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Before Riley can answer, Rys says, “I assure you, my darling, I certainly deserved it.”
“She’s not your darling,” barks Nine.
Riley snorts before stifling a small laugh. For a second, she loses that apprehensive look of hers, making her seem more approachable—and even prettier. Wonderful. “Uh, Nine? I think he was talking to her. Not me.” She bumps her thigh into his. “Looks like you’ve got nothing to worry about, huh?”
“Oh.” Nine blinks. His eerie silver stare goes from Rys to me, then back to Rys. “Is that why she’s coming on this mission? Because she’s your—”
“Elle is joining us because Oberon insisted on it,” Rys tells the Unseelie, cutting him off. “He won’t be persuaded otherwise.”
Gee, thanks. As if I needed the reminder that I’m just an unwanted tagalong.
Well, might as well let the mated couple know that our foursome is now a quintet.
“It’s not just me. My”—oof, what should I call him? “Jim’s coming, too.”
“Another human?” Nine sounds as happy with the news as I am to give it. “The Summer King does remember that, to find the Winter Queen, we have to go to the Unseelie Court?”
“And the Shadow Realm,” added Rys. “We can’t forget that.”
Nine thins his lips. “Rys.”
“All the same, Oberon approved the addition.”
He did?
“I’m sure the Summer King has his reasons,” Nine says after a moment.
“More like motives,” adds Riley. Her earlier good humor is gone, her forehead furrowed as if she’s questioning that as much as I suddenly am.
I mean, she’s not wrong. I only met with Oberon the one time but between that and all of the stories Morgan told me about the infamous king of the Seelie Court, I know that Oberon doesn’t do anything because he’s being kind or magnanimous. If he’s giving the okay for Jim to come along on this super important mission, he’s definitely got some kind of motive behind it.
Fingers crossed that I never have to find out what that is.
5
I take one look at the pair of stallions pawing the springy, blue grass in front of Rys's manor and feel my stomach drop to my scuffed boots.
Knowing that we’re about to start our trip, I gave some of my new clothes to Lolly to “pack” for me before pulling on my familiar jeans, tank, leather jacket, and boots. Since I lost my shadow cloak when I was trapped by the redcap and his trolls, and the imp who tailored my new wardrobe made me everything I would need to blend in but that, I figured wearing straight black should help me hide enough once we cross over into the Shadow Realm. Sure, I might stick out in the Seelie Court, but I’m beginning to understand why Rys didn’t say anything when he noticed what I’d changed into this morning.
I knew we were going to have to travel through the Summerlands. Maybe I was being naive, but I guess I was just banking on the fact that we’d use Rys’s portal. I mean, when Rys first brought me home with him, that’s how we did it. As soon as we left the Unseelie Court behind, he whipped up a portal and, poof, we were standing in front of his house.
Unfortunately, I’m only now remembering that there’s a slight problem when it comes to our group. Rys is Seelie. Riley’s mate? Unseelie. Just like how Rys is drained by the dark shadow magic, the light and fire wielded by the Seelie would weaken Nine. We’d save time, yeah, but would it be worth it if the other fae was incapacitated when we needed him the most?
Which explains the horse-drawn carriage waiting for us.
The fact that it’s a carriage instead of a caravan does little to settle my nerves. Growing up in the city, I saw carriages just like this in the tourist section all of the time, but I never got close to them. They were just there. They stayed in the road with their controller, and I kept to the sidewalk. No harm, no foul. Then I ended up in Faerie, got sentenced to fairy jail, and Bram drove me all of the way to Siúcra in the back of an iron cage draped in canvas.
It took three days to travel from Veron’s palace to the prison. I hated every last minute of it.
And now I’m supposed to willingly climb into the carriage and ride
out of the Summer Court into the Shadow Realm… oh, come on.
I don’t want to. I never even thought I’d have to. Obviously, I know there’s nothing like cars in Faerie, and horse travel seems pretty routine, but I’d rather freaking walk if I have to. Just… not the horses, okay?
They’re exact doubles, down to the massive dicks that tell me that, yup, these are definitely stallions. I don’t really know shit about horses—that whole “males being stallions” is about as much as I do know—but they don’t seem so different than the horses back home. I guess because they are, technically, Seelie horses, the golden color of their coat is to be expected, and each horse has a pair of gleaming black eyes that are way more intelligent than they should be.
It’s almost as if they can tell how uncomfortable they make me… and it amuses them.
