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“Why did we stop?” a little girl asks near me.
My mind races, trying to decide what to say. “I think we’ve had enough fun today.”
Hopefully, this doesn’t end in a mob attacking me…
I scan the crowd again, but my gaze comes to a halt on the three princes. They’re always scowling. They must’ve scowled too much as children and now their faces are stuck like that. Prince Rinan combs a hand through his blond hair, looking uneasy. When Prince Drogo realizes I’ve seen him, his scowl turns to a full-out glare.
Prince Arlys steps out of the crowd, his scowl replaced by a calm look, and he places his hand on my arm. “We need to talk.”
Before I can answer, he tugs me away. I cast Lady Scarlet a glance, and she looks away. Apparently, she doesn’t want to get involved in our relationship. Not that I blame her.
I give the kids and the leaves one last glance, my heart aching a little. I’d gotten caught up in the moment. I’d forgotten that I was a witch in the Shifter Kingdom. Hopefully, the consequences won’t be too dire.
TWO
Rinan
It seems that every time we have our goal in mind – to stop this damn illness – something happens with Princess Tara to shake that goal from our minds. We’d wanted to speak to her immediately after finding the young shifter sick in the woods, but King Talon had advised us to wait. Instead, he’d sent a warning to all the other packs about what we’d discovered. He’d also sent yet another missive to the bears to try to learn what they were experiencing, even though he knew they would likely not answer us.
Then he’d added many duties to our daily list. He’d determined that all the sick would be quarantined together, so as not to spread the illness. The exception was him, but he cautioned that from that point forward we couldn’t go near him. From a distance, he’d instructed us to give Princess Tara a few days to get to know our people, to see why they’re worth saving, while we do our duties for our people.
As upset as we all were, we were kept busy arranging places for the sick to go, getting them the supplies needed to treat the worst of their symptoms, and arranging volunteers to care for them. Which meant that none of us even had time to address Princess Tara, until today.
With our tasks done, we’d learned she was in the village and went to find her. I think we were all fully expecting to see our people tolerating Princess Tara at best. Nothing in us had been prepared for the music and dancing.
For how happy our people seem to be with Princess Tara.
For the magic.
“Have you been keeping busy?” I ask as she walks quietly beside me.
With magic? With the shifters?
She shrugs. “I’ve mostly been getting to know the people working in the castle and walking the castle grounds. Prince Arlys really has a lovely garden.”
Arlys looks back at us, but says nothing.
I don’t blame him. I don’t know what to say either. The truth is I hadn’t thought much about what she’d do with us not around, which is a little shitty, if I’m thinking about it. But I definitely didn’t expect her to take an interest in our people or our castle. I don’t know why.
Even though King Talon hoped for that.
“Learn anything interesting?”
She smiles that gorgeous smile of hers. The one that brightens her dark eyes. “I learned that Queen Talon planted a number of golden roses in the rose garden. Now, they have the largest and most beautiful blossoms of all the roses in the garden. Smitty, the gardener, told me that.”
I can tell Arlys and Drogo are listening by the way their steps have slowed.
“I also learned that the vegetable garden is where the castle gets most of its vegetables, and that Smitty himself has done most of the work planting and caring for all the plants. He’s even, and I didn’t understand this part, making better and better vegetables by breeding different things together.”
It’s weird that I didn’t know that. Should I have known that?
“And I visited the cook and got to see her make a few meals. Charlotte really is a gem! She’s been working in Prince Arlys’s kitchens for thirty years. Never even taken a day off, although I told her she deserves one.”
I knew Charlotte worked in the kitchens. I didn’t know the rest of that. “Interesting.”
“And Fredrick, the stable manager, has recently birthed two new foals. He thinks they’re going to be powerful stallions, like their fathers.”
Again, news to me, but she looks so beautiful as she talks, with her long dark hair braided down one shoulder and a red dress that makes her look more beautiful than any red rose could be, it’s hard to focus on her story. “He must be…keeping busy.”
