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I cleared my throat. “I have something for Talen.”
His white brows raised. “You didn’t have to get me anything. I’m here to serve you.”
He might technically be charged with caring for me, but Talen was no servant. He was more friend than ally, and this would show him that I cared more about him than what I could get from him. I proudly passed him the box.
With a dance of excitement, he opened it.
His mouth unhinged. “Whose heart did you steal?”
“Yours. And I didn’t steal it. I won it.”
Odette gasped and Talen almost dropped the box. I put a hand to his arm to steady him as disbelief rolled over his face.
“What did this cost you?” His voice was thick. He slowly took off his hat and set it on the bed. “It must have cost a lot.”
“Nothing,” I lied. Only the loss of a favor. “But I would have paid a heavy price for it.”
He wrapped his hands around the heart and let the empty box fall to the floor. His eyes fixated on the fragile glass. “Why would you do this for me?”
This moment, drenched in gratitude, touched me far deeper than receiving a favor from Brock would have. Among us, the shields had begun to fall, stripping bit by bit as a friendship deeper than an alliance formed until I was no longer on guard for hidden motives or sneaky tricks. I could breathe.
This realm was becoming dangerously more like a home and less like a prison.
“Oh, I suppose I forgot that friendship means nothing,” I said. Talen’s eyes met mine with a twinkle.
Odette wrapped her arms around me with tears in her eyes. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“Of course,” I whispered back. “For the girl who gladly handed me a blade even when she thought I planned to murder a king, and the man who gave up his heart to save me from my own mistake, I would do anything.”
Talen lifted the heart with a contented sigh and eased it back into his chest where it belonged. His face brightened like he was complete now, and his eyes grew moist.
“Thank you, my Queen.”
I wiped my own cheeks. “Look at me, making everyone cry. Let’s get back to the real issue, which is where we are planning to hang this masterpiece.” I lifted Odette’s painting. “I say in the throne room.”
Her eyes widened. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“I might,” I said with a wiggle of my brows. Talen grinned, but his hand was still over his chest, and his eyes still sent a million thanks my way.
Once more, he reminded me of my brother. My thoughts of Cal were fewer and far between compared to when I’d first arrived, and my feelings for Talen were no longer reflections from missing my twin. He’d earned them in his own right.
“Find a place to hang that while I change, or else I swear I’m putting it in the throne room,” I warned.
“Quick,” Odette squeaked. “Throw it off the balcony.”
I laughed, making for the closet. I looked back at them before changing, as happiness settled in my heart with a peace I thought I’d never feel here.
I was more than happy. I felt at home.
Guilt threatened to replace the happiness—guilt that I didn’t miss my real home as much as I ought to. Guilt that I was thinking about staying here. Guilt that when I thought of my future, it was a fuzzy picture of nighttime and lanterns hanging off the edges of islands, and chariots that burst through the sky as the company of fae surrounded me.
If surviving the two years meant I had to go home, that was what I would do. But if it offered the chance to stay here . . .
I looked at Odette and Talen once again. Sure enough, they’d chucked the painting off the balcony.
If offered the chance to stay here, I wasn’t certain I’d say no.
I woke to an unforgiving wind curling through my hair, and the curtains over the open balcony door whipping against the wall. Between the two open doors, which I swore I’d shut, was a painting of a girl I’d come to recognize standing on the very balcony the canvas now sat upon. Her hair was pulled back from her face with the force of the wind and her eyes were pink with tears.
