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Undine ate raw fish, though they preferred shellfish; the more elaborately displayed, the better.
I hadn’t eaten much in Tarsainn. The mer hadn’t fed me while I’d been in the dungeons, slowly poisoned by iron. I suspected they liked their food alive and wriggling so they could watch the life leave its eyes.
Nymphs cooked food over the fire, and it appeared that selkies shared their taste for roasted food.
Trout cooked until black, its skin peeling to reveal the pale flesh underneath. Salt-crusted, with slices of lemon. Scallops cooked with herbs I’d never tasted before. Bread, a rarity, eaten above the surface. Sweet cakes with creamy swirls on top.
Though the lake had felt a lack of food with the war, I had been lucky. Cruinn had never wanted for food. It wouldn’t do for the Undine King and the Esteemed Undine Court to go hungry.
I supposed that selkies could find their food on the surface as well as the water.
As I ate the flaky fish and marveled over the taste, guilt made it hard to swallow.
My life had been spent in a castle tower. Cloistered and coddled and pushed onto a throne to bleed. Even when I had mated, I had been given two males of royal standing. Aside from our sojourn across the lake in the middle of a war, it was unlikely I would know hunger again. Rainn and Tor would not allow it.
But how many of the Lake Fae could say the same?
The tumult in the lake had killed many fish. I knew it. Even when we swam to the Skala beach, the coral didn’t blossom with life. It was stark and barren, like a graveyard.
Would my uncle’s death be enough to fix the unease in the water?
The door opened, and the selkie queen bustled into the room with her mates on her heels. “My children!” She beamed though she looked just as young as each of the selkies at the table. “Starting without me, I see.”
“We’re late, dearest.” One of her mates brushed his finger down her cheek.
She waved his comment away. “A messenger came for Rainn. From the nymphs on the other side of the lake.”
I sat up. “The nymphs?”
The Selkie queen held out a flower, though the petals weren’t right. Rainn took the peony, brushing his fingers over the frilly pink edges; it rustled like paper. He unfolded the flower, his curiosity turning to an icy anger before he schooled his face into a blank mask.
“Wedding invitation,” Rainn said flatly. “Shay Mac Eoin is getting married.”
Chapter Five
I’d never had my heart broken, though I was familiar with grief. The realization that one moment, a person was there, and the next, they were gone.
Shay Mac Eoin had been a moment in my life. A blink. And yet, as I thought about him marrying some faceless nymph female—no doubt more beautiful than I could ever hope to be—I was filled with a desolate longing. Shay Mac Eoin had belonged to me, if only for a moment. I had watched Rainn and Shay together. We had worked to free Cormac from his mental prison together.
So many moments when his colorful eyes had given away his thoughts, and his braids shifted like the tide.
I rubbed my hand down my face.
Perhaps I was romanticizing a stranger. Clinging to the princelings because of the words of the prophecy. Determined to find an end to the fighting.
Maybe I’d beaten it. I’d killed Irvine with my magic and my will. Did I need to be mated to all the princelings to bring peace to the lake?
Could I even call them the Princelings, when two of them were kings in their own right?
The dinner passed in silence, as Rainn, Tor, and I had no desire to join the conversation after the wedding news broke.
We excused ourselves early, and though our somber moods should have given away that we weren’t escaping for any carnal reason, a flurry of jokes followed us to the door.
My smile dropped when we entered Rainn’s suite, though I didn’t know exactly why.
I didn’t own Shay Mac Eoin.
I barely knew him.
