Page 62 of Prince of Night and Storm
“It’s goingto rain,” Numair says, eyeing my hair. “We should head back.”
He still doesn’t understand that it’s when my hair isstraightthat I don’t want it to get wet. When it’s curly, I don’t care.
I turn away, palming the second slip of paper that was enfolded in the first. The first letter, formal with the Prince's silver seal. This one. . .
I shake the males and find a quiet spot where I unfold it for the second time and read the words slowly, fear and anticipation a vise at the base of my spine.
If I show my House the letter, they’ll seize their swords and storm the palace again to defend my honor. No scion of Faronne is so easily taken.
I won’t show them. I’ll take this fight to a different field.
1 From Emma’s feeble understanding, a term of endearment a father might use for a daughter. It’s the shortened version of Wakia Maitu.
https://mukuyu.wordpress.com/2018/09/02/gikuyu-greetings
Chapter
Nineteen
THE EYE OF THE HIGH LORD
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon.
—Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2
Aunt Nora is waiting for me when I return to the house.
I sneak through the back entrance—not the kitchen, someone is always in the kitchen—to avoid my relatives, especially the drunk and crying ones.
She’s avoided me avoiding her by standing, still and silent as a statue, right in front of my office door where I head to store the threat in an iron safe until I decide what to do with it. Burn it, most likely. It's not as if I want to put it in a scrapbook. Though maybe I should have it sent for handwriting analysis. Every bit of knowledge helps.
I mean for you to be mine.
My hands shake, so I shove them in my pockets. I’ll need to hunt down Juliette for my chill pills soon.
There are few ways to interpret that sentence. It’s not like High Fae don’t fuck what they also want to kill. My mother died before I could pick her brains about the sexual politics of her specific caste, and there is no one left in Everenne like her and Renaud, but I can piece together the generics.
I’ve braced for hints of how he will punish Faronne. There are few ways he can go about doing it if he's serious about the ceasefire.
Leashing me to his bed is diabolically clever in its simplicity. He can claim in all truth, in front of the entire city, that hehonorsme with such attentions and the entire time my House will be impotent with fury. I'll be a hostage, my gilded captivity a backhanded slap in their face.
But it will also appear to be penitence for my mother’s death; he elevates her daughter, providing her the ultimate protection, after all.
Plausible deniability is the knife baked inside the pretty cake. If I weren't the fly caught his gossamer trap, I'd admire its construction.
The wild creature stirs; the male will discover we’re no pet. He’ll learn what lurks beneath a halfling’s facade.
Darkan is strangely silent.
I stop at the top of the steps. “Aunt?—”
“I wish to read the note.”
“What note” is on the tip of my tongue, but I'm not in the mood to insult either of us. I would, however, like to know how she knows the things she does. If I ask once again, she won'tanswer and I may be stubborn, but I also don't believe in wasting energy.
“Inside.”
