Page 44 of The Princes of Stone and Steel

“Then pray tell, who are you and from where do you hail?”

Her head up, her feet planted, intending to speak, she became understandably distracted by the smells of sweetgrass and the feel of sunshine caressing her skin. And the rays lit up the meadow until they began to dip and bob and she realized they weren’t the sun’s rays at all, but the tiniest insects, glittery insects reflecting the light, lighting up the meadow the way fireflies lit up back home.

She held her hand out, and as they came to rest there, her skin appeared to shimmer. Millicent then turned to stare down at the mud field and the scores of dead and dying trees. A sour lump formed in the pit of her stomach. In the distance, a geyser of thick, glistening black liquid shot up into the air, guided by a great iron tower. It pooled in a trench dug out around the tower collecting the liquid.

Farther in the distance, opposite the geyser, she saw the beginnings of a great city, one she hadn’t seen before. Between the mountains in a valley. Turning back to take in her shimmering skin, she looked a few more times between the ugly down below and the beauty before her. Did they not understand the wonders of the world they lived in?

When a throat cleared impatiently, she jolted back to the reality that a man stood waiting for her answer.

“Oh, right,” she murmured. “My name is Millicent Merchant, and I come to you from Lancashire. In England.”

“Where is this England?” His brows drew together perplexedly.

“Not of your world,” she answered honestly. “I came to your land, stowed away on a Papyrus ship, though at the time I did not know it to be a Papyrus ship.”

“You’vecome? On aPapyrus ship? My father will want to know. You will come with me now.”

No. No, this cannot happen.How did Millie always find herself in such precarious situations? How had she let her life get so out of control that her father would give her over to the likes of Leland Barnabas? How could she end up sailing on a vessel with a people so foreign, they were not even of her world? How did she end up face to face, staring at the prince of the people she’d been warned to never, ever reveal herself to?

And why would the voice on the wind lie to her? She’d found the white horse as directed. Had she been bewitched to think she’d heard the voice by the Forfex prince? To lure her here? How could he have known of her arrival?

Millicent looked around her to plot out any sort of escape. Or to decide if one would even be possible. Her captor appeared to be fit. Healthy. He could most likely outrun her.

“Thank you, though I’d rather not,” she said.

“You would…rather not?” A smirk played against his lips, and the beautiful man looked to be fighting to control it.

That would be when something amazing happened. As she looked deep into the eyes of the prince, because Millie lacked the ambition to look away, his burnished silver-gray eyes sharpened to polished steel. “You will come with me,” he ordered. The smirk ever present, as if he held a secret over Millicent.

“If it’s all the same,” she returned, “I’ll head back to find my friend now.”

“You—you’ll head back to your friend?”

Millie nodded.

His brow crinkled, his mouth drawn tight, his eyes hardened and sharpened to mirror quality. “Youwillcome withme.” The tinny quality around the fringes of his voice no longer clinked, but clashed as if waged in a life-and-death battle.

Goosebumps prickled up Millicent’s arms. This man held power. Yet he hadn’t attempted to restrain her, so she would not follow until such a time occurred.

“No,” she responded, equally as sure, even if she didn’t feel sure.

Then he took a step forward, his hand outstretched. Only one step before he let the hand drop to rest on his hip. “How do you fight it?” He gave her a puzzled frown.

“Fight what?”

“Thepush.” Now the frown dropped, yet the puzzlement stayed.

The push? Millicent had no answer for the prince because she had no idea to what he referred. “Could you explain this push to me?”

Ignoring her question, he continued to stare at her as if she were one of those modern innovations in the factories of Manchester, with a sense of wonder that filled his entire face and made Millie feel unbelievably warm, despite the sparseness of the frock Pétra had dressed her in yesterday.

“Have you eaten?” he asked abruptly. The change of the direction of the conversation had Millie’s head spinning. Especially under the blanket of such sweltering heat. Wasn’t he hot?

“Uh—pardon?” Millicent swallowed.

“Have you eaten? Food?”

No. No.What she required was a shock of cold water. And at his returning smile, she realized that while thinking, she’d shaken her head. The prince walked to his saddle bags, unbuckled one, flipped the flap open and reached his hand inside to produce a canvas bag that he showed her contained berries, then a second one with sweetly pungent cheese, and finally, he pulled a loaf of bread wrapped in a cloth before walking back over to Millicent.

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