Page 135 of Bride of the Fae Prince

I am alone whenI wake, leaving me to wonder if I imagined Ash joining me last night. But when I sit upright, the covers on his side of the bed are mussed.

Ash isn’t in his study, or anywhere else. Edvear informs me that he left at dawn but should be back soon. I eat the breakfast I’m served, ready myself for the day, and then approach Edvear while he is polishing silver in the kitchen.

“Edvear—”

“I think it might be better if you rested today, my lady.”

“I wasn’t going to ask for help with glamours again. Would you take me to see Hylath?”

The clink of silver stops.

“Please?” I ask, offering him my biggest smile as a bribe.

“She doesn’t want visitors.”

“Please?”

“His Highness will kill me if I let you leave his quarters without him.”

“I can glamour myself! I can be one of the other servants!”

He doesn’t budge for several minutes, picking his silver back up and scrubbing even harder with his cloth, his chin setting in consternation.

“I could order you,” I remind him, lifting my chin.

He glares at me. “I won’t be responsible for something happening to you.”

I let out a dejected sigh, plop onto the stool next to him, and join him in his task. He eyes me warily at first, protests, but then gives up and lets me work beside him. I’ve never polished silver before, so I watch what he’s doing and mimic it as best as I can. “If it would be too foolish to leave, then we don’t have to go. I only wish for her to know that I care. And I long to see if she’s alright. Hearing how she’s doing from someone else isn’t the same.”

He doesn’t reply for a long minute, rubbing away at a silver knife.

Then, with a sigh, he pulls something out of his coat’s inside pocket. At first, I think it’s a wooden paddle about the size of my spread hand, but then he flips it over, and I discover it’s a mirror. It looks as though it is made of once-green, twisted vines, but now it has died and faded to brown.

It is still beautiful.

He sets it down before me. “Say her name.”

I blink once at the reflection of my own confused face, then oblige. “Hylath.”

The mirror ripples like water, making me flinch just slightly. Then I lean forward, hardly believing my eyes when there, swimming into focus, is the familiar but strange form of my old maid. She is curled up on a small cot. Her wide mouth is angled in a frown, and where she used to have those five unsettling eyes always blinking out of sync, there are now only five stumps of bandaged tissue. She has a mostly empty bowl of soup on the small table beside the cot. Another creature like her bringsa steaming mug of something hot, pats Hylath on the shoulder, and it looks like she urges Hylath to sit and drink.

“Her daughter,” Edvear explains.

No sound emerges from the mirror, but somehow, I can still hear theburrrap!Hylath makes in protest, flapping her long tongue at her daughter. The daughter spits some retort back, and Hylath seems to grumble, but sits up anyway, accepts the drink, and drains it dry before laying back down.

The image blurs.

“How could the High King do this?” I demand. “How can he be so cruel, so evil?”

This needs to end. Faradirmustend. What he did to Ash, to his servants, to Hylath, to me, and countless others—it needs to end.

Edvear says nothing, only takes the mirror as the image fades, and replaces it in his pocket.

I dry my cheeks with my sleeve. “What is that?”

“It’s only a faerie trinket,” he replies. “His Highness procured it for me when I became his steward. It helps me manage the servants.”

“Do I say anyone’s name and see them?”

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