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APRIL
The ballroom is a fresh headache caged by four tall, lavish walls, a ceiling that glitters like the chandeliers Grandmother used to tell me about back in the old world, and shimmering black drapes ghosting all around as if to hide any mischief they might find.
I stand, a statue amidst the organised chaos; my sandaled feet entwined in a loose ribbon that must have fallen from someone’s dress at some point in the festivities.
I am numb. Numb to it all—the clinking of glasses, the laughter that tinkers like small silver bells, the rustle of the dresses swishing over the floor. All the sounds gather into one muffled noise that seems so far away, yet suffocating all at once.
My own dress brings me no reprieve.
Now, I no longer wear the shame of a slave’s beige. This silky gown is an ivory, figure-hugging masterpiece that gifts my curves with a delicacy my body does not normally possess. And these lace sleeves … they itch. Scratching at my arms, red beneath the ivory, I tighten my grip on a flute of purple fizzing drink to help fight the urge to tear at them.
There’s something about attending the Lesser Court that prickles my skin and shivers my bones like nothing else. Is it that my daughter grins something wicked as she is gracefully danced around the room by Affay, a litalf prince’s heir? Or that my own husband stands across the grand room on the podium with the very dark fae who used his whole arsenal to bring me to my death?His brother—a dokkalf I will never escape. One of two.
Daein is still my captor.
I feel very much the prisoner, even as his wife, the mother of his child, the object of his entire love. All the love he is capable of burns for me and me alone.
Not even his daughter earns herself some shavings of that love. No, it is all for me, and yet it somehow goes down wrong, like a drink down the windpipe, a sprinkle of dust up the nostril. It all feels so veryoff.
Am I drowning…?
No. Drowning would mean fight is still in me, somewhere. Death has not yet come either. I have not found the peace that comes with the true end of life.
I am somewhere in the middle, somewhere in between the state of drowning and death; that peaceful silence, surrounded by the impossible pressure of infinite water, deafened by the sound, limp and simply on the brink.
My daughter catches my dazed attention for a moment. Her laugh rises too high above the chatter of the ball. People turn to look at the pretty girl with reddened cheeks and purple-stained lips, her hand loose in Affay’s as he grins something mischievous, then whips her into another circle. Around and around, she goes.
My gaze flicks to Daein on the podium. I know him too well. He watches our daughter, Ensley. I call her Flower, but he insisted on a true dokkalf name. So there it is—another decision stolen from me.
Her name matters none at the moment, though.
Her behaviour embarrasses Daein. His anger is betrayed in the clench of his jaw and the tightening of his gloved hand on his tumbler. His eyes narrow on her for a beat before his brows ruffle and he turns his gaze around—finding me instantly, as though he knew where I was already. How silly of me. Of course he did.
He always knows where I am.
His face softens for the quickest of heartbeats—and my own heartbeat skips painfully in my chest.
Why can’t I love him the way I love his face? His body. His touch. His lips on mine. His worship of me. His ultimate sacrifice of his princeship to protect me, to give me what I wanted.What I thought I wanted.
Why can’t Ilethim make me happy?
He so wants to.
And I so much want to feel … something.
The heartbeat moment is shattered. A flutter of darkness steals his face at my utter disinterest in both him and our daughter; at my blank expression staring back at him. And he looks away, turning back to Elden, a new dimple of tension dipped into his temple.
I turn my cheek to him, to the misery his desperate eyes bring me, and I look to the swirling paved path that loops around the dancefloor. Smaller fae—pixies, mostly; the ones as tall as those grubby gnomes—prance around in golden tutu dresses, balancing gold platters of sizzling drinks on their hands.
Just as a blur of gold—a pixie with sunshine hair to match—swivels around a pair of humans dancing way too close together for the event’s stiff, political tone, I catch my eyes in someone’s reflection. I blink, realisation draping over me like a storm cloud; it isn’t my eyes I see, but the same sadness in someone else’s as I carry in mine.
We lock gazes for a beat and I recognise her. I recognise the litalf fae she clings to, her arm hooked around his. Ember, her name is. A Halfling born in the light lands from a long line of slaves—and that makes her a slave here too, despite being a half-breed. I believe her mother was, too, a concubine.
Ember just so happens to be the favourite concubine of a litalf royal; Ocean, the Prince of the Waters.
I know, right? Obvious name. But all the litalf royals have these simpler names, like Rain (the Prince of War … he didn’t do so well with that duty, considering his lands are currently occupied by the dokkalves). Anyways, Rain is the father of Affay, the Halfling my daughter fancies herself so attached to. And considering how poorly Rain and Daein tolerate each other, I’d guess that Ensley has misplaced her moodiness and resentment on me.
