CHAPTER EIGHT
CARDEN
From her throne, Queen Coeur rose, the layers of her dress unfurling like teal-colored smoke. A swift and heavy silence fell over the room. When the Queen spoke our names, Arabella stiffened beside me. “Prince Carden of Tierney, from one of the Seven Kingdoms, and his heartmate, Arabella,” she announced, “please come forward.”
My heartmate. The term crashed through my veins.
Coeur pressed her painted-teal lips into a heart shape as she waited for us to respond. I clasped Arabella’s hand in mine and together we started toward the throne, stopping before Coeur. The members of her court, fair and monstrous alike, murmured as we waited for the Queen to address us.
She gestured to us. “May I present your players.”
No one applauded, though their eyes darted between us and their Queen, looking for cues. “See that they are well-fed and their thirst is sated. They must be famished,” she decreed, looking over our heads. When she turned her attention to us once more, her eyes flicked to our hands and her smile grew. “Yes,” she murmured, “we want you to be strong. You will need every ounce of strength you can garner.”
An invisible force like a stiff wind turned us away from her and propelled us through the crowd to the back of the room, my feet scrambling to keep up and Arabella’s toe tips dragging along the tile. “She’s going to force us to eat and drink,” I gritted.
“This is bad,” Arabella acknowledged, “but remember she can’t kill us. If she does, she won’t get to put on her charade of a game for them, and that’s what she really wants.” She squeezed my hand in her smaller one, and as we came to a hard stop in front of a banquet table towering with delicacies, she let go of me. “This looks delicious,” she purred. A violet film slid over her eyes as she stared at the piles of food and flowing faery wine. Arabella grabbed a crystal glass with a delicately curved stem and filled it in the fountain. When she brought it to her lips, a look of pure ecstasy, almost of pain, slid over her face.
I knew I had to taste it. Holding my glass to catch the flow, I tipped up the stem.
The flavor exploded on my tongue. It tasted like honey and berries and every delicious thing of nature I’d ever tried, and some I hadn’t. For some flavors, I didn’t even have the proper words to describe. It was magical. I found I couldn’t stop drinking it, until I noticed Arabella biting into a glitter-encrusted fig.
Once I tasted the fae food, I realized I’d never really eaten before. Human food was bland and tasteless, whereas the fig was filled with nuances and notes of emotion. I could almost taste the fingers of the fae who prepared it.
Arabella and I ate until we were bursting, and then we were pulled away into the crowd, where I lost her.
I stood beneath the dimmed lights, looking at streaks of glitter flying across the ceiling. I spun in a slow circle, trying to keep my balance. The room tilted and I cried out, catching myself just before I crashed to the floor. The fae around me laughed. With long noses, tusks, and snouts, they chortled. Others looked human but definitely weren’t, with their pointed ears and otherworldly eyes. It was like they were so much more than us, and I wondered how that happened. And why.
I couldn’t figure out where I was or how I got here, or who I was and why I even cared, so I stood there watching the muted lights and tried to stay on my feet while the world swayed underneath me.
Something was missing, but I couldn’t think of what it was. All I knew was that it was gone and I was sad. No, sad was too small a word. I was bereft. I mourned for it, whatever it was that was missing from me, and the ceiling cried along with my heart. Tears of glitter stardust.
ARABELLA
My palms were painfully hot. I couldn’t feel my lips and my legs were wobbly. I managed to make it to one of the ballroom doors, where a guard stopped me from exiting. “I need air,” I gasped. It was too hot in here. The atmosphere was too thick, the scents too overwhelming.
“I will escort her,” a masculine voice purred.
The guard’s eyes widened and he gripped his spear so hard, his knuckles turned white. “As you say, Sire.”
I turned to see a fae male standing behind me. “Who are you?” I panted.
“Someone who can help,” he offered, taking my elbow in his long fingers and leading me through the door. “But we should hurry before the Queen realizes you’re gone.”
He tugged me along beside him, through the doors and down a long corridor. The farther we strode away from the boisterous revelry, the easier it was to breathe, like a heavy weight was lifting from my chest, inch by inch. “Why are you helping me?”
He shrugged. “I want to see the game as much as anyone, and it can’t go on without a player. I’ll stay with you until the spell passes, and then I’ll see you safely back inside.”
“Spell?” I asked dumbly as he led me through corridors where the walls swirled and bled into the floor below and onto the ceiling above. Dizzied by the onslaught of visions, I shut my eyes and kept trudging forward. “Like witches?”
He chuckled darkly. “Witches are half-fae abominations. Sure, they conjure with what little magic they have, but they aren’t capable of what a full-blooded fae is. And they cannot concoct such fine libations and cuisine as you’ve engorged yourself on this night.”
Unable to form coherent thoughts, I could only offer “Huh?” in response.
He laughed again, though it lacked any note of merriment. “One bite of fae food will intoxicate a human. One drink of faery wine will make every worry go away—for a time. You’ve consumed much of both, which is ill-advised. And now you must pay the price.”
“What price?” My stomach roiled in protest.
Rule steadied me when I fell onto one knee, my skin emerging from the folds of my dress and squeaking on the tidy tiles. “What did she do to me?”
“My dear, I’m afraid you’re going to be sick.”
This is the Queen’s fault! I raged internally. My stomach lurched and half of the fae food I’d eaten, plus most of the wine, surged up my throat and splattered across the sparkling tiles.
The young man laughed again. Why would he find a human being sick funny? Unless he means to kill me, a dark thought mused. The room spun impossibly fast, so I pressed my eyes closed until the feeling began to ebb.
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “Who are you?” I asked again as I started to stand.
“Rule,” he answered simply. “Let’s keep walking. Your body will continue to purge until it rids itself of the toxins.”
Unfortunately, Rule was right. He placed his hand on the solid wall and made a door appear that led to a side garden. Once we emerged into the shrubbery, the vomiting began in earnest. He sat patiently on a nearby bench, observing good-naturedly while I puked into the hedges.
Rule… whom I finally remembered was Coeur’s son, and whom Brave told me was even more brutal than his mother.