Page 37 of The Fae Menagerie
"I told you. The fae luck coin assigned me to take care of him."
Prince Drummond's laughter echoed off his shadows in an unsettling cacophony. "You chose to take care of him, a human." He grinned at Parker and then turned his predatory gaze on me."If I help you, do you promise to apologize to my parents for disrupting my engagement?"
"You did that all on your own." I couldn't hide my outrage at the suggestion I owed them anything.
"I was misled by a very sexy anthousai. I have since seen the errors of my ways and apologized to my parents. I only ask that you do the same."
I respected his plight. It couldn't have been easy for him. "I will visit them as soon as I'm free from the menagerie."
Prince Drummond nodded. "I will see that your warden receives punishment for using jasmine to cause nightmares."
"Thank you."
Prince Drummond didn't say goodbye. He simply vanished from my viewing room, leaving everyone outside scrambling to see where he emerged, or if he'd returned home without his entourage. One by one, his guards disappeared outside my enclosure, including the red cap who attended each day.
That answered my question. Drummond had returned home to his dreams without speaking to anyone. It could take days, or even weeks, before Aidan would be punished. Fitting. It would be eons before I could apologize to the Unseelie King and Queen, his parents.
Even if Prince Drummond was on his way to forgiving me, my mother didn't seem the least concerned about my captivity as she waved goodbye at the last bell. The prince's forgiveness wouldn't set me free. I still needed to solve her riddle.
In the meantime, Aidan would return, and I would be ready.
Chapter
Thirteen
PARKER
Two wash dayswent by without a visit from Aidan. The weeks passed quickly enough, but the longer we waited for retribution, the more apprehensive Doyle became. Still, on washday morning, Chani took our dirty laundry with a small bow. That afternoon, they brought them back clean.
Before they disappeared for another week, Doyle stopped them and asked after the warden.
"He's around," they said. "Still angry about the backfire of jasmine in Horace's enclosure." They leaned forward, all six eyes boring into Doyle. "Did you have anything to do with that?"
"I only know what Horace told me."
"Shh," they whispered. "Horace was not supposed to teach you cuddlebug signs."
"He didn't teach me anything!" Doyle scoffed. "I'm anthousai. We all know cuddlebug sign language."
I should have recognized the similarities before, but I didn't realize until that moment. Chani had brown skin and gray eyes. "Are you a cuddlebug?"
Chani laughed, a strange chittering sound. "No, but we are cousins. And while I believe some anthousai know cuddlebug common, I highly doubt the prince would."
Doyle's gaze flicked to me, and then to his feet. "Please don't call me that."
Of course, Doyle was a prince. That explained how he'd gotten close to Prince Drummond in the first place, how his name had made it into the spell books in the human realm, and why he was in the fae menagerie instead of married off to a lesser fae or executed for his crimes.
"I feel really stupid," I admitted. "I should have known."
"Aye, you've bedded a prince." Chani laughed.
Bedded. It was my turn to blush and look at the floor. "It's a bed. We sleep in it."
They laughed again, and it sounded far more joyous this time as they patted Doyle's shoulder with one hand. "Yes, we know. Prince Doy'al'ini isn't living up to his legend."
"You have a legend?" I asked once Chani vanished. "Wait. You said that book was about your grandmother. You're the prince who …" I hadn't recognized all the strange fae names in the history book Doyle had given me, but hearing Chani speak Doyle's full name aloud …. "The Unseelie Prince So-and-so was Drummond?" I couldn't try to pronounce his real name, so I'd taken to calling him Prince So-and-so. Doyle hadn't corrected me once.
"It was."
