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“Help us?” I whisper back, awareness of how close our faces are lining up inside of me as his hair slides against my cheek. “This female threatened you last time she marched into your throne room,” I remind him. “Why would she help you?”
“Us,” he corrects, his hands brushing my dagger-clutching one. “I made a bargain they couldn’t refuse.”
Before I can ask him what he offered, what other piece of him, his freedom, his people’s future he bargained away for me, the fairy princess clears her throat, drawing our attention back to her leather-clad form.
“I hate to interrupt your little—I don’t know what it is, but it seems rather intimate. Could it be you’ve found a bride who doesn’t despise you after all, Crow King?”
A tremor runs through Myron’s body, and his face shifts to bird features as he hisses a warning at her.
“Oh, don’t worry. I’m not going to tell a soul,” the princess says with a smirk I quickly learn to identify as delighted observance of the Crow King’s misery.
What had she said? She’d once been destined to be Carius’s bride? However she escaped and lived to see the day is a story I’d love to hear one day. But for now, I’d really like to not feel like the female is about to invite me to a tea party with deadly creatures.
“Hold up your end of the bargain; I’ll hold up mine.” It’s all Myron says before he gently squeezes my bad hand around the hilt of my dagger. “Don’t worry. I’ll be right here in case she doesn’t.”
The princess rolls her eyes at him, gesturing impatiently at the carved rock by the weapons rack where he likes to take up residence when he watches Royad and me spar with our blades. “Yes, yes, what a noble protector you are.” She swirls the water in the crystal jar she’s picked up like it were a goblet of wine, and it’s almost comical.
Only, there’s nothing comical about being shoved into a room with a deadly fairy. One who is scrutinizing me with vigilant green eyes I can’t seem to escape. I’ll bite off Myron’s head for it later—if I walk out of here alive.
Princess Cliophera seems to not be as worried about keeping a beating heart and a breath in her lungs, for she flashes a dazzling smile, which momentarily stuns me. “So, here we are.” She uses that sweet voice I am certain is a trap.
“Here we are.” I am hovering in a half crouch, ready to block an attack—of blades. I have nothing to shield an attack of magic.
“And you look better even than last time I saw you, Wolayna.” Is it just me, or does she sound pleased by the fact I haven’t fallen prey to a Crow beak?
“Doing what I can. It’s getting a bit boring though with just males around. I could do with a female confidante with all that feathery male attitude around here.”
Myron chokes on a cough, and the princess laughs, sheathing the sword in her other hand as she approaches on silent feet.
“I like you, Wolayna.” With a flick of her hand, she sends the jar floating in front of her, holding out her other hand to me. “Princess Cliophera Clarette Tarie Amaryll Saphalea de Pauvre,” she introduces herself. “But you may call me Clio.” She gives a wink. “You know, between royalty.”
There is something so undeniably charming about her that I almost take her hand and shake it—then I remember that this is a fairy who hates the Crows, one whose family is responsible for locking Myron’s people in this forest. I grab my daggers harder and say nothing.
“Oh, don’t worry. You’ll warm up to me once you see I’m not here to kill you. What Myron here offered is more than enough motivation to train you in magic, cooking, hunting, or even crochet—if I knew how to do that.” She laughs at her own joke and manages to somehow make me smile even when it was a really bad joke.
“I like crochet…” I place a finger at my bottom lip without letting go of my dagger, pretending to think. “I could use something to do while I wait around for this one every day of our fateful marriage.”
At that, Clio bursts out with a laugh. A real one rather than one crafted to charm her political opponent—because that’s what I am. Tied to Myron and damned to be seen as attached to the Crow Court. But in this one moment, something more shimmers in Clio’s jade gaze, and I know that, had we met under different circumstances, I may not have been merely part of a bargain the Fairy Court made with the Crow Court but a friend.
The thought hits me right in the chest where the pain of losing all the people I dared call friends before still simmers like burning embers, and I slam down my defenses so hard something cracks deep inside of me.
It seems to be all I ever am these days. Part of bargains. A woman traded for the Crow’s confinement to the Seeing Forest. A potential human magic wielder in a Crow-high fae training arrangement. Someone who asks questions to someone who promises answers. A bride for show in exchange for my freedom.
I can’t help the bitterness fueling my words as I step back, pointing at the floating jar with the tip of my blade. “What is it you’re going to teach me?”
Clio’s features sober as she takes in my mood, reads it right from the swirling anger in my gaze, and nods. “How to survive.”
* * *
Clio wasn’t lying, I decide the next day when she’s waiting for me in the training chamber an hour before dinner with a few jars of water at her disposal. Myron settles into his spot on the rock by the wall, monitoring how the fairy instructs me about the same basics of magic I didn’t grasp the day before.
“It should resonate somewhere within you when you call it. Like a responding thrum,” she explains as I dig deep into myself, searching for any awareness of that magical presence. It’s gloriously absent, and so is my fear as all of me is too focused on repeating in my head what she’s already taught me about how to keep one step ahead of my enemies in battle.
“It’s about survival,” she said, all that humor and swagger gone as she switched into the role of a general in a field as easily as I step into one of the feather-adorned dresses Myron keeps pulling for me for dinners. “If you manage to sense magic before it strikes, that will give you a heartbeat to block your opponent.” She didn’t say shield because that, apparently, is an entirely different ability from wielding water.
I stare at her, sweat beading my neck even as she lets ice spark through the air, cooling the room down enough for my breath to fog in front of my face.
Myron rubs his palms together, folding his wings tightly to his sides. Of course, he failed to put on a vest to cover up those sculpted muscles, and the way the cool air sends goosebumps along his skin is proof that—no matter how powerful—his flesh is just as sensitive as my human one.
