Page 44 of Fae Farewells

Ruby’s room looked much the same as Vaughn’s did, except it was hot and smelled faintly of a fire. Blank canvases lay broken on the floor, paint splattered all over the walls. Her mattress was cut open in multiple places, and the inside of her dressing room had been burned, leaving only ashes and the walls.

“Ruby must have really pissed off Alania,” I mumbled to myself.

“How do you know whose room is whose?”

“Vaughn’s is cold as fuck. Colors, temperature, everything. Ruby’s is red, like her name, so that was just a guess. But she’s also the only other missing Winter, and her room was as trashed as his was.”

“Got it. You don’t have to continue.”

I rolled my eyes. “You were supposed to be paying attention to the details. We’re looking for—”

“Anything out of place, I know. But the entire fucking palace is out of place. It’s barren, and I keep getting this feeling like something is touching me. Do you think the fae realm has ghosts?”

“We would know if a wraith was here.”

“Right, but like the haunting dead kind of ghosts…” He trailed off, shivering as he glanced over his shoulder. “No one is there, but something keeps touching my shoulder.”

“It’s your hair,” I told him, tugging on the piece that had fallen from his topknot.

Briggs glared at me as he fixed his issue. “We’re not talking about this.”

“Let’s check the kitchen,” I proposed. “Our staff always congregated in the kitchen.”

“Well, yeah. It’s the hub of any household.”

I sighed. “I don’t really care. It’s just the last place I can think of to check, except Alania’s room. Something tells me we shouldn’t go there without Sloane.”

“You should care.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Listen.” Briggs stopped me, his hand on my shoulder. “We need to get ahead of whatever is going on. We’re always three steps behind, but this could be our chance.”

I tipped my head, agreeing with him. “I doubt the staff knows much of anything about Alric. And if they did know anything, that’s not something they’d talk about in the open. I spent my childhood with the staff in our palace and their children. We’d have to find someone who would talk to us.”

“Vaughn might know someone?” he suggested. “Or Freya?”

“Let’s check with them after the kitchen. I thought I saw stairs leading down somewhere around there.”

The kitchen was a clusterfuck of madness, as it should be.

But there weren’t that many people here.

There were four cooks standing around stoves and chopping vegetables. Another woman called for supplies. And a group of six staff sat at a table in the corner, sipping tea as they talked.

They appeared to be maids, but I couldn’t be sure. The only one I recognized was the green lady, Lashul, from the sitting room. Everyone was dressed in similar colored clothing to her, long-sleeved shirts and pants, not a stitch of skin showing.

“I can’t believe she locked the visitors in their rooms,” a light yellow woman said.

“I can,” Lashul commented, setting her cup aside. “This isn’t Vex. She’s not the same person we once knew.”

“She used to care more,” a grass-green man acknowledged while stirring his pot of food.

A pink woman leaned over the table. “Shh. Don’t let anyone hear you saying that. You’re begging for death.”

The man swatted her concern away. “Did you hear about Prince Vaughn’s mate? She’s here.”

“I did,” she replied. “Lashul said Prince Sergio is back for Princess Freya, too.”