Page 118 of Taken By Shadows

Taking a bite, I nearly choked on the fruit sponge cake between my teeth. But she was waiting for me to reply. My choking notwithstanding.

Bleeding Crowns … Why was she asking about Kaed? And me!

But she had stirred something with her probing. My words took over before I could swallow them. “Kaed. Does he—Has he—” As soon as I started the question, I wasn’t sure I wanted to finish it. I didn’t even know how to ask what I wanted.

Did I really want the answer?

“Has he been … involved with people?” I hedged, thinking of Sapphine and the refused offers of Pearl and Daeghan’s heirs.

“Has he been involved with people before you?” Audrie clarified.

“We’re not involved,” I shot back. “Not really.”

“I know that.” She’d been privy to the whole story from the start, so I don’t know why I felt the need to remind her that our betrothal was all just a lie that had gotten out of control.

“I don’t know much about his, um”—she picked at a cake—“history with, um … I wasn’t in the fortress of Hayden long before he moved my studies here. I don’t think he’s had anyone to the Alabaster Palace since I’ve been in the city these past two years.” She looked at me expectantly.

The monster that dwelled in the darker parts of my soul stayed silent, but smiled.

“But he is more than two centuries older than me, so I suppose he could have had dozens, maybe hundreds of people to his rooms. I only moved to the Alabaster Palace when you arrived. I like it there. It’s nicer than the scribe quarters near the library.” She shrugged as she picked her way over a stall with colourful jars, her thoughts now refocusing on her new room, not my question.

Jealousy rose in me like bile at the thought of being one in a long line of what I’m sure were beautiful fae and humans alike. And I wasn’t even in the line. I was standing to one side. Watching. Hungry. I groaned internally.

Get a hold of yourself. He’s not your betrothed. And you’re not getting into his bed.

“I know he was supposed to marry Lady Sapphine. But she ended up marrying Lord Tymon not long after it was all broken off,” Audrie offered as she moved to a stall with silver urns, each of them smelling of different sweet smokes that they puffed out from tiny nozzles.

“Why did they not marry?” Genuine curiosity forced me to ask.

“I don’t know.” She let her fingers linger on the silver. “It’s not something they put in the history books.”

“You must have an idea?” I wasn’t usually one for gossip, but I couldn’t picture them together.

Audrie paused her perusals.

“You know more, don’t you!” I laughed. “Friends. No secrets,” I reminded her.

“We said no lies. Not no secrets.”

“Well, how about some gossip then. Tell me,” I urged.

A vendor offered us a sample of some sort of buttery pie, but I ignored it in favour of the story Audrie was about to tell. A plaintiff meow came from Turnip as we passed over the food, but Audrie hushed him.

“Lady Sapphine is the daughter of a very, very wealthy lord. The only daughter, in fact. Her brothers died early in the war, and so her father was rather protective of her, I suppose. Or so they say. Kaedian’s family is royalty, and the Northern Corner steel they forged was used throughout the war. But it was Sapphine’s father who supplied most of the warriors.”

It’s not that this wasn’t interesting, but it also wasn’t what I needed to know right now. I tried to focus on her words, but all I could think about was Kaed with Sapphine.

“Steel and armies?”

She rolled her eyes. “Less history and more gossip?”

“Please.” I smiled.

Audrie sighed dramatically, but I knew she was loving this. “Some history?” She bit her lip. And I conceded.

I knew Crown histories. Or at least I thought I had.

“Viverna was the Crown in the East, they had been the only human Crown of the four, ever.” Audrie paused at a parchment stall, her fingers trailing over the rough edges of the sheets. “It’s part of why so many humans still live in the city. And the allyship with the Vivernan Crown was the beginning of the fall of the Western Crown and the stronghold of Fort Gorrim.”