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“Lovely to see you too, Foalan,” I squeaked, slamming the door shut.
The noise brought a head out of his room, surveying the hall for the source. I recognized him only a second after Eadaoin.
She pushed out her chest, whiskers twitching and a low, soft purr rumbling out of her throat. The guard who had his way with her in the hall the other day gave her the same look back.
I knew where this was going.
“Eadaoin, I can take it from here. Consider yourself off duty,” I said. “Go enjoy the rest of your night.”
She bit her lip, winking at guard man. “Are you sure, my queen?”
“Yes, I’m—”
She took off running, leaving me and my goodbye in the dust.
Leaving everyone to their night, I crossed to a window, gazing out over a snow-covered courtyard. Frozen raindrops fell from the sky, casting a hazy curtain over the rolling black mountains. There was a peace and quiet in Lumenfell that could never be achieved in Lyrica. Something about this place—this land the stars forgot—made me feel that if I stopped and listened closely, I could hear Meya whisper her secrets on the wind.
I breathed deeply, inhaling the staunch, unforgiving chill into my lungs. Even the air fought back in Lumenfell. A kingdom where every creature demands to be free, even if it means growing wings and soaring through the trees.
Lumenfell was beautiful. I’d never utter such a truth outside of my mind, but it was truth all the same. It was wild and free and ruthless. It was the jungles and forests our race was born in. The life we abandoned for riches and society. Yes, it’s beautiful—
“But it’s not home,” I whispered. “I am going home tomorrow night, but not to the same life. And not alone. Where are you, little boy? This is one carriage ride we can’t afford to miss.”
I lit on something through the curtain of white. “Is that...?”
A glass dome stuck to the end of the east wing. I assumed it was the east wing because Eadaoin started our tour in the west wing, and we didn’t happen upon any room that doubled as a conservatory, sunroom, or greenhouse.
If the little fox boy was still in the castle, then searching the east wing until it turned me out into the conservatory was my only chance of finding him.
I continued on by myself, making my way out of the soldiers’ barracks. On my way, I lifted diamond necklaces off their displays, gold rings out of their cases, and a silver dagger with a pearl inlay hilt off its pedestal, and tucked it away inside my bottomless pockets.
Now I understand why princesses wore all those heavy skirts and cumbersome gowns. To hide all the weapons.
“Not just the bleeding kind.” I grinned, twirling an emerald-and-gold tiara around my fingertip.
I was going back, packing up my family, and we were leaving. Leaving poverty, leaving Gutter Galley, leaving Kirwan, and leaving Lyrica. Maps upon maps collected dust in that war room, charting out the many lands where we’d be free to live in peace, or with plenty of coin to buy peace, if we were so inclined.
Leave it to the real Princess Emiana to determine if there was goodness beneath Alisdair’s brutality. Let her repair the cease fire she destroyed. Lumenfell was an interesting place with many mysteries, but only one was mine to solve. The rest was her fucking problem.
I wandered the halls, sticking my head in doors, calling for little fox boys, and stealing everything that fit in my pockets. The little boy couldn’t come with me to a land where he’d be jailed on sight as a faeriken spy, but half of these jewels would give him a new life in one of the outer-lying towns of Wind and Wild. I was suddenly thankful Alisdair saw fit to show me where they all were.
If there’s time, I’ll drop him off on my way out of this frozen enigma. If there isn’t time, it will take longer, but I will see to it that he gets somewhere safe.
I paused beneath a ceiling-high window, and looked upon the soldiers’ barracks—stark and staring across the way. I was heading in the right direction and searching every room along the way. No sign of him. Did this castle have a dungeon? Entirely possible considering the man I was dealing with.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
I spun around, my head whipping this way and that. It was that sound again. Despite what Eadaoin insinuated, it didn’t sound like lustful noises. The noise was both close and far away.Like the whisper shared across the room that’s trapped in a dome and escapes to you.
It sounds like...
I pressed the heel of my palm to my racing heart. “Heartbeat.”
Thump-thump.
My feet moved on their own power, carrying me to the end of the hall. I touched the cool stone blocking my way, announcing a dead end, and slid to the right. Stepping lightly, my slippered feet told no tales.
My hand reached the end of the wall where stone was supposed to meet stone... and slipped through.
