Page 17 of The Autumn Prince

“Yes.”

“Huh.” Who the hell was Lars then?

Incendis returned his attention to the woman and said, “Neither you nor anyone else needs to continue standing in the hall. Please return to your normal duties.”

“Yes, Your Highness.” She bobbed a curtsy and made to leave.

I rushed over and said, “Could you do one more thing before you get back to your real work now that he’s done wasting your time making you hold up the wall out here?”

Her lips twitched as she tried not to smile. “Of course, sir. How can I help you?”

“We need a broom, a dust pan, and some trash bags or bins that can hold broken glass.”

“Oh! Yes, sir. I can have a crew come up and⁠—”

“No, no.” I smiled at her and it was probably a little evil. “Someone else is going to do it all by himself now that he’s done throwing his tantrum. We just need the supplies to facilitate the cleanup.”

Her startled gaze flicked between my face and somewhere behind me. No doubt Incendis was looking all befuddled and shocked back there. A blush hit her cheeks and she nodded. “Yes, sir. Right away.”

“Thank you so much.”

Incendis was glaring at me when I turned around. I had a feeling I was going to see that expression on his face a lot.

“Dial down the pissiness there, Sport. You might have wings and be a little fancier than everyone else, but you’re not better than them. You can clean up your own mess.” I carried on when he tried to protest. “And while you do, you’re going to explain every little thing about the curse from the moment you learned about it to five minutes ago.”

He opened and closed his mouth a few times before it clicked for him that I wasn’t going to budge on any of this. I could out-stubborn just about anyone when I put my mind to it. He nodded and went over to pick up one of the paintings face-down on the floor.

“Father first came to me when Hydris and Flurris went to war for the second time in a year.” Incendis hung up the painting and took a moment to straighten it.

“Little to the left.”

He adjusted.

“Perfect. Now who are Hydris and Flurris?”

“My brothers. The princes of Spring and Winter, respectively.”

I pointed at another painting. “Okay, and why were they fighting?”

He went and picked up that painting. “It’s just something they did from time to time.”

Oh, boy. The family drama was thick with these fae.

I sat down in the chair he’d been in when I got here and shooed at him. “Keep going, Your Princeliness. I have a feeling this is going to take a while.”

Chapter 7

Actually, it did take a while. In fact, it took the full two hours we had to wait for everyone to assemble downstairs. And as Incendis cleaned and I supervised, I realized he wasn’t a bad guy. I’d been thinking he was because who could curse everyone like this and not be terrible. But he wasn’t.

“I just didn’t know what else to do but help Father,” he said as he dumped another dustpan full of glass into the bin. “At least, if I did, one of us would know what to do later on.”

“Except you don’t know.”

He sighed heavily and nodded. “Except I don’t.”

Because what had sounded like a reasonable desire—princes changing their ways for the better—wasn’t specific enough when faced with the reality of actually changing to save them all. Incendis still had no idea what he was meant to change about himself; and I had to wonder if any of the other princes knew they were meant to change at all.

“Did you tell your brothers what to do about the curse?”