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“I never said it did.” The Fairy Princess strides to the side of the dais, taking in the rest of the room before she faces Myron once more. “Now that I know your bride is in glowing health, I might as well pass on my brother’s message and inform you that, if you don’t keep your people to the confinements of the Seeing Forest, there will be repercussions.”
A hiss runs through the row of Crows, and I nearly ask what she means by that when Myron’s hand wraps around mine in warning, and the contact momentarily distracts me on a level that makes it impossible for me to speak.
“My peoplehavebeen remaining within our borders,” the Crow King tells her with such authority that I would have believed him even knowing that it’s a lie. Ephegos has been spying on the nearby villages for signs of malignant activities and found burned-down sheds and stories about dead half-crows.
Princess Cliophera’s gaze lingers on Myron as if waiting for him to admit to the lie for long moments. When he doesn’t speak, she shakes her head. “Consider yourself warned. Recienne isn’t in the mood for a third war, and if you can’t keep your people in line, he might as well take away all your privileges and see you slaughtered by his armies.”
It’s a bone-chilling threat. One that I can feel reverberating through Myron’s body as he leans half an inch closer, his warmth swallowing me up even when ice slides down my spine at the look the fairy gives us.
“If my people disrespect the bargain, I might as well slaughter them myself.” Every last fiber in my body tells me that he means it. He’ll kill his own people if they disrespect the agreement he made with the Fairy King for the benefit of peace and that one bride a year—that onechancea year, as Royad had called it.
As I stare from him to the princess and back to him, something shifts inside me, and I realize that this one tiny detail is what made him bleed that day when he’d shared it. A chance.
Brides are chances. And this year, the chance is me. If only I knew what for?
I put it on the list of things to ask Myron and hope he won’t choke on the answer—while working myself to hold the princess’s gaze as it lands on me.
“I hope to find you alive and equally well the next time I check in,” she says before she turns on her heels and saunters back to the door without as much as a dip of her chin.
The Crows hiss at her as she marches past, and Royad and Ephegos draw their swords, ready to hurl them at the fairy though she doesn’t bother to spare anyone a glance, as if her power exceeds all of theirs. Probably, it does, or this arrangement with the Fairy King would have long ended.
When I turn to gauge Myron’s reaction, I find his all-black eyes resting on me, an unease tightening his once more human features that ties a knot around my stomach, and I know that whatever he does or doesn’t know about what’s going on at the borders of the Seeing Forest, none of it scares him as much as the questions burning in my mind—and that I might actually ask them the moment we’re alone.
Twenty-Three
My skin is still pricklingwhere his wing pressed against my arm when I sit in one of the chairs he had brought onto the dais after the fairy left. I scan the Crows discussing the most recent developments in hissed and cawed statements while trying to ignore the itch to steal a glimpse at Myron’s face while he is focused on the meeting rather than on me. He sits a few feet away from me in the other carved chair instead of his throne, listening patiently to the demands and claims his people make.
While the rest of the Crows broke into a clamor the moment the fairy walked out the door, he explained to me in a murmur that the King of Askarea likes to check in on the Crows every now and then and that he likes to remind them that this bargain is at his convenience. I don’t know what sort of king would do anything like that, but then, I’d expected all Crows to be monsters, yet I found myself in the middle of a triangle of friends who seem to not want me dead as much as they want something else from me. What that is exactly, I have yet to find out, but it all seems to have something to do with the way they keep referring to my role as a bride.
Myron’s eyes snap to mine, and I realize I failed at keeping them away from him. A small smile lingers on his lips that is slightly out of character for the cruel king he intends to portray, and I can’t help noticing how much more regal it makes him look, how good, even with the wings, as if the self-loathing monster he believes himself to be has retreated to give him a break.
Before I lower my gaze back to the conversing Crows, I give him a tiny smile of my own and watch his eyes go wide for a heartbeat as they warily follow the movement of my lips as if he can’t believe I’m actually smiling at him.
“It doesn’t change a thing,” Royad’s baritone carries above the hisses, drawing my attention back to the conversation. “If the high fae believe we’ve broken the bargain, they’ll send Shaelak himself after us.”
Again—that mention of a foreign god that I have never heard of, a reminder of how little I belong with this species who either need me or hate me or both. Something clenches in my chest at the thought that this is the only reason I’m here. Not because anyone wants me here but because I’m part of a bargain I never agreed to. I’m a tool to be used, a pawn. Nothing more, nothing less.
A bride. Achance.
“No one is leaving the Seeing Forest.” Myron’s smile has disappeared as he rolls over the rising voices. “No one but Ephegos and his spies.”
Ephegos inclines his head. “We have more reports of fires in the surrounding villages,” the spymaster reports, ignoring the caws of upset from the Crows at the other end of the table.
“We’ve been locked in here for too long, my king,” one of them hisses, and I can tell by the flash of anger in his eyes that he is one of the faction working against Myron. “If we don’t get out of here, we will be forgotten by the gods.”
Myron’s tone is like ice as he answers, “Maybe we should be forgotten by the gods.”
Gods.How many gods do they think there are? Eroth and the one they call Shaelak. But the Guardians aren’t gods. They are Eroth’s children.
Before I can dive deeper into the topic, another Crow caws his anger, and the feathers flare as two of them get into a hissed argument. I don’t understand a word as their features and bodies become more and more like those of birds, and eventually feathers are flying through the air as they rip at each other with their claws.
“Silence!” Myron thunders, a streak of silvery power flashing across the table and shattering one of the goblets next to the fighting Crows. They jump apart, shifting back into their more human forms, lowering their heads before their king. Because that is what Myron still is—no matter what they believe they can do to him. And I think I’m starting to understand that the faction against brides is the faction that deems a king unnecessary too. They are savages who want to scour the realm for any advantage they can get and take as they please—riches, land, women.
As I am wrapping my head around how deep the cleft between the two fronts truly is, I can’t help but wonder why the other faction would hold on to a king if they obviously strive for freedom. Freedom—it hits me then, how much those creatures and I have in common even when some of them won’t hesitate to do whatever they can to see me dead if it means it hurts their king.
Another thing strikes me in that moment, and the room around me vanishes as my gaze snaps to Myron: There is a part of the Crow King who will be devastated if I die, and I am not sure it is because I am just another bride wasting away in his care, another proof of his failure. Or if it is something more.
* * *
