Page 134 of Bride of the Fae Prince

“Tell your mistress that Prince Trenian is here,” I tell her.

She shows me into the reception room without a word and disappears. The room is so blue it makes me think of drowning in a vast ocean. Tightening my jaw, I distract myself by picking up a trinket on the table beside me: a beautiful, glass-blown peacock.

“Prince Trenian,” comes a low, melodic voice full of false sweetness.

“Princess Listhra,” I reply, as she appears through a waterfall of blue sothsril silk, wearing a sunset-orange dressing gown with a slit from floor to hip that matches her golden eyes. She swishes into my space and settles on the seat next to me.

“Don’t tell me you’re visiting me because you’re lonely,” she coos. “I cannot imagine that human is particularly . . .satisfying.” She says this with a pointed once-over of me, while I wait for her to get her insults out of her system before we proceed.

Except she should know better than to insult my wife by now.

“My wife pleases me greatly,” I say, curling my lip in a threatening smirk. “Unlike some. Now, would you care to hear why I have come?”

She flutters her wings lightly. “Of course. Do not keep me in suspense any longer, darling.”

“Very well. Going back to our little conversation that we had the other night—the one after you’d thought to make sport of Princess Stella—I did find out, when I asked her later about the particulars of her time with you . . . she mentioned an interesting tidbit of information.”

Listhra’s luminous skin pales a split second before she catches herself and reasserts her glamours. She laughs daintily. “Whatever she told you, she must have been lying. Humansdon’t remember what happens while they’re under the influence of faerie fruit. You must find it so curious to watch her lie without consequence.”

“That is only the case sometimes,” I tell her, enjoying the way she swallows and struggles to maintain her composure. Because sheknows. She knows what I’m about to say. “I’m sure you can clarify for me any misinformation I received about that night. As I heard, yourfriendswanted to kill Stella. But you—you decided not to. Why?”

She strokes a long, slender finger down the slit of her gown. An attempt to cover her discomfort that pairs well with the snakelike smile she gives me. “It would hardly do to make the future High King of Faerieland a mortal enemy.”

“But that wasn’t what you said that night, was it?”

“I didn’t claim to only have one reason for my actions.”

“No, you didn’t. But I wonder what the High King would think if he knew his favorite little accomplice, the one he’d promised to reward with a queenship if she could succeed, neglected to kill the prince’s human wife when she had the chance.”

The reward was a suspicion on my part, but Listhra’s lifted chin only confirms it. “It was as I said then. If we killed her, you would only go find another one.”

“You think the High King would agree with you?”

She goes silent, her gaze falling to the glass peacock I rub my thumb along.

“It does make me wonder,” I say, never taking my eyes off her face, “what the High King would do if he found out you were more concerned with not making me want to kill you than you were about his interests?”

She stands up, paces across a swirling blue rug to the crystal mantle. She places one delicate elbow on the mantle and rolls her eyes. Still trying to maintain the illusion that I don’t have complete control over her now. “You must want something.”

My grin widens. “Indeed, I do.”

For once, her veneer fades, her glamours loosening so her straight, white teeth become fangs. “Then tell me what it is.”

I set down the peacock, steeple my fingers, and answer her. “The Neverseen King is planning a coup. You will help me stop him—or else he may end up as the High King, and he already has a queen.”

Her eyes, now slits like a cat’s, blink slowly. “What do you want me to do?”

“I need you to tell Prince Rahk and Princess Pelarusa about the Neverseen King’s coup. It is too risky for me to interact with them right now with Faradir’s spies everywhere, so you will be my messenger. You will meet with the two of them individually, and then you will call your friends together from the other night like normal. You will invite them here, and you will stay in your room until the banquet tonight. And if you deviate in any way from my command, I’ll report your duplicity to the High King.”

I can almost hear her turning over my words in her head, searching for the trick. But she knows if Faradir catches her playing both sides, or acting out of her own self-interest rather than being his loyal dog, he will have every right to publicly execute her. No matter what court she is from or who her parents are.

She knows as well as I that she made a mistake, and now she must pay for it.

Slowly, hesitantly, she nods. Then she bares her fangs and snarls, “Now get out.”

Chapter 48

The Princess

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