Page 119 of The Beast King's Bride

When he doesn’t move or speak, I brush past him, entering. The house smells of leather and urine and sweat, a worse stench underlying it all, like rot. Like the Decay—and instantly in my mind I’m transported back to Faerie, riding on Embar, Talen seated behind me, toward the river where the monsters lurked and the black ate at the land and water. The sky, so pink and purple above, the snow blanketing the ground, the weird upside-down mountains in the distance.

His breath on my neck, his low voice making me smile.

The knowledge that he loves me, making me warm inside.

Jerking out of the memory, I stomp over to the cobbler’s tables, still covered in pieces of leather and nails and the tools of his profession, obviously not touched by Pete.

I find a blade, grab it and turn to him. “Look. Pay attention.”

“What are you doing?”

I drag the blade down my skin, barely feeling the burn, so miserable that I welcome it. “Here is your proof that this is no illusion, no glamour, no trick of the Fae.”

“What have you done?” As if snapping out of a dream, he comes to me, takes the blade away, studies the shallow cut. Blood seeps out of it, warm, trickling down my arm, dripping off my fingers. I gaze at it, needing to feel something, anything other than despair.

I’m not dying, though, my skin not blackening, so that probably means that if my father was Fae, there is no proof of it in me.

I don’t care.

Pete mutters something I don’t catch, abandoning me, only to return moments later with a piece of cloth. He wraps it around my arm, then he pulls me to a bench at the back and seats me down.

“Ash…” he says. “You’re Ash. I recognize you. You escaped from Faerie?”

I nod, not trusting my voice.

“I mourned you. For years I mourned you. A guard at the great cave gate to Faerieland found one of the shoes you were wearing. One of those glittery slippers. We thought you were gone forever. Nobody ever returns from the land of Faerie.”

“Then you didn’t hear all the tales,” I say, attempting lightness. “Sometimes humans do come back.”

“But time there flows differently,” he whispers, “and when they come back many years have passed.”

I swallow hard. “That’s right.”

“How long has it been for you?”

“A few weeks.”

“Gods below,” he breathes and it brings a smile to my lips, to hear the familiar exclamation on someone else’s lips at last. “Gods.”

“I’m sorry…” I have to clear my throat, inexplicably close to tears again. I flex my fingers, the bandage tied a bit too tightly. “Sorry for your loss. Your wife, your babe, your sister… I’m so terribly sorry.”

He curses, pulls on his beard, then sits down beside me. “They told you?”

“In the palace kitchens. That’s where I went first. I’d forgotten about the time running different down there.”

“In the kitchens?”

“In Faerie.” I give him a watery smile. “Good to see you haven’t lost your sense of humor.”

“You bring out the worst in me.” He slips an arm around my shoulders and finally I break apart, sobbing against his shoulder, soaking the rough cotton. “There, there. What’s wrong? You’re back now. It’s going to be okay.”

I sob harder, my nose blocked with snot, my throat clogged. I hold on to him, my old friend, and eventually, when I can, I tell him everything.

No details about the king bedding me, of course, or exactly the words he told me, but the rest, and when I’m done, we sit together in silence. I have to wonder at what is going through his head. Here is a man whose sister, wife, babe, and father-in-law just died, whose old friend just came back from the dead with a weird tale of her love for the Fae king who kidnapped her and then eventually sent her away—about her heart breaking over someone considered a monster.

Perhaps he’s confused. Or perhaps he’s livid.

When he finally meets my eyes, though, some undetermined time later, he seems to be neither.

“I’m sorry for your loss, too,” he says and from the look in his eyes, I know he means it. A sort of understanding passes between us. “What do you want to do now?

“I hoped you’d help me decide that,” I whisper, and for the first time since I arrived, he smiles.

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