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“Are you hungry?” he asked, nodding at the table.
I started to shake my head…and then my stomach growled. I had been too nervous to eat that morning and of course, I hadn’t had any of the delicate refreshments being served at our ceremony. Most of them were simply candied flower petals and the like, anyway.
No one at the Summer Court but me seemed to crave food with any substance. I’d spent half my life feeling like I was starving, even as I failed to even approach the Seelie standard of slender beauty.
“I beg your pardon, my Lord Blackthorn,” I said, putting a hand to my traitorous stomach.
“Call me Liath,” he said shortly. “And don’t apologize, you’re hungry—and for real food. Not that fucking cobweb stew and rosewater tonic stuff they serve in the Summer Court.”
I was surprised that he knew the details of what we ate—how did he know so much about the Summer Court and its denizens when we never mixed? But I took a seat at the table, after Liath pulled out my chair. He might look beastly but he had the manners of a gentleman, at least in this instance, I decided.
He sat across from me and drew his dagger again. I watched uneasily as he pricked a fingertip and made a gesture with one hand while rumbling something under his breath.
At once, the round table was filled with serving platters, all of them full of steaming, savory-smelling food.
My stomach grumbled again but I sat frozen in place. A lady didn’t serve herself when dining with a gentleman and there were no servers here to help. Also, though the food smelled amazing, not much of it was familiar.
My dilemma came to an end when Liath reached easily across the table with one long arm and began serving me some of everything.
“Here,” he said, putting a piece of rare meat on my plate, followed by a scoop of something gooey and cheesy, followed by some hearty looking root vegetables which were crispy and brown on one side. “Well—go on,” he urged as he started filling his own plate.
I looked at my plate, unsure what to try first. It all smelled amazing and completely unlike the kind of food I was given in the Summer Court. It seemed real—substantial. This was no wispy and delicate fare that would melt away, leaving me hungry again an hour later.
I tried the meat which was juicy and tender with a delicious salt crust on one side. It fairly melted in my mouth—I couldn’t believe how good it was. I tried the cheesy dish next—salty and creamy with a hint of spice. The root vegetables were crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside. After a moment, I found that they tasted even better when I paired them with a bite of the meat.
Before I knew it I had finished everything on the plate. How had that happened? I shouldn’t have eaten so much, I scolded myself. This one meal was more food than I was used to having in a whole day back home.
No—this is home now, whispered a little voice in my head. At least until you kill Liath Blackthorn—then you’ll have to hide in the mortal world. If you can find it.
I had a vague idea that the Mortal Realm began somewhere at the boundaries of the forest that surrounded the Palace, but I had never been there. Still, I would have to run somewhere if my plan to murder my new husband worked.
At that point, just as I was thinking again about killing him, Liath looked up and asked if I wanted seconds.
“Seconds?” I asked, frowning.
“A second helping—more food,” he clarified. “Do you want some more?”
“But…all this food is really heavy,” I pointed out. “Aren’t you afraid if I eat too much of it I’ll get even bigger than I already am?” There was no point in dancing around the issue, I thought, since our marriage wasn’t going to last very long, once I found a way to kill him.
“What?” He frowned as though I was speaking a different language. “What do you mean ‘bigger than you already are?’ You’re just the right size. Besides, a female has to eat to maintain her curves.”
“She what?” I could hardly believe what I was hearing. “But…a female shouldn’t have curves at all,” I said.
“Yes, she fucking should,” Liath growled. “Or were you hoping to starve yourself down to the size of one of those skin-and-bones Fae maidens who live in the Summer Court?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to do all my life,” I admitted. “I’m too big—I always have been.”
“Horse shit,” Liath said crudely. “You’re fucking perfect. If you don’t want any more dinner, would you like some dessert?”
I stared at him blankly. Had he just dismissed a lifetime of body image issues in one sentence? Surely he didn’t really believe what he was saying. A maiden should be “slim as a sapling”—that was the acknowledged wisdom of the Seelie Court. Could it really be that different in the Unseelie world?
