Page 149 of Beyond the Faerie Gate

Damn it. “Sneak out of the front gate.”

“They’ve got that locked up tighter than the fever cloister in a temple of Danu!”

Gron and Aran look between us, confused, before finally turning their attention to me.

“What are your orders, your highness?” Gron asks.

Prae gives a tiny scoff of disgust and throws her hands in the air, but I’ve won. I allow her to argue with me, but at the end of the day, I outrank her.

I pace, but I know we can’t afford the kind of delay it would take to find an alternative plan. “Fine!” I growl in annoyance. “We’ll do it Praedra’s way. But we’re out of here. No lingering.”

“He’ll have your head,” she insists, and her eyes are actually wide this time. “Mine too.”

“I have a much better idea.” Or at least, I’ll come up with one as soon as we’re out of Rose’s palace. “My father would be a fool not to allow me to see it to its conclusion.”

“You are so full of shit, Caedmon.” She only uses my full name when she wants to piss me off.

“And you’re not?”

I don’t wait for her to reply. We take the stairs three at a time, but it’s not long until all of us are cursing the fae for creating this damned tower. Some of their race may have wings, but the ones who don’t must have to go through this damned torment every time they want to change the Nicnevin’s bed sheets.

“Ancestors,” Prae pants as we finally start to see the delicate mess of bridges and garden platforms at the top of the tower through the windows we’re passing. “I think I preferred scaling the wall.”

“You chose this,” I retort, clutching my side.

I’m fit, but this is ridiculous.

Eventually, the staircase ends, and we emerge onto the open roof of the tower. To protect the stairs from rain, the designers elected to cover the flat open space with a circular stone gazebo whose glass dome was obviously meant to let light in. Unfortunately, some idiot planted a great big tree on top of it, so now the moonlight has to battle past the exposed roots to reach us.

“Shit, there are so many candles up here, it’s a miracle they’ve not set the palace on fire,” Aron mutters. “Hey, maybe they’ll burn themselves to death, spare us the trouble of killing them all.”

Gron snickers, but Prae and I tune their bumbling out as we examine where we’ve ended up.

Half a dozen bridges branch out on all sides of us. I have no idea which one will get us to the higher platforms, but it’s clear we still have quite some way to go. I glance up at the highest platform, surrounded by the five smaller ones that hover protectively below it.

One of those five should be mine.

Whoa. Where did that thought come from?

I shake it off and trace the lines of the branches, trying to figure out a route up there.

Prae does it faster—of course she does.

“This way,” she hisses, leading us over to the bridge on our far left. “But there are guards patrolling some of the platforms, so keep quiet.”

“How small did they make these dainty little branches?” Gron mutters. “Bloody fairies.”

I’m pretty sure Prae and I manage to roll our eyes in perfect sync. “If you both hadn’t snuck third helpings, maybe it wouldn’t be such an issue,” she retorts.

“Can you blame us?” Aron asks. “There’s so much food in this land.”

No, I can’t really blame them. Compared to our mountains, Faerie is a lush paradise. Food. Wenches. Fresh water.

Even their ‘inhospitable’ Winter Court is full to the brim with precious metals and stones. And the wealth of the land will only grow now that its queen has returned.

All because of her. Rose.

We fall into silence as the group of us approaches the first platform.

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