Page 30 of Until the Stars Fall

I straightened in my seat. Her eyes danced with a false innocence I’d come to know all too well.

“What do you mean?”

“My parents received a message from Mrs. Bishop yesterday evening after you’d turned in.”

Hardening my glare, I scooted forward in my chair. “Stop stalling. What’s the news?”

She shrugged and looked casually around my tent. “Oh, you know, just that he’s courting Princess Calla of Arenysen. Seems there does exist a female who can tame him. They’re expecting a proposal within the month, so she says.”

My heart tumbled into my gut.

For years I had watched Brennan sneak off with one female after another, and it had hurt, but I’d always known his trysts weren’t serious. Nothing more than distractions.

But a proposal?

Marriage?

I was out of time.

Maybe that’s best for you.

This could be the very thing I needed to help me finally move on.

As if in answer, my chest tightened at the mere thought of being parted from him. This was preposterous. I didn’t belong at the palace. I didn’t belong with the fae royals. I was nothing but a mortal human, the daughter of a cook. A nobody.

And yet I did belong there.

I couldn’t explain it.

I couldn’t ignore it either.

Like something was calling me back home with more intensity than ever before.

I needed to get home.

And soon.

Raven caught my gaze. “There’s the fire I wanted to see in you.”

We walked through camp in silence until we came to Raven’s parents’ tent. She announced our arrival, and Anna bid us enter, where we found her sitting with Owen at the table. I dipped my chin to them in greeting, and with a toss of her hand, Anna dismissed her daughter.

“Meet me after?” Raven asked, and I nodded as confusion set in. In all my time here, I’d never known them to exclude Raven from one of our talks.

Anna beckoned me forward, proffering the chair opposite her. “Come, sit, sit.”

With a tight-lipped smile, I obliged, my curiosity and apprehension growing.

Owen laughed once, and the kindness in his eyes helped put me at ease. “No need to look so frightened.”

“Then why—” I started, but Anna raised a hand and shook her head slightly. I expected her to offer an explanation. She didn’t.

“You are not the first we have trained, Lieke. And with fae-human relations deteriorating as they are, you won’t be the last, I am sure. But you are the only one we expect to ever send off to the palace.”

My forehead twitched and my shoulders tightened as questions swirled around my mind.

Why had I really been sent here?

What was expected of me?

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