**ASH**
When the king returned, Hayden and I were waiting together in the common room, like total strangers. Neither of us giving even a frosted look toward the other. Oddly enough, the first thing Hadimere asked about, was Daphne.
Not because he wanted to see her.
He didn’t ask for her company.
He wanted to know if she had learned of her family’s fate.
Of course, the answer to that question was no. So, when Hayden told him of her escape, I expected he’d be furious, but I was wrong.
He appeared, relieved.
As if her disappearance would save him from bearing witness to the disappointment in her eyes, when she discovered what had happened.
He cares about her more than I thought.
He might actually love her.
Amazing.
Should she be sacrificed in front of him, he would certainly be displeased. Depending on what I learn when I get back to her, I might grant him that pain.
Then again, Hadimere didn’t seem very worried over whether or not she would survive in the forest alone. He didn’t care which direction she headed, didn’t send out any scouts, just nodded in acceptance. Perhaps he thought it fitting for her to die out there. Afterall, she’d left him.
But death of a loved one, in front of a loved one, was something entirely different indeed. Should he have to watch her bleed her life away, then, behold her body as it burned - he may just lose his mind.
Just the cryptic ideas I am playing around with in my head are causing my heart to ache.
Why?
Has she enchanted me beyond reason? Beyond every single plan I have engineered for the last eighteen winters? She is so sweet, so soft. So warm. But, if Hayden had her? If she gave herself to him? She is trash.
*Stop it!*
I am the one that left her here!
Knowing she was defenseless!
*But, I did tell her I would return. Does that count for nothing?*
Shaking myself, I try to clear my head of the clouded conjectures my mind was ovulating towards. I focused on the human scum around me instead.
The three of us - Hayden, Hadimere, and I - are seated at the high table discussing the murders over a mundane supper of roasted boar. Human fare is not nearly as tasty as that which we enjoy in Faery. We know flavor in our world and this spice wine they served with dinner is horrible tonight. This food tastes more and more unbearable each time I have it.
“You are obsessed with the Fae father. What did you plan to do if you found them?” Hayden asks behind a mouth full of pork.
“Kill them, what else,” the king says tiredly, and I want to laugh.
The Fae in question, the ones he’s referring to, the killers, would certainly have made a meal of the fat king. He thinks, just because he killed one faerie, years ago, that he is some sort of Fae defiler.
Idiot.
Add to that, that the faerie he killed was pregnant at the time and had been hiding here so long she was practially mortal, and all you have is the murder of a glamourous human girl.
Unfortunately for King Hadimere, said faerie was carrying my betrothed. Behest to me by an ancient magic - tying us together for balance. A completion of souls to break the curse of my infertility. A curse bestowed on me by the Winter Queen on the day of my father's death, while I was still in my mother's belly. The hag.
They both died that day. Both mother and unborn child. And I swore my revenge.
But now...
It is as if I don't want it.
Now? I would almost give it up just to keep Daphne as my own. Unless she lay with Hayden of her own free will. In that case? I shall have my desire for vengeance multiplied tenfold.
Something for her and something for him.
The king? My desire to see him suffer will no longer be an issue.
Looking around me, I swallow the last of my wine, my eyes settling on the prince as he flaps his wearisome gums. I really do not need to know what the pair of them are talking about. All I want is to do is get through this evening so that I can make my way to Daphne. Beyond that, I don’t give a fuck what these humans are up to.
I am just about to announce my retirement for the evening when the king begins to foam at the mouth. His body convulses, the room gasps. His face smashes into his food and he ceases to move.
He is dead. Poisoned, obviously.
Damn it. Someone, who wasn’t me, did this.
Then, I see who. Just beyond the king - seated to the right of him as always - is Prince Hayden. And he is calmly sipping his wine. But that is not the part that troubles me.
What surprises me...is that I did not smell the poison.
**DAPHNE**
We arrived at the cottage just after sundown. When we first happened upon it, I had the most peculiar feeling. It was akin to the sensation of arriving home after a long absence. The moment I spotted it, I felt comforted. As if it belonged to me and I belonged to it.
But, the strangest part, was the state of the structure. It was in perfect condition. One might actually believe it was brand new. And the inside? Lavishly furnished and without a speck of dust. There were two levels to it. A common room with kitchen and hearth on the first level. An outhouse connected in the back and a small glass solar on the side. Then, two bedrooms up top with a window seat in the hall. The beds were made, the dishes were clean, and the herb garden in the solar was flourishing nicely. There was even a vegetable garden behind the cottage. One that had been harvested recently and the plunder stored in the kitchen pantry.
The only thing that had not been kept up, seemed to be the small stable at the edge of the tiny plot. Just at the head of where the evergreens began again. Dionie had to clean it out and stock it, so the horses could be tended to rest.
But still, it was as if someone had been living here and I said as much when we arrived. However, Dionie assured me that the place belonged to Ash by right, and that anyone who came along to say otherwise would be answering to his blade.
“How long do you think it will take Ash to arrive?” I ask Petra as we finish setting the table for supper.
Petra grins at me as she serves up the rabbit Dionie caught and roasted for our dinner. “Why? Are you that anxious to get knocked up again? Let me just say this, you can only have one baby at a time.”
My face is burning as I swat her with the soup ladle that I’m using to serve up vegetable broth. The two of us made the soup, aenting it with the spices she swiped from the Hadimere Palace kitchens.
“We do not know that I’m with child,” I lecture her, secretly pleased at the prospect. “I just miss him, is all. I haven’t even had a chance to talk to him after what we did together, and I guess,” I chewed my lip, “I’m just a bit worried. What if-” I stop, chiding myself for being too revealing.
“What if what?” She asks softly.
“I’m afraid that he might not feel the same as I do,” I confide. Tears begin to well in my eyes and I will them away. “What if he-”
“Daphne!” She sighs, coming around the table to take the pot of soup from me. “All I can tell you is this.” She places the pot on the table and takes my hands in hers. “I have never seen him look at anyone as he does you. No one. And I have known him my whole life.”
I study her. She no longer looks anything like the girl I first met at the palace. “Tell me the truth, Petra.” I take a seat, still holding her hands. “Are you-” I start, then stop to take a deep breath. I want to ask her, but I am afraid.
What if she snaps at me, or worse laughs?
What if her hair really hasn’t changed?
What if it is I, that have changed?
What if somehow, in the weeks I stayed in that cursed palace, I lost my mind?
Then, just as I have convinced myself, just as I decide to take the plunge, she supplies, “Am I a faerie?”