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“It’s Eleanor, actually. Easy mistake.”
I focus on not sounding afraid. I shouldn’t be afraid. After Galaphina, most of the court would know better than to go deliberately targeting me. But these fae look awfully young. Maybe too young to understand when to be cautious.
“Listen to her, friends.” One of them, a black-haired girl in green, laughs. “The way she speaks to us like she’s not a slave. How deluded.”
They close in, backing me up against the archway leading to the orchard. I don’t bother answering, focusing instead on calculating how much danger I’m in. One of the boys speaks next.
“Look at that face. Do you think she always looked like that, or did Prince Ruskin make a deal to suck all the beauty out of her?”
They descend into a fit of giggles and my shoulders sag a little with relief. These insults are truly juvenile, but they’ve not lifted a finger. I can deal with the taunting, especially if that’s all they have in mind.
That’s when I see the knife.
There’s always one, isn’t there? Some kid who takes it too far. Here it’s a big male with messy blond hair and a glinting dagger in his hand.
“Do you think if we use this, it’ll improve it?” he rumbles.
“Axtil!” the black-haired girl gasps, pretending to be scandalized but looking delighted. “You’ll get us in trouble.”
I read the amused faces of his friends. They all think he’s joking, but I’m not so sure. I have a gnawing feeling Axtil might be looking to impress his friends, and it’s my face that’ll pay the price.
The dagger looks sharp, but still pretty and ornate, like everything the fae own. The handle is a the familiar luster of gold—and my mind immediately jumps to the twitchy ring on my worktop.
Had I imagined the way it moved?
I concentrate on the handle of the knife now, visualizing a mental string connecting me and the gold. I yank on it, hard, and the dagger drops out of Axtil’s hands.
No, not drops, it’s pulled. When Axtil bends to pick it up, I yank again, and the handle of the dagger spins away from him, making the blade come round to slice at his palm. He jerks his hand back, gasping in pain.
“It cut me!”
“You’re so clumsy, Axtil.” One of his friends roll their eyes.
“It wasn’t me. It was magic, I saw it,” Axtil’s hurt and angry, his eyes darting across the faces of his comrades as if he’s totally forgotten I’m there. “Which one of you was it?”
“Come off it, none of us did anything.”
“Don’t lie to me, one of you was messing with it.”
The group descends into an argument, and I edge towards the archway. When one of the other boys jokes that Axtil doesn’t know how to handle his weapon, his outrage reaches new levels, and I’m able to slip away unseen into the orchard. I hurry across to the other side, where I know I can double back and head to Destan’s quarters without being seen by my new acquaintances.
But first, I take a moment to lean against a wall and just breathe, trying to grapple with what just happened. I moved that dagger. I did that. But it only could have happened with magic. The incidents in my workshop look less like unrelated events now. Wasn’t the gold in the gryphon’s blood and the pomegranate drawn to me? Didn’t Cebba’s ring change before my eyes? Magic is everywhere in Faerie, but that doesn’t explain how I could wield it as a human.
Standing around won’t get me answers, though, and it probably isn’t very safe. After taking a few deep breaths and pulling myself together, I head to Destan’s quarters.
He looks great, propped up by about a thousand tasseled cushions, under a bedspread of rich velvet.
“Des, your pajamas are fancier than my day wear.”
“As I would expect.” He smiles, reaching out to take my hand and squeezing it. I perch on an armchair angled towards his bed that’s obviously meant for visitors.
“How are you? Is your family around? Bandish showed me in, but he didn’t make any mention of them.”
I’m trying to make a point to learn the names of the Low Fae I encounter. They so often come and go without a word, that sometimes they might as well be invisible, but it makes me uncomfortable. I want them to know I see them, even if no one else in this place does. Even if the opinion of a human doesn’t matter a bit to them.
“No, thank the skies. I made them leave this morning. I couldn’t listen to another lecture about how this just proves that life is short and it’s time for me to settle down.”
I laugh, remembering Halima’s complaints about Destan’s relatives. “Pushy parents?”
