No surname, or not one he was going to hand out?
“Solaris,” I repeated. “Cool. Do your friends call you Sol?”
“No.”
I didn’t ask if it was because he didn’t have any friends.
“So where are we? And how long has the drought been going on?” Because I could look back and see that our footsteps were grinding the crispy grass into the very dry dirt.
Solaris side-eyed me for a second as we trudged along. “We’re in the Summer Court. The drought is because we’ve been locked in our season for three years.”
“Why have you been locked in summer for three years?”
“The curse.”
Okay, so he wasn’t delusional from a head injury—there was a curse. But then he actually didn’t say another damn word about it. I groaned, apparently finding my limit for playing nice.“Are youseriouslygoing to make me keep dragging information out of you?”
He sighed. “Three years ago, someone very powerful cast a curse on all the seasonal courts to trap us in our seasons and prevent anyone from traveling. Those who had been in a different court for whatever reason were instantly transported back to the court of their birth. I’m told the constant high temperatures and long days of summer have caused some sort of fatigue to the plants and soil.”
A sort of climate change crisis for the fairy world? And after only three years the plants were dying. I had to wonder aloud, “How are you growing food?”
“Greenhouses.”
That made sense and also brought to mind what the other places must be doing. “Does this also mean there are people stuck in a perpetual winter?”
“Yes.”
Either they’d already been using greenhouses and those trenches below the frostline, or the people living in an endless winter might be seriously suffering. Who would do that?
“You said ‘someone very powerful,’ so you don’t know who cast the curse?”
“No. I also don’t know what they want. I’m aware of rumors, but no facts other than the results of the curse.”
“What’re the rumors?”
He eyed me like he didn’t want to talk about it.
“Oh, come on. What else are we going to do?” I gestured at the expanse of nothingness ahead of us. Seriously, I couldn’t even see a distant city or anything else. Just a few copses of trees barely clinging to life and miles of brittle grass. Not a single distraction as far as the eye could see.
He heaved another sigh and kept on trudging. “Some say the king cast the spell to teach the princes a lesson, force themto grow up, or make them change in some way. I think that’s absurd. There was nothing wrong with the Summer Court before the curse.”
Their own father? “Were the princes assholes or something?”
“No. Well, some of them.”
“Are they young? Doing dumb kid things because they’re dumb kids?”
“They’re all in their prime.”
“What does that mean for a fairy prince?”
We were about the same height, but he did a thing where he managed to look down his nose at me just by tilting his head back a bit. “Fae, thank you.”
“Sorry. I don’t know the difference.”
Solaris stopped and turned to face me, his expression incredulous. “I’m not the size of a bird.”
“Oh. Okay. So fairies are literally the tiny ones. Tinkerbell and her girl friends.”
