Page 63 of Conquering the King of Storms

Bowls and plates of the same food already in front of the others were placed on the table for me and Sirus. Excitement coursed through me.

Hot food—that sounded incredible.

I peered into my bowl, at the soup I’d seen them making above our heads. It looked delicious, so I grabbed my spoon and filled it.

The moment it met my tongue, I gagged.

A soft breeze blew at my skin, as if Sirus’s magic was trying to calm me.

Holy fuck, it was spicy.

Like, tongue-burning-for-hours spicy.

I forced the food down my throat, silently glancing around the table and trying to ignore the fire in my mouth.

Sirus hadn’t touched the soup—a good call, I thought.

Ayla was eating it like itwasn’tmade of this world’s version of fucking ghost peppers.

Ivy’s had been emptied and pushed to the side of her plate, and Margo’s was half gone.

Dove was even spooning it into her mouth like it wasn’t poison.

“Are spices less… spicy to fae?” I whispered to Sirus.

His lips curved upward. “No. Some elements can handle spices better, though. Even those of you without magic have been touched by the elements in your time here.”

My eyebrows shot upward. “Things taste different based on your magic?”

“Mmhm. The elements affect plants differently; the location they were grown in will play a large role in determining how appetizing they are to you.”

Hmm.

I thought back to the plants in each of the elemental lands we had been through. I’d liked the earth fae ones okay, but wasn’t a fan of too many of the water fae ones.

“Which types of fae don’t like these spices?” I whispered to him.

A smile curved his lips further. “Just wind fae. The fire fae aren’t impacted by spice, and these ones in particular grow in sand.”

Sand… which the earth fae and water fae both had a plethora of.

“Do you think I’m a wind fae?” I asked, pushing the bowl further from my plate so it wouldn’t infect the pleasant-looking food on it.

“No way to know for certain, but it seems like a possibility.”

I didn’t hate the idea.

Not even a little.

I washungry but didn’t trust the food, so I watched Sirus closely and only ate what he ate. Nothing on the plate ended up being too spicy. It wasn’t my favorite, but it was similar to the food we’d had before I fell asleep, so I ate it without a problem.

No one seemed to be in a hurry to get up after they finished eating, so Ivy struck up a conversation with Margo and Doveabout the marketplace they had in the water fae lands. It sounded kind of like a swap-meet, and I wondered how the other lands ran things. In the earth fae city we’d been to, what little I’d seen of the shops reminded me of a massive strip mall, with everything separated but connected.

I found myself watching Ayla and Flood, since they were the newcomers. She was sort of taking care of him, even though he was insane at the moment. When she handed him a forkful of food, he ate it. When someone said something negative about the kings or their insanity, she would glare at them.

She seemed protective of him.

That surprised me, but I supposed it shouldn’t have. None of the rest of us had been stranded alone with our kings for very long, if at all. She had been stuck in the Aboa with Flood for a long time; long enough to become friends, or at least develop some sort of attachment even if he wasn’t sane very often.

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