Page 45 of Fae Champion

“Everyone assumes I’ll die…” I stated, mostly to myself. “This is one majorly messed up place, Pru. Why would anyone want to live here?”

“Not many do, milady. Most are here because there’s no better place for us to go.”

I crossed the room to check out Pru’s work in the full-length mirror of the armoire. She’d clothed me in a delicately feminine dress of happy periwinkle blue, with a flared skirt that revealed the tops of my ankles and dainty matching stilettos. Walking in the shoes was still a challenge, but I’d improved greatly since the first time.

“What of the human world?” I asked, angling my head this way and that to make out the serpentine pattern that trailed around my head, wrapping a modest diadem. I tapped the glittering crystals set within the gold.

“And this? You’ve never put me in one of these before.” With the blush, rose lips, and blue eyeshadow, I looked so different from my usual self.

“There’s nowhere else for us to go, not eventhe human world. I dressed you for battle,” Pru explained, “just of a different sort.”

I wouldn’t admit it to her or anyone else, but I liked my appearance. In Nightguard, I’d never had reason or opportunity to dress up. The goblin hadn’t adorned me in the garish styles and colors flaunted by the courtiers, but I looked … quite pretty.

I fingered the delicate tiara. “Is this to remind the queen I’m the king’s daughter?”

Pru straightened, drawing her shoulders back and setting her jaw with ferocity. “No. That’s to remind the queen you haveroyalblood in you. It’s why the land saved you.”

I spun around so fast I tottered before regaining a semblance of grace on my heels.

“Have you heard anything more about that?”

“No more than the expected.”

“Which is?”

“That you must be a royal close enough to the pure-blooded elves of the Golden Forest for the land to want to save you. And that maybe there’s another bloodline out there from early on, when our ancestors first arrived here, that separated from the queen’s long ago. Maybe it’s connected to the king. And maybe, just maybe, you could be a new heir to the throne.”

“What about Rush?”

“The fae like him.” She shrugged her slender shoulders. “You could marry him.”

“Marry Rush?” I sputtered and chortled. “No, no way,” even as a tingle zipped up and down my body,conjuring an image of me astride him in the tub. “He’s a spy for the queen.”

Pru shrugged another time. I couldn’t decide if she, like everyone else I’d discussed the topic with, really thought an arranged marriage was no big deal, or if she was pretending.

“He’s also risked a lot for you already,” she said. “Besides, it’s all just empty hope in the end. If you become heir, you’d have to do whatever the queen tells you to anyway.”

“How’s that different from now?”

“Now you’re not as big a threat to the queen.”

I scoffed. “Which is why she keeps trying to kill me…”

“Whoever becomes the next crowned princess, the queen will rule every aspect of her life so it suits her needs.”

“Until the princess becomes more powerful than she is.”

“That will never happen. Not until the queen’s dead.”

“Lucky for us, that result aligns with my current goals.”

Pru smiled at me, but it was frail, tenuous as a spider’s web assaulted by whipping gales.

It was the smile one gave a person whose fate they believed already dealt.

“Iwillmake sure she pays for all she’s done,” I swore fiercely, as much for myself as for her.

“Of course you will,Mistress.”

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