Page 58 of The Iron Fae
Balancing the plate of food, the servant offers me a chair. I sweep my long skirt under me, adjusting myself next to Kai, content to not be sitting directly across from Violet. Kai's pen still remains on his scroll and stays there until I pick up my fork. The movement somehow reminds him that he too should be holding something.
"On top of all the pressure mother's giving us, your presence has got her panties in a new sort of bunch. I had to listen to her all morning complaining about having a human in our castle. Well now, she'll be complaining about Shadow Fae later, I'm sure."
"I don't understand." I shuffle the vegetables around on my plate. "Aren't you all adults? Why do you have tutors and such? Isn't your schooling over?"
"No." The princess snorts.
"I wish." Rowan says under his breath.
Kai looks from his sister, to his brother, and slowly back to me. "Our main schooling is done, yes. But it's pretty traditional for us to have continued learning until we take our place on a throne one day."
"And if you don't ever get a throne?"
"Ug. I don't want to think about that." Rowan slaps his hands over his face, dragging his features down.
"Then the learning and improvement never stops," Prince Kai adds softly. "As annoying as it is... it's good for us."
"Such the traditionalist," Violet growls.
I look down to my plate, admiring the thick cut of steak glazed over with butter. The smells drift up to my face, making my stomach scream in hunger. I push my fork into the meat and slice a bite off popping it into my mouth after only a second of blowing on it. It scorches my tongue as imagined, but the feeling dies quickly.
I'm healing. I think with revelation.
Being a human had so many downfalls, huh?Lincoln's voice fills my mind.
I jump in my seat. I'm quick to scold myself, I'm the one who demanded he be present with me and to let me be present with him and yet here I am surprised that he's acknowledged a thought. Perhaps, I'm the idiot. I mentally face-palm.
"Let me guess, Lincoln." Violet coos, lifting her embroidery ring. She scowls at me, then offers a much wearier expression to her sewing. "Tell my brother," she pushes the needle through the fabric aggressively. "That he left and if he wanted to spend time with you he should have stayed. I'm not sure why he even bothers. He doesn't stand a chance with you."
Lincoln is painfully silent.
"I'd beg to differ."
The Princess snaps her head up, her eyes wide as she gives me her full attention. She looks at me for a moment, before resuming her work. "That'll change once you are presented with all your options of Fae who aren't mixed breeds. Lincoln's a bottom tier lover. –Sorry, Linc—. There is a world of men more suited for a queen, ones that their people can respect and that will give you alliance."
The metal of my fork bends in my hand. I grip it with such ferocity that my knuckles are white and the muscles up my forearm visibly tense.
"I think you forget yourself." I grind out. "You forget that I'm the rightful queen."
"Ooh, sassy, I like it." Violet bats her lashes at me.
Kai's pen freezes. Rowan quietly lowers his boots from the table and glances between us.
"Are you two going to fight right now?" Rowan says with a slow smile.
"That's ridiculous." Violet laughs. "We're much more civilized than that. Plus, Lincoln isn't worth fighting over."
"Again, you're wrong."
I force myself to set my fork down, more concerned that I'd stab the sharp points of it into her pretty pale neck and the blue vein that runs down it.
Calm down.Lincoln reminds me.You're not yet used to the way your body processes emotion, now. Laugh it off.
Laugh it off?
"Ha. Ha. Ha," I say rigidly. Trying to calm myself, I take a long slow breath but the bitter rage of Lincoln's mistreatment, the frustration of the mistreatment of all Fae with mixed lineage, still glows with a scarily hot flame inside of me. They're just like me. I'm just like them. Violet's cutting remarks, all of their remarks, are against everything that I am too. Not just Lincoln.
At that thought, I feel Lincoln thoughts stir. A dark violent rage fills his thoughts, it stalls whatever conversation he is having with another guard in the Shadow Court.
