Page 147 of Bride of the Fae Prince

“Fine, you can look!”

I open my eyes.

She stands before me in a color I’ve never seen on her—a dark, deep blue. The gown is lush, billowing, and yet not at all bombastic or pretentious. Frothy white layers peek through the skirt, making the entire dress look like a midnight ocean with rolling waves. It shines and sparkles as though the water’s surface reflects a myriad of stars above it. Her shoulders are bare, but the slightest shimmer on her arms betrays the thin gloves she wears of spider silk.

The most startling transformation of all, however, is the silver hair swept on top of her head in a crown and trailing to her elbows in long waves. A new tiara rests atop the elaborate style and glitters with dark sapphires and diamonds.

Her ears are not covered, as per my instruction, and there’s something about their rounded tips that always fascinates me and draws my attention to them.

But it’s hard to think about her ears when her big eyes are staring at me, lined with silver and tiny precious stones. Her lips are a warm lavender, highlighting her unusual human beauty yet mingling it with something entirely ethereal. It’s like she’s from another world—from beyond the Veil—and yet the smallest things like her downcast gaze and the fan of her lower lashes on her flushed cheeks ground her in enough reality that I know I’m not hallucinating her existence.

She goes blurry until all I see is one blob of midnight and silver.

“Oh, Ash!” she cries, rushing to me at once. “You’re not supposed to cry!”

I cannot deny my own tears without suffering a mouthful of iron, so I only offer a watery smile, catch her chin, and tilt her face up so I may kiss the tip of her nose.

“You’re thinking sad thoughts,” she whispers, her glittering eyes searching mine with that infinite gentleness. “You’re thinking about me dying.”

What’s the use in denying it?

She frowns. “You have the expression of a baleful hound dog hoping for scraps from under the table. It doesn’t suit how dashing you look. Shall I tell you the real reason I didn’t let you open your eyes for so long? I had to let myself admire you first. I couldn’t let you see how red my face had gotten when I walked in and saw you in your own dark blue tunic. Has anyone ever told you that those boots make your calves look so handsome?”

I grab the back of her neck and pull her into a kiss, pouring every one of my sorrows and the depths of my love for her into our kiss. My fingers thread into her hair, tightening as my brow furrows, and I kiss her harder, deeper, savoring every sweet second as if it will be our last.

When the kiss ends, we stay there, our foreheads pressed together and our open mouths only an inch apart.

“Ash,” she breathes.

“Stella,” I murmur in reply.

Then I pull back, try to smooth over any hair of hers I disrupted, and give her glittering cheek a caress with my thumb.

“Are you ready?”

She nods and tries to discretely wipe away a lone tear that threatens to smear her carefully applied paint. “And just like you said, not a shred of glamour. Not untilthe moment.Is everything ready?”

I pat my breast pocket, where a tiny vial rests against my heart. It seems to thump with my pulse, as though it knows exactly what it’s for. “Areyouready?”

Stella smiles at me, a slow, determined thing that, if he saw it now, would terrify the man she called Father. It gives me the rush of courage I need to take her hand and lead her out of the safety of our quarters.

She squeezes my hand. “Let’s go win a crown.”

I squeeze back, swallowing hard. I close my eyes briefly, and in the quiet of my mind, I remind myself why we’re doing this. Why I’m fighting with everything. It’s all for Stella, for the chance to spend the rest of my life with her. I need this moment. I need the strength it gives me to pull my old mask down over my face and face the world of Faerieland and High King Faradir.

Because tonight, I’m going to poison my wife.

Chapter 54

The Princess

Tonight’s banquet isn’t inthe banquet hall, like usual. Instead, it’s on the palace greens. When we reach the marble steps descending into the revelry, we stop and wait as the crier announces us.

I stand there, holding Ash’s hand, wearing not a single glamour. It’s not unlike my first night in Faerie, when Ash threw that revelry to celebrate our marriage. The night multiple people tried to kill me—likely to please the High King and bring him into their debt.

Nothing has changed. And yet, everything has.

The traditional color of Lulythinar’s Eve is midnight blue—the color of the almost full moon’s missing sliver. Apparently, everyone wears the color tonight, and then tomorrow night, at the culmination of the celebration, there is a masquerade ball.

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