Page 130 of Bride of the Fae Prince

I wriggle away as Edvear and other household servants come to remove the gown. “I will endeavor to become more capricious, if it will please you, husband.”

Ash rolls his eyes, smiling. He waits until the servants are gone to tug me down closer to his level and whisper: “You are such a lovely distraction, I fear I am tempted to throw away kingdom and future simply for the pleasure of engaging your lips for a few hours.”

My blush returns in full force, and I completely forget about my newly discovered powers. In fact, I forget so completely that I find myself once more in a nightgown with loose, tangled hair.

Ash’s mouth curves in a devilish grin. “It seems you feel the same way.”

He tightens his hold on my hand so I can’t pull away, even when I give a solid yank. “You flustered me, that’s why my glamour broke! I think kingdoms are far more important than kisses!”

“Do you?” His arm slides around my waist, tugging me until I stand between his knees and he is looking up at me with too much smug triumph. He coils a lock of my hair around his fingers. “But you like kisses better than murder plots, yes?”

“I suppose it depends on who is getting murdered,” I reply stubbornly, crossing my arms over my chest and refusing to look at him.

“That is quite the vicious response coming from my sweet wife.”

Then he catches me by the hips, pulling me close, and ducks his head to press a kiss to my stomach. I blush furiously, every cohesive thought abandoning my brain like a swarm of hummingbirds.

Except for one thought.

I want to give him an heir.

I dismiss the thought the moment it appears. We’re just trying to survive the next few days. I might be leaving. And the only way I could ever give him an heir is if the High King was dead and Ash sat on the throne. In any other circumstance, it would be far too dangerous.

So I let that little desire go.

Ash pulls back from me when the servants’ quiet footsteps come back down the hallway. In a more serious tone, he says, “We should test the limits of your magic. And then I really do need to shut myself into my study.”

We both regret the separation. But there’s no use trying to pretend away reality.

I nod. “Back to murder plots it is.”

Chapter 45

The Prince

Stella’s brand of glamouris both like and unlike fae. When we return to my study, I give her dozens of prompts, telling her to glamour her face to appear like a sister’s, to glamour her clothes, her voice, her expressions, her scent. She struggles the most with the last two, probably because her sense of smell isn’t as strong as a fae’s, and it twists her mind a bit to make one expression but imagine herself making a different one. Once I suggest it is like forcing yourself to smile when you don’t want to, or keeping your composure when all you want to do is break out into laughter, it clicks for her. In those ways, her glamour is very similar to a fae’s.

What I quickly discover, however, is that her glamour abilities extend beyond even my own. When I tell her to make herself look like Edvear, she does it. Hardly a minute later after another command, I find myself staring at my twin. Which is vastly unsettling, even as my brain turns over this new development.

“How strenuous is this?” I ask, Stella’s reflection revealing what a mess I am.

“It’s . . . fine?” She sounds almost uncertain, as though she’s not sure if she’s missing a piece of information.

“You’re not struggling to maintain the glamour?”

“I don’t think so?”

At my order, she holds the glamour for ten minutes, then twenty, with no sign of flagging.

It’s astounding.

“We can glamour ourselves as other people,” I tell her, unable to stop myself from pacing the small length of the room. “But rarely can a fae maintain it for more than a few minutes. Yetyouwalk around like it’s nothing!”

Her glamour melts away, to my relief, revealing Stella’s drawn brow. “It felt the same as glamouring my clothes.”

She may not have magic that can split the world in half, but what she has comes as naturally to her as breathing. With a few careful glamours, she could pass completely as fae. Longer ears, a disguising of her scent, and a bit more height, and she could easily join revelries, and none would be the wiser. Her glamours have a stamp like any other, but we fae are so used to glamour we notice its absence more than its presence.

We could use this.

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