Page 180 of Spring Guardians & Songbirds

Challenge rose in his features, his jaw ticking and he, too, took a step closer, our chests now touching and his face hovering over mine. “Tell me, Snowlin, what girl can escape the Night King?”

“Can’t tell you,” I whispered. “I’m a woman.” My grin grew at his visible anger—the first time he’d shown me such a side. “Calm down, village boy, your pedestrian lies don’t bother me. Letting a witch play with your lifeline is only your concern, not mine.”

Pulling the domino mask over my face, I turned on my heels toward the buzzing room that boosted with chatting mouths from all corners of Isjord. Few greetings and congratulations later, I managed to part from the crowd and take a seat next to my father.

“You look beautiful, Snowlin,” father said, sweeping his gaze all over me. He looked too pleased with himself, almost as if he had scored a victory. “You’ve always made my dais shine brighter than the gold.”

I froze at the compliment and shuddered when he gave me what looked like a warm fatherly smile. The rattle and the snake. All felt so wrong. “Thank you for the dress.” Offering him a smile that probably resembled at best a cringe, I took my seat. “I see we are missing Melanthe.”

He surveyed the guests filling the ballroom to the brim. “It would do her no good to be part of the celebration. Her pregnancy is a difficult one.”

Funny this one, wasn’t he? Had he worried like this for my mother too? “Father?”

He turned to me. “What is it, my rose?”

“Truthfully,” I said, holding his repulsive stare. “When did you and Melanthe begin your relationship?”

There was tension in his face. “It doesn’t matter.”

“I suppose it doesn't anymore.” There was a dull ache in my chest for my mother. She’d once loved this creature I called a father. The worst part was that she had loved him till her last moments. And that enraged me. “But father.” He turned to me again. “I am curious to see its end.”

He regarded me for a moment as if he was taking my warning with caution—different from how he always did. Strange.

Lords, scholars and all sorts of fawners lined before us to kiss compliments up my father’s arse. It wasn’t long before I was half dozing and drooling on my fist.

“Snowlin,” father's voice boomed too close to my ear drums. “Snowlin, the Breshall Prince is asking for a dance.”

I shook thoughts back into my head, noting the young unblessed prince standing with his hand reaching out to me, a stunned look on his eerily pale face. In Fernfoss, the unblessed had prospered, thrived even, and lived longer, too. The one before me, however, looked like he’d been brought from the graves, puffed in lace and dipped in white powder and rouge—looking like he was held upright by strings.

“Of course.” My mouth curved with a sneer when his leery brown eyes roamed over my scar for a long while.

He pulled us between a parting mass of bodies and rested a hand on my back. “I’m told there is great beauty under that mask,” he said with a too primed common tongue accent, eyes drifting to my scar again and that thin moustache twisted a little like he was displeased at his observations.

“And I’m told correct about you.”

“And what is that?”

“There is a great lack of brains up there,” I said, pointing my chin to his head.

He tried to disguise his snarl with a creepy smile. “Impolite as every other of your sort.”

“Superiority does that to you. Inferiority hasn’t treated you nicely, but it sure did get you a ticket to my father’s ball. The more uselessness under his foot, the greater he feels.”

“He wishes to make an alliance with us,” he gritted out near my ear. “Tell me where is the inferiority in that?”

Pride was a fickle thing, and I knew how to play it like a fiddle. “To be on the receiving end of pity is nothing to boast about. What can you possibly have that he wishes to have? Disease and famine?”

He bristled. “Access and knowledge, Princess. Far more valuable.”

“And you’re telling me father needs you for access and knowledge?”

“Primal knowledge. The same one your kind seems to have buried underneath their mistakes.”

With a saccharine smile I said, “My, you’re trying too hard here to impress this princess. Pray tell, how could you come up with that lie?”

“It is not a lie.”

“If you say so.”