“What is it?” the king says from the other end of the table.
“I had wondered where the Lesser Fae were, if they all worked for the Empress.”
“No, not all. And these ones have been here all along.”
“No way.”
“All Fae exist together but our eyes sometimes want to deceive us, paint over what doesn’t seem possible. That’s what the humans call glamour. They don’t realize that they are the ones using it, not us. They are the ones placing blinkers over their own eyes, their minds refusing to acknowledge what is different from their own reality.”
I take a sip of wine to steady myself. “That’s… something.”
He nods, raises his goblet to his lips.
“So what happened today? Why can I see their animal parts? Is it that I’m getting used to this world? Why would my blinkers vanish?”
“Those with Fae blood in them can do it,” he says. “I don’t know why it happened now. Maybe you are becoming accustomed to this world.”
I spent my life refusing to believe that my mother had slept with one of the Fae and now he’s saying… He’s saying that there might have been some truth in those stories.
“Why do we have to sit so far from each other?” I blurt out, needing to change where my thoughts are leading.
“I thought you might prefer that,” he says quietly, setting the goblet back down. “Not sitting close to me.”
Yesterday I might have. Today… I’m not so sure anymore. All my beliefs, my certainties are falling away like flakes of dry mud, revealing startling possibilities underneath.
“I’d like to sit closer to you,” I say just as quietly. “It would make talking easier.”
He grins all of a sudden, a flash of slightly sharp teeth, and it’s so charming I find myself grinning back. “It certainly would,” he agrees. “From tomorrow we will sit closer together.”
I can’t look away from the excitement in his sparkling eyes. If I thought he was gorgeous before, I have to admit he’s breathtaking now.
What have I got myself into? Agreeing to stay for a moon is as good as a death sentence…
After the dishes are cleared away, a platter of gleaming, perfect fruit and more wine is set on a low table in the next room which proves to be the study I visited before.
So many books. Walking along the shelves, I marvel at the sheer number of them as the king sinks with a half-suppressed grunt in one of the grand, leather-padded chairs by the fire. He seems to favor fireplaces, as if he’s always cold. He lifts a hand to rub at his brow, then catches me watching and lowers his hand slowly.
His mouth flattens.
“I think that wound in your side is still infected and bothering you,” I say.
“I said I’m fine.”
I roll my eyes to the spirits in the heavens. Boys. Pete did the same whenever he was sick or fell and injured himself. I learned to see through his posturing, and I think I’m starting to see through the king’s now, too. So odd to think that there are similarities between the servant boy I grew up with and a king of Faerie.
Then again, this world and this king keep surprising me. That’s one way to keep me on my toes.
Because I’m not staying here for long. I need to hold on to my reasons, to my anger, to the fact that I’m going back.
I find myself massaging my hand where a faint impression of pain lingers.
Somehow that gets his attention. “Why are you holding your hand like that? Does it hurt?”
“It’s nothing. It’s as if something stung me when I stabbed at that… sark thing.” I approach regardless, let him take my hand, run the callused pads of his fingers over the painful spot. “See? There’s nothing.”
“Sometimes wounds aren’t visible, and still they kill us.”
“That’s so uplifting.” I laugh, a little nervously, gazing down at his dark, horned head, the long lashes casting filigree shadows on his cheekbones, the muscular shoulders stretching the fine fabric of his black shirt. “Sometimes the pain is passing, though, and there is no wound to show for it.”