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“We offer up the bounties to the earth and the darkness to maintain the balance,” she tells me, taking a determined step closer. “But that balance is becoming unsteady.”
I whisper, “The light is breaking through.”
Her eyes flash like silver blades caught in the light. “You know too much already, young one.”
I cut a glance down at my sandals. My toes are curled. “I overhear things in the castle,” is all I say, a weak explanation, but the truth. I look up at her. “What is it you want with me?”
She lifts her chin and sniffs the air once. “Your fear is intoxicating,” she tells me. I can’t say why I blush, but I do. “Your fear, however,” she adds, stepping around me, her silver eyes running me over, “is misplaced. I have not come here to harm you. Should I wish to sacrifice you for the balance, I could do so easily—in this moment. No one would hear you scream, not once I tear out your throat.”
“So you don't mean to kill me,” I whisper, as if to remind her of her promise. “Then what do you want?”
“The iilra, among others, are displeased,” she tells me, her mouth flattening into a disgusted line. “Prince Daein draws too close to you. He brings you to the Royal Court, from pet to official lover, and of all things—he dances with you for all to witness.”
I didn’t know the dance was significant.
I pale, slipping a foot back as she comes too close. Despite her promise, I keep a safe distance between us.
“We can offer you an escape,” the iilra says, walking me around in slow, steady circles. “Prince Daein means no such thing for you, to be free.”
I shake my head. “My bargain ends in a month.”
“And a new one will take its place.”
She sounds confident in this and, as I consider it for a beat, I realise that he can do that—and maybe he’s been planning on it all along. How easily he can return me to the farmhouse and snatch me back up again for his next bounty.
Still, I refuse to believe it. I shake my head so hard that I dizzy myself. “I’ll be leaving soon,” I insist.
“Prince Daein has duties,” the iilra tells me, as though I hadn’t spoken at all. “Duties and expectations that have been abandoned since the moment you arrived here. We hear rumours, young human. Rumours that you are his evate.”
Chills run down my spine. “I don’t know what that means.”
“He does.” Her lashes lower, darkening her eyes to thunder clouds. “We do,” she adds. “It means to relinquish all power. And this is where we have ... challenges.”
I swallow back a gulp.
She stops circling me, instead stepping closer. “Prince Daein has done all that he can to delay the proceedings with the litalves. We can see where this union of yours is directed. Soon, you will be wearing black if we do not intervene now.”
A bitter smile takes me. “He won’t marry me,” I tell her. “You think you know our relationship, but you don’t. He hurts me.”
Unfazed, she doesn’t so much as bat an eye. A moment passes before she says, “We cannot return you to your home. That is the first place he will search for you. But we can keep you hidden.”
“Why not kill me?” My voice is small.
“To kill a prince’s evate is a greater crime than to kill his mere lover. Not even the iilra or his brother will commit such an act.”
“His brother?” I whisper, complexion fading to ash.
The tree branches rustle behind me.
I jerk back, staggering on the foliage as a familiar prince emerges from the darkness.
Elden, his face carved from stone.
I swerve my gaze back to the iilra, a breath trapped in my chest.
Her eyes darken on me. “And the prince has kissed you.”
My cheeks blaze as I cut my gaze away.
