Page 13 of Fae Crown

Zako would have my hide for my lack of control.

I forced my grimace to contort into what was supposed to pass for an impartial smile.

The female nearest me, who was adorned with unnaturally yellow hair, cringed and turned to face front.

Right. I had to do better than this, a whole lot better.

The announcer continued in a predictable order, calling out the names and full titles of the sycophants I’d grown accustomed to seeing flitting around the queen. The more willing they were to kiss her wicked ass and engage in her evil fantasies, the closer to the front of the line they were.

The voluptuous Coretta, her voluminous bosom pushed enthusiastically toward her throat, immediately followed Natania. Next came Malina, the female who’d volunteered to join the queen in her bed, promising untold pleasures.

On and on went the list. Many of the names and faces I recognized, several I didn’t. Without exception, every name was accompanied by a title marking the woman as an important ranking member of Embermere’s nobility.

Among them, a few mentions surprised me. Octavia Lily Rose was new to the treachery of the courtiers, a lovely innocence trailing her like the scent of perfume. She was a mere scaless, the penultimate lowest title on the hierarchical ladder. Only a lady—what most fae believed me to be—was lower than she. Octavia, however, was likely to inherit the position of visdrakess. Regardless, I suspected the queen was so adamant about including Octavia in events the scaless clearly didn’t want to attend solely to corrupt her. Everyone else appeared to be in a great hurry to become thequeen’s plaything—or better yet, to join her in toying with others. I suspected the queen viewed Octavia as a challenge. One of the few last remaining pure ones.

Eliana was the second surprise. Always among the tittering gaggle that shadowed the queen at her parties, she entered the great salon only a few contestants ahead of me. Her parents, a viscount and viscountess, had drawn the queen’s disfavor when the monarch had been so keen to pin Prince Saturn’s death on someone. They could have too easily suffered Yorgen and Idra’s fate. Whatever her parents had done, the queen obviously hadn’t forgiven them for it.

When all twenty-one women had entered the room ahead of me, I finally drew up to stand beneath the threshold of the double doors, propped open. Just beyond hung a shimmering, iridescent curtain. Its two halves undulated after falling closed to conceal the previous entrant.

I sensed the intent stares of West and Ryder upon my back, maybe that of the she-goblin too, but I refused to turn to check.

Whatever I’d have to do within the Great Salon of Delicacies, when I already knew the queen and I would have very different opinions of what adelicacywas, I’d do it. This fight might be unlike any I had ever anticipated waging, but I’d master the mate bond within me. I’d figure out how to play the queen’s game—and I’d motherfucking win it.

I’d win the man I loved and ignore how wont the queen was to treat her subjects like chattel she owned.

The announcer towered over me. As he always did, he kept his attention straight ahead, discerning whoever he was to introduce next without looking.

I gazed up at him, waiting for my turn—anxious, even, to see what lay beyond the curtains.

When I’d convinced Rush to lead me around the palace and its grounds so I could learn the territory, we’d come here. The great salon was perhaps a fourth the size of the Hall of Mirrors, but no less opulent.

No curtain had obstructed the entrance then.

When long seconds drew out and still the announcer didn’t speak, I cleared my throat in an artfully feminineeh-ehthat felt too frilly to me.

He didn’t break his pattern to glance at me.

I waited an entire minute—I counted the passing seconds.

From behind me, I heard Ryder utter a gruff, “What the dragonfire’s the holdup?”

I was pondering if I should clear my throat a second time or straight-up ask him what he was waiting for when the announcer bowed his head in a sharp nod, then stepped back through the door, the billowing curtain a pace away. Without a single look at me, at any of us, with long arms he first clasped the handle of one door, then…

…pulled them shut with a concluding snick.

Right in my face.

4.THE RULES OF THE NUPTIALIS PROBATIO ARE FEW

ELOWYN

My mind strangely blank, I was gaping, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, at the doors so very undeniably closed now inches from my face. As was common in the palace, the doors were wooden, an intricate scene carved into them inbas reliefof a monarch in a crown brandishing a sword as he stood atop a heap of dragon carcasses.How very fucking innovative. It was impossible to get far in the palace without the reminder of how unforgiving and brutal the place was, its pomp solely for show.

Before I’d succeeded in making sense of a damn thing, Ryder and West were at my side. What few attendants had lingered in the hallway behind us scurried away now, as if concerned they’d get caught up in whatever shit I was about to stir. Wise of them, really. I was definitely going to be stirring.

“What the fuck just happened?” I asked Rush’s friends.

Everyone and anyone who might have answers was on the other side of the doors.

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