Page 78 of Lady of the Nightmares

I looked down at my gown, which was getting increasingly less lovely by the hour. “Er, I don’t know what I want, and tell her anything you like about the dress. I’d like to see someone’s face if they knew you kidnapped me.”

He rolled his eyes and spoke rapidly back and forth with the woman for several minutes before she ran off into the back of the shop at top speed.

I shifted where I stood, glancing back and forth between the prince and the door where the tailor had disappeared. “Wait, what just happened?”

“You are quite hindered by not speaking the old language,” he said, unbothered.

“They don’t speak it in Aftermath,” I snapped. “What did you say?”

“She asked what size you wear, what you’d be doing, and who was paying…that was most of it.”

I narrowed my eyes. “And what did you say?”

“That she has eyes and a tape measure, that I would pay, and that I wasn’t sure what you would be doing, but I have no doubt it will infuriate me.”

“Right,” I said awkwardly, my cheeks heating slightly for no reason I could explain.

I took a few steps back and leaned against the long fabric-cutting counter, facing the prince. Behind him, the sunny square was as bustling as ever, but in here, it was almost too quiet.

“It has been some time since I was in Cutthroat, but I believe the city has grown since I was last here,” Scion said blandly.

“Is that unusual?”

“Unfortunately, it is,” he said, pushing his blue-black hair out of his eyes and taking a seat on the bench under the window. “Most of the villages are shrinking as the population shifts and grows smaller each year.”

I raised an eyebrow. Was this his idea of casual conversation? “How can a population dwindle if you are immortal?”

Leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, he stared up at me. “We are immortal, not invincible, and Fae need magic to thrive. The magic has been failing for centuries. Now, some Fae are born with no powers at all. I’m not sure what that makes them—something else entirely, I suppose. A new subspecies.”

I chewed on the inside of my cheek, considering this. It was the kind of thing I had never thought much about—servants didn’t worry over evolution or population growth or politics. Those were questions for, well, queens. “It’s a luxury I have never known to think so deeply about things that do not affect me directly.”

He shot me a quizzical look. “I don’t understand.”

“You wouldn’t,” I replied. “You haven’t spent every day of your life in fear or poverty or pain. To you, it is a burden to consider the fate of the country and of people you will never know, and it is a noble burden, but at the same time, it is a luxury to carry that burden.”

“You make it sound that to be born and raised royal is some kind of blessing.”

“Isn’t it? Would you have preferred my circumstances?”

I hadn’t expected him to give me a real answer, but he surprised me by considering the question. “No,” he said after a moment. “But I still believe you are underestimating the difficulty of running a kingdom.”

I let out a sarcastic laugh. “As far as I can tell, it’s no hardship at all.”

He evidently did not perceive my sarcasm. “That is because you are running nothing, making no decisions, and have no responsibilities.”

“Aside from staying alive,” I snapped.

His face twisted into a sneer. “Which you can barely manage, even with a truly baffling amount of assistance and coddling.”

We glared at each other, and for a moment, I forgot there was anyone else here. The tailor in the back may as well have been in another province, the people in the square nonexistent. I’d almost had time to marvel at the fact that we were having a civil conversation that did not revolve around my death or any imminent crisis, yet now unfulfilled tension seemed to crackle in the air like a tangible presence.

“Did you have a point to make, Prince Scion?” I said slowly. “Or were you merely looking to make mine for me? For someone who claims to have so many responsibilities, you certainly have the luxury to spend a lot of time obsessing over what I’m doing.”

He’d stood up, and I realized I had no idea when it happened, but now he was standing only inches away. His jaw had gone so tight his next words sounded physically painful. “I am merely trying to say that not everything about royalty is a privilege. Some things are horrific, painful, and violent, and there’s no one else to take the burden of them.”

I raised a skeptical eyebrow. I’d lived at the court of Everlast long enough to see plenty of horrific, painful, and violent things. I was sorely tempted to list some for him and force him to pass judgment, but I had to admit I was curious:

What did Prince Scion, the queen’s executioner, think was horrific?

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