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They practically obsess over me. Not in the nicest of ways, either.
Lately I learned that my hips are too wide, and Princess Elly wants me to stop eating. Daein would have a fit if I lost my curves. He quite fancies them. And they only got wider, my belly a little chubbier, my thighs a little meatier, since birthing Ensley.
Anyways, so the light fae do what they can—all that I’ll let them do. My hair, my make-up, my fancy and strange outfits. At least all of this washes off when I strip down for the bath before bed.
Just as I bring the rim of the cool glass to my silver-painted lips, familiar faces pull from the thinning crowd and draw my way, catching my attention. It’s the Prince of the Waters and Ember, his lover.
By the weariness of Ember’s bloodshot eyes and the watchfulness in the prince’s, I suspect what’s coming. With a prepared nod and tight smile, I reach out a free hand for Ember and she takes it.
I tug her onto the window’s ledge with me.
The humans are tiring, the Halflings too. The prince, thinking me one of the humans (a heavily protected one at that), leaves his favourite concubine with me. He turns his back on us, heading back into the thick of the crowd. It’s becoming late now, and this is when the political talks and negotiations really kick off.
We—us humans, even the pretend ones—are not allowed to participate. So we sit it out, like Ember and me, or dance the night away while high on the native fruits. The fruits don’t have the same potent effect on me as they would a human, but they are a bit of a mood booster. Maybe I should take more of them just to lift myself up a bit. Though, I find that they do come with one dizzying headache once the fun effects wear off.
“I don’t know how you keep up,” Ember groans beside me, crumbling my thoughts down all around me, like tower debris and dust falling.
I blink one, twice, then turn my blank face towards her. It takes another few moments for me to trace her gaze to the wine glass in my hand and understanding falls over me like an elegant cloak.
My lips form an ‘o’ shape, and I nod slowly.
“Guess I’m just used to the stronger stuff back home,” I say, and of course by home, I mean the dark lands. Never the human lands. That’s not home anymore. Never was in the first place, really.
She loosens a heavy sigh that deflates her flat chest so much that it’s almost indented.
I feel like a bloated sap tree beside her, she’s so slender. No wonder she’s a prince’s favoured concubine. Her body shape matches that of a full-blooded litalf; slender, no hip bones to speak of, perky and small breasts that hardly hold up her binding corset. Slightly reminds me of a boy’s body before he hits puberty.
Even still, jealousy spikes inside of me and I’m suddenly too aware of how much wider my thighs and hips are now that I’m sitting.
I wonder something that has niggled at me for almost two decades now. Why is my body so unlike the frames of the litalves, when I truly am one? A Halfling, yes, but all the same—I look nothing like them. My ordinary powerlessness is human, as is my appearance. As though when I was born, all the essence of litalf blood was plucked out of me.
Fleetingly, I wonder if that’s possible. Maybe it was…
Hmm.
“Did you hear about the Wastelands?” she asks, making conversation, filling the silence between us.
This is why I hide away—I hate these forced conversations, the same rumours and reports over and over. It’s enough to further numb my brain.
Mind you, this is really the only chance I get to find out what’s actually going on in the lands—Daein tells me nothing.
“The light pillars stopped expanding?” I ask, taking a wild guess and fighting the urge to roll my eyes.
It’s not Ember I’m annoyed with. It’s Daein. We should have left by now, and I’m officially stuck in small talk with someone I’ve only ever chatted to in brief spouts when her prince and mine murmured about political matters.
Politics. The mere thought dulls me. It’s always the same conversations whispered around the lands. Will a dokkalf and litalf marry to combine the Higher Courts? Will many royal dark and light fae wed to join the peoples? Or will this conquering turn into what it did in the old world—the human one—with total and absolute control and the light fae officially joining the Lesser Court?
Right now, it’s all up in the air. Could take even more years to come to some sort of decision. Elden fights for total colonisation. Of course he does, he’s a bloodthirsty prick. Wouldn’t be surprised if he chose to back the rare—but out there—idea of slaughtering every… well, everythingwith litalf blood just to make a statement.
He’s an ass.
“No,” Ember sighs, slumping back against the window.
I side-eye her for a beat, guessing that she’s somewhat disappointed that I’m not more interested in our topic. Her brown eyes, so dark that they’re almost like ink blots, meet mine.
“The light’s growing again,” she says, watching me closely. “And new columns of it are starting to break through, as well. That’s what I heard.”
My brows furrow. Eyeing her, my grip on the glass tightens a tad and my back stiffens. “It’s growing again?”
