His eyes held mischief, the same look he used to have when he sketched human villages and ships for her when they were young. The Fae Queen had never approved. “You know how my mother loves her drama.”
“The king and queen of Lore!” the herald shouted.
Aury looked to Werian in question, but he just shrugged, his gaze skirting away. “This should be interesting,” she murmured.
The Fae Queen approached the royal retinue with open arms, as though the king and queen of Lore were friends, but everyone knew the Fae Queen had no friends. She had allies. Entertainers. Kin. The human rulers weren’t the last two, so they must have been the first. Allies to the fae court.
“What do they do to make her smile like that?” Aury asked Werian.
“They control the farmland and vineyards. My mother may like rubies and intrigue most,” Werian said, “but she also enjoys a nice braid of light bread and spiced red wine. You two have that in common at least.” He raised an eyebrow at her empty goblet.
She elbowed him. “I can’t put up with you pure types without proper intoxication.”
He placed a hand on his chest and shut his eyes briefly. “I understand.” His gaze flicked to where the king and two queens were chatting it up. “If it weren’t for the human army of Lore, we fae would’ve been ground into dust by our enemies.”
“Why are the human rulers here?” This was the first she’d seen of them. They didn’t come around here, supposedly because of an old grievance with the Matchweaver Witch that had happened around the time when Aury was born.
In his youth, the human king had probably been a fine-looking man with flaxen hair, but now his beard looked stained, as if he smoked a pipe a little too often. He held a water mage staff that was covered in runes.
The human queen’s eyes were soft, but her mouth had the hard lines of someone who did more frowning than smiling.
“I don’t like them,” Aury said.
Werian’s gaze landed hard on her face.
“Do I have something in my teeth?” She looked around for a pitcher to fill her goblet.
Werian didn’t answer; he only crossed his arms and watched his mother talk with the human rulers. “I have loved you, Aury,” he finally said, his voice a whisper. “You are my dearest cousin. And a friend. Remember that.”
A cold finger of dread dragged across Aury’s neck. “Are you drunk?” Of course she knew he cared for her. She loved him too. But to say it like that, with that sadness… Her stomach clenched. “What are you not telling me?” she hissed.
“I was bound to keep the secret, Aury. Remember that, as well.”
“What?”
Werian stepped back as the human rulers approached. She hadn’t realized they were walking toward her, and now, here they were, and she felt unsteady, for once wishing she hadn’t had all that wine.
She bowed clumsily. The Fae Queen, standing behind the retinue, looked skyward and sighed as if Aury’s manners were the worst sort of torture.
The king took Aury’s chin between his thumb and finger and studied her face. The urge to whinny like a bought horse nearly overcame her good sense. “You are a lovely woman, Aurora Rose.”
Rose? She’d never been called Rose. That was…
The human queen smiled, her perfume rolling in like fog. “You have my second name, my dear.”
“Why would I be named for you?” Aury asked. “With respect, of course.”
The human king and queen traded a look and laughed like only royal people can. Aury forced a smile. What was happening? She looked for Werian. He stood beside his mother, his head lowered as he spoke to a servant.
The king took Aury’s arm and looped it through his. “Let’s take a walk through the gardens, Aurora Rose. We have much to discuss.”
She let him fairly drag her across the great hall with the two queens trailing. Unless this king fellow had something to say about horses, pain-in-the-arse fae, fig tarts, or wine, they had absolutely nothing to discuss. “I’m sorry, but what are we talking about?”
“The two greatest forces, my dear. Magic and marriage. Specifically…yours.”
And suddenly, the emptiness of Aury’s goblet became the least of her worries.
Chapter 2
Filip slashed the wooden training sword across the younger warrior’s leathers, then came down with an overhand strike between head and shoulder. The younger warrior dropped to his knees, but he was grinning like he’d won instead of lost the sparring match. Filip tossed the sword to the side and offered a hand up.
“Prince Filip! That was astounding. You’re incredibly fast.”
After slicking his sweat-dampened black hair out of his face, Filip yanked the trainee to his feet as snow began to fall in thick waves. “You did well.”
The gathered crowd of fellow mountain elves, there for the entertainment of the Frostlight Tournament, shouted Filip’s nickname, Hatchet. More people walked the distant path, leaving the highest elevations to celebrate in the relatively flat land where his ancestors had made their home. Already, woolen tents covered the expanse of rocky land from the castle to the cliffs that overlooked the Kingdom of Lore.
Filip strode out of the ice-crusted sparring ring and looked around for his friend Costel while the crowd began to break up and the judges called out the winners of the day’s fights.
“Will you have a drink with us, Prince Filip?” Two red-haired women he’d never met gestured toward the tavern and the outdoor tables set among the large, copper bowls of fire.
“You do remember I’m the younger prince?” He grinned, already assuming they had set their sights on him with aspirations of nobility. His elder brother, Dorin—heir to the mountain kingdom throne—was heading up a scouting mission in the highest peaks. Dragons had been spotted recently, and Filip’s father the king was determined to record their numbers and protect their young from poachers.
The taller of the red-haired women stretched like a cat, showing off her body, which Filip duly appreciated. “But you are the prince who moves like a mountain lion. A perfect face and the keys to a kingdom say nothing of how a man is behind closed doors.”
Filip chuckled. “You’re brave to speak to a prince like that. Of course I’ll meet you. Perhaps at the bonfires tonight?”
Nodding, they murmured something complimentary about his arms. Knocking the worst of the ring’s mud from his boots against the fence, he pretended not to hear.
A whimper sounded through the noise of laughter, conversation, and horses nickering. At one of the tables near the pie seller’s cart, Filip’s cousin, Ivan, grabbed the front of a young woman’s dress. The man was a beast in size and manners, and Filip had hated him since they were forced to play together in childhood.
Ivan shoved her forward, and she slid in the mud, nearly falling before catching herself. “Get me more mead, wench, and be quick.”
Without thinking, Filip approached his disgusting cousin. “I see you’re spreading the joy of solstice Frostlight.”
Ivan grunted and drank the rest of his ale. “Shove it, princeling.”
“Seems to me you’re the one doing the shoving.” Filip looked pointedly at the woman he’d mistreated. She grabbed a pitcher from a nearby table, sloshing the contents.