hasn't been made aware of all the political difficulties yet, of course, but she's my soulmate and Queen," Cass said in a pleasant voice. "Surely you don't intend to suggest that the Queen be left out of the dealings of her own Court."

"I'm sure she didn't mean it that way," I said, giving Paloma a smile of my own. "I saw some of the cultists coming in, hierarch. Cass isn't a god, and they're wrong to treat him like one. He was chosen by Mercy, and Mercy's goddess is Ithronel. Isn't that true?"

His surprised pleasure filtered into me, like sunlight shining off the waves on a cloudy day. The grip of his hands on the couch eased. So did the tension in his wings, the feathers rousing slightly so that they no longer formed one smooth surface.

Paloma examined me for a moment, her expression curious rather than upset. "Many mortals are among those flocking to the palace in false worship. After the events of yesterday, how are you so certain of your soulmate's humility?"

I lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "There's many fae, as well, if what I saw was any indication of numbers. But…" I glanced up at Cass, who offered me a half-smile, his dark eyes hopeful. I smiled back before looking towards the Royal Seneschal. "When the Court first caught me, I admit that I thought I was meeting a powerful spirit. I even gave the Court offerings. Cass isn't the Court, though. I mean, he is, but the Court is also its own thing, and it's a lot more powerful than we are." I shrugged again, a little helplessly. "He may be god-like, but that's because of the Court's power, not because he is a god. He can die, hierarch. Can a god?"

I wasn't sure why I was so certain that death was on the table. The bandits had called me deathless—one of the Deathless. Something told me I wasn't, though, and that neither was Cass. Maybe it was Mercy, winding through us, the Court making sure we knew not to get too big for our britches. We answered to it, not the other way around. The crowns were to remind us of that, even when we weren't wearing them.

"Even the Deathless may die, but first, they must be utterly forgotten," Paloma said, in a sonorous voice, as if she was intoning a prophecy. Her full mouth curved up. "Some say that death visits twice: first when our lives end, and then when our memories are forgotten. For the gods, the order is different."

Like fae healing, I thought, my brows drawing together. Two truths, lying side-by-side. Something could flip their order: unwounded instead of wounded; memory instead of vitality.

Cass had said that fae healing could be broken. Could deathlessness?

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