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I was new to having friendships that mattered, but not dumb enough to push her into a conversation she wasn’t ready to have. She’d tell me if there was something she wanted to tell. For now, her silence was a reminder to mind my own business and let her work through whatever it was she needed to.
A comfortable silence blanketed the room and my attention focused in and out as my mind raced with all the pieces of information I had. Nicole’s love life, Noah’s declaration of dating a fellow fae, some high-up dignitary making their way to the castle, and what was most nerve-shattering of all, an attack on the Unseelie lands by the Seelie. Again.
“I should go,” I said softly. “Last thing I need is getting a curfew or something if someone doesn’t like that my freedom to wander keeps me out late.”
Nicole didn’t turn to say goodbye. Her gaze was transfixed on the distance, unblinking. Whatever was on her mind must have weighed heavily enough to turn the feisty force into a cocoon this evening.
“Goodnight, Nic.”
I touched her shoulder before crossing the room, but before my hand turned the knob on her door, she caught me. Not physically but with words that halted my progress.
“Do you ever think we’re on the wrong side of the war?”
The war. The sides. Unseelie versus Seelie. I’d barely been here long enough to know what the war was about, let alone the nuances of either side’s feelings.
But the question was there, bold and out in the open between us. I looked back at Nicole as she stared from the window. She wasn’t nervous to ask me. Not at all. Her eyes held a genuine curiosity. At least that’s what I let myself believe. Because asking the question so openly, anywhere but in what I hoped was the quiet privacy of her room, would have been looked at as treason.
“Whatever side Noah is on, that’s where I’ll be.”
She frowned and for a moment she almost looked disappointed at my answer.
“I hope we’re not wrong,” she murmured, turning back toward the window and the night.
A shiver crept up my spine as I shut her door behind me and scurried back toward the shelter of my own room. I knew Noah would never be a part of something evil, something wrong. This was the right side, it had to be.
And the fact that Nicole was doubtful enough to even question it left a bad taste in my mouth.
A taste I prayed wouldn’t grow with more questions and doubt.
