They whispered amongst themselves again. I was waiting for one of them to ask?—
“Your Highness, do you recall your height at the time of impact?”
Solaris side-eyed me. I smiled encouragingly.
After a moment, he stood up and fluttered his way up over our heads. Thankfully, the room we were in had enormous vaulted ceilings so he had room to get up near the top and confirm that was about the height of his flight.
Damn, we’d been so close to the ground and yet not nearly close enough. If he hadn’t caught me and controlled most of our decent, I’d be a splat on that brittle grass way out there in the middle of nowhere.
I squinted at him as he came back down. Were his wings bigger than they had been? They seemed…fuller maybe? Scalloped edges, larger sections of color, and I couldn’t remember those bottom ones having that drippy-looking part. Were they changing along with the amount of tiny feathers taking over his skin?
Solaris retook his seat as the spellworkers whispered again. I reached over and squeezed his hand in thanks for saving me. He gave me a grin and squeezed back.
When I glanced at the spellworkers, I realized every single person was staring at me. Us. Our clasped hands?
“Are you twoinvolved?” one of them said. I wasn’t sure if it was with alarm or just surprise.
“Pardon?” Solaris asked in a tone I was going to call prissy prince. Now that we were here, and he was all up in his royalty, he could make these people wet themselves with that tone and one word. I was seeing it happen live.
The woman who’d asked the question gulped and curtsied until she was practically folded up on the floor. “Forgive me, Your Highness! I meant to convey my delight at your new romance.”
Uh-huh. Solaris didn’t look like he believed her any more than I did. I wanted to ask if our relationship was adding to the changes he was making with himself, but I wasn’t sure that was any of their business.
“Why don’t we take a break?” I said before anyone else could do more than open their mouths. I looked to Solaris. “Can you show me more of the castle?”
He nodded and stood, still holding my hand, before leading us into the hallway. When he stopped, he took a deep breath and sighed it out. I was glad I’d asked for a break.
“What would you like to see?” He gave me a tired smile.
Since he was asking… “What I’d really like to see is the barrier. How long would it take us to get to one?”
He walked to a window and pointed. “It’s just there.”
I joined him at the window and… Okay, yeah, that was a barrier. It looked like a massive smooth pane of glass stretching as far as I could see in every direction. Clouds were on the other side and it seemed to be raining over there, but no clouds or rain were on this side. What a horrible tease. Five minutes of rain would make such a difference here.
“Can we get closer?”
“Of course.”
Chapter 11
Ifollowed Solaris down a small flight of stairs and zigzagged with him through hallways. When he got to the bottom of a staircase and looked both ways, I had to tease him.
“Is this even your castle?”
He paused and frowned at me. “What?”
I grinned at him. “Are we lost?”
He huffed. “I don’t knoweverystairwell in the building.”
“So you don’t do a lot of sneaking around then?”
He looked me up and down like maybe something could happen in this dimly lit spot, but then two men carrying giant pots pushed through a door. Solaris startled like he’d been electrocuted, and the two men sloshed whatever was in their pots as they jerked back and tried to bow to him.
I laughed at all of them, grabbed Solaris’s arm, and hauled him toward a door that had sunlight streaming through its windows. We burst outside onto grass between the moat and the castle’s outer wall.
“Well, would you look at that…” Right in front of us and bisecting the muddy moat was the barrier. “So you built your castle on someone else’s property?”
