Page 144 of I Dream of Dragons
Can’t forget that. I should be delirious with joy to find him again, to find he has feelings for me, but my mind won’t let go of this little detail.
The general of the fae king’s armies. Killing people for a hundred years. Suppressing any revolt. Carrying sacrificial victims here to die. And my family.
Not such a little detail, after all.
“I’ve seen Lynn around the palace,” I murmur. “Have you talked to her? The king said she was given to a fae lord. Is she okay?”
“Lynn? She’s dead,” Mera says dismissively, turning away from me to look out of the window.
I recoil, the shock almost physical, a blow to my stomach. “Dead? She’s not. I tell you, I saw her! The king said?—”
“Dear Gods, girl, you aren’t all there in the head, are you?”
“Not all there in…?” I shake said head. “She can’t be dead. She can’t. I took her place so she could survive. How would you know anyway?”
“I saw her dead body, that’s how. Right after the first trial. A guard was dragging her by her necklace out of a room. Pearls rolling everywhere. She was gone.”
Pearls rolling everywhere…
“But I saw her,” I say stubbornly. “I saw her more than once. I…”
“Gods below, a ghost? You see ghosts now?”
“Only those who have lost someone can see them,”the page boy had said.
“Girl.” I jerk when I find Mera standing right in front of me, snapping her fingers in my face. She glares down from the one foot extra height she has on me. “I was right, wasn’t I? You’re as crazy as Athdara.”
“What?”
“I mean, you’d have to be, to work with the seafolk. They eat most of the people they bargain with.”
I step back. “Not true.”
“Oh? Got any insider information you’d like to share?”
“No. Stop inferring things you know nothing about.”
“Ouch. Look at you, all haughty. You probably think that now you have the royal mark on you, the king will marry you. But…I wouldn’t bet on it. After all, it’s not up to him. So get off your high horse, lady.”
I shake my head, bewildered, hope adding to my dizziness. “Not up to him?”
“Didn’t you know? He has to marry the winner of the games, if there is one, man or woman.”
“But… what if there are many survivors?”
She laughs. “Want to know how many won so far? How many survived? Not a single one.”
My mind won’t let this tidbit sink in. “He has to marry any survivor?”
“Yes. Like I said, don’t get your hopes up because of the mark. After all, it’s not complete.”
“I know that,” I snap, becoming irritated with her smugness. “What about Lady Selene? Isn’t she engaged to him?”
“A fae marriage is distinct from a human marriage,” she says, as if that makes sense. When I say nothing, she rolls her eyes. “Where have you been living, under a rock? The laws say that the king may take a human wife, aside from his fae queen, to mark his dominance over the human world.”
“A plaything,” I whisper, bitterness coating my tongue.
“Why, did you expect anything else? That perhaps he fell in love with you as you dragged your filthy feet over his marble floors?”
