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I stared at the enormous table in utter disbelief.
I must still be asleep. I’d never woken from my aural-induced stupor at all. That was the only way to account for the ridiculousness of the scene unfolding before me. It had to be a dream—or a nightmare.
“What the hell am I supposed to do with it?” I said stupidly.
The Ancestors-damned thing took up my entire antechamber. Someone had removed the table that had been there before, an ordinary rectangular thing that had sat innocuously off to one side.
But there was nothing ordinary about the table Gwen had gifted me. And it certainly couldn’t be set to the side. It had taken four full-bodied fae guards to deliver the damn thing. Shreds of the priestess’s prophecy floated betwixt my pounding temples.
Thud.
Table of destiny.
Thud.
Siege Perilous.
Thud.
Moment of direst need.
It’s just a table, I told myself stubbornly. The priestess is a power-hungry elemental, like all the rest of them, just like Esa had said and Roksana had implied. It meant nothing.
The guards who’d delivered the table retreated, leaving behind Lyrena inside the door, on guard duty, and Parys standing at her side, grinning like he hadn’t drunk as much aural as me the night before.
“Planning on hosting some grand dinner parties, are you?” Parys said, walking the perimeter of the table.
“Not likely,” I bit back, raising my index fingers to my temples.
“I thought the penchant for ostentatious dramatics was endemic only to the elementals.” Parys ran a finger over the gold scrollwork cut into the surface of table at intervals, counting aloud. “Eight seats. But the prophecy only speaks of seven.”
My hands froze on either side of my face. “I don’t want to hear a word about prophecies, or dire needs, or brave fathers,” I said sharply, turning away and walking to the window. But even as I tried to focus on the scene outside, the sharp red angles of the Effren Valley, I could feel the round table behind me like a presence all its own. “It is just a stupid table.”
“Don’t let Gwen hear you say that,” Lyrena said. I could hear the mischievous smile on her lips.
“I’m not afraid of Gwen.”
If Parys and Lyrena exchanged a look, I didn’t see it.
Feather-light feet came from the bedroom.
A pause. The soft thud of a tray being set down.
“A lovely gift befitting of a queen,” Cyara said softly.
A long scrape across the tiled floor.
When I turned around, I saw my half-eaten breakfast tray obscuring one of the gold engravings. Parys had dragged up a chair and was resting his feet on the edge of the round table, chewing on a chocolate croissant my traitorous stomach wouldn’t allow me to even nibble at. Only Lyrena kept her distance, standing at the door to the corridor. I wondered if Gwen was on the other side.
A shiver ripped through my spine, turning my stomach and setting of a series of explosive, painful fireworks in my head.
“No!” I cried.
All three of them jumped.
Comical flakes of pastry rained over the round table. Except that it wasn’t comical at all. It was sacrilege. Which was insane because it wasjust a table.
