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Casja
“WHy do you think they left her behind?” Lady Miranda asked her husband with a not-so-lowered voice. “She must be a spy.”
My gaze fixated on the candle on the table to avoid the glaring that would soon follow, I brought a spoonful of chunky mushroom soup to my mouth. My tongue burned as I quickly downed the spoonful, and my eyes teared up with the pain. The woman wanted me to hear this. She hadn’t even bothered to look away as she spoke.
My hands were shaking. There was nothing I could do about that.
“Miranda...” Her husband said.
“I don’t care if she hears it,” Lady Miranda interrupted her husband. “I lost my boy because of her kind. If that other girl had anything to do with it, I’m sure she knows too. I hate them. I hate that the king let them inside our walls. As far as I’m concerned, the claim that the Seelie Queen is doing all of this might not even be true. They tricked the king. I know they did.”
The candle flickered. I couldn’t help but look away from it and toward the woman. These words weren’t the kind to be said in the middle of the great hall while fae ate and sat all around her. Talking about me was one thing; criticizing the king was another.
She was looking directly at me. Her dark hair was tied on top of her head meticulously, her eyes two pure pieces of coal focused only on her enemy. She pursed her lips as I met her gaze. There was a challenging look on her face that suggested she was ready for a confrontation.
I was not.
I cast my eyes back to the candle and dipped my spoon back into the soup.
“Darling,” Lord Tegan’s voice carried the pain they shared. “We do not know who was involved in his injury. He was not at the ball when the attack happened. ”
“He was near the fire rooms,” she said, grief taking over her voice and making it shake. “They found him there, wounded.”
I remembered then who it was that they were talking about. Lanny. The young squire who had been working for Lord Lugh.
I knew that a young man named Lanny had been injured during the ball when the monsters infiltrated the castle using the fire rooms. I had not known that he had died, but I remembered hearing that he had been sleeping in a feverish state since the ball due to his injuries. So the fever had taken him.
That explained why this woman hated me and the light fae and blamed us for her son's death. If her son had been working for Lord Lugh, that would mean their families were close. And Lord Lugh and the fae around him blamed the light fae champions for the ball attack somewhat openly.
They had even captured Jasmine before she and the others took off to find and destroy the queen’s weapon. They had openly claimed she had been a spy for the queen.
I shouldn’t have been surprised.
“I know...” her husband replied, but I had stopped listening. Their grief made them talk like this. I did not know how it would feel to lose a child. I could not judge them for hating me.
“I bet they left her behind because she’s useless,” Lady Miranda kept her voice lowered, but every single word vibrated through me. My chest tightened. She’d struck a nerve. “Her friends are gone, and she’s still here. Don’t you think that’s odd? The only thing she’s good for is to spy on us.”
The candle went out as my feelings called on the wind against my wish. I darted my gaze away from it.
Her husband remained silent. Perhaps he knew the only way for his wife to stop attacking me was to take away her unwilling conversational partner.
My hands felt sweaty.
All I could do was to get out of there.
Eating quickly had become a habit since Brigid and Jasmine had gone away on their mission and left me behind. Their departure had made the Unseelie even more distant toward the idea of having light fae champions among their ranks. Now that I was the only one still residing in Winter Castle, their hate focused on me.
I stared at the table and ate quickly. Lady Miranda kept speaking about me, but I did my best not to listen.
Perhaps I could speak to Orla about letting me eat in my room from now on. She was the only one in the castle who still talked to me. I knew the king tolerated my existence because he knew that was the right thing to do. Despite telling me he needed my services to research the histories of the two realms, he had not spoken to me once since the departure of Jasmine and the others.
I was alone in the castle, hated and scorned. The only places I felt safe were the library and the privacy of my room.
Lady Miranda kept her voice low as she went on about how guilty and useless I was.
After finishing my food, I got up. Then, without meeting anyone’s eyes, I made my way to the great hall's exit. I heard whispers about me and my kind, but I did not look up to see who it was that uttered those hateful words.
I would go to my room and read. I’d taken out a few books from the library, ones relating to the history of the Unseelie.
