“Ah,” Koan said as he smiled and leaned closer to me. “Because of a tiny detail you’ve left out. You see, our opinions on the entertainment value of threatening powerful, but temporarily vulnerable, half-fae have changed considerably in the last hour.”
Could he be serious? “And why is that?”
He waved a hand toward me in a grand gesture. “Becausesomeonefrom that very particular demographic went out of her way to protect us.” He tossed another grape in his mouth and pointed at me again. “Your turn. Why would you argue in our favor againstthe kingwhen he was clearly protecting you from us?”
I eyed his grapes, and he set the bowl of them in front of me. I stared at them. He cracked a lop-sided grin and slowly lifted a grape from the bowl to his mouth, keeping his eyes and that mischievous smile glued to my face.
I picked up a grape and rolled it between my thumb and forefinger, shifting my gaze from Koan to the piece of fruit. “You remind me of my brother,” I said, not lifting my eyes from the grape. Alastor would never poison someone, even someone he hated or feared. He would tease and taunt, though probably not as violently as these two had. But if they had anything in common with my brother, they wouldn’t pretend to be my friends while deliberately poisoning me.
I lifted my eyes to Jolter. He acted as light-hearted as Koan, but he also carried a more mature air, like an undercurrent that ran hidden by the more jovial surface waves.
He answered my unspoken questions. “Truly. The food is safe. Think of it as a peace offering. The king actually suggested we bring it to you. He said even fae need to eat eventually.”
I set the grape in my mouth and chewed it slowly. It had to be the sweetest, most perfect grape I’d ever eaten. If I was to live with elves for the rest of my life, I couldn’t spend the entire time suspicious of every scrap of food—especially if it was to be this delicious.
And if I died from this meal, at least my mouth would be happy.
Koan handed me a cracker he’d just finished spreading with cheese. I took it and nodded my thanks. Heraised a similar cracker to mine, like a celebratory drink, and I returned the gesture. As our crackers touched over the bowl of grapes, he grinned and said, “To a little more trust between elves and fae.”
Jolter leaned in and tapped a piece of rolled ham on a skewer against our crackers. “To food that brings people together!”
“Hear, hear!” Koan laughed and looked at me expectantly.
I grinned back at them. “To spur-of-the-moment, life-changing choices. May they all bring us more good food than we expect!”
Chapter 6: Aedan
Iappreciated the sun’s late rising in winter more since I’d borne the drekkan curse—it gave me a few extra minutes as an elf every morning, and—like every chance I had—I wanted to use those moments to see if I could find anything new on fae curses in my library.
Before I found any hidden books that might tell me how to free my people, a loud groan caught my attention.
“Oh, no. Don’t give her that one.”
“Why not? It has more current and detailed information than any other.”
“It’s the most boring thing I’ve ever read.”
“Sheaskedfor history. It’s not like she was hoping to be entertained.”
I paced toward the argument as fast as I could. Those two voices belonged to Koan and Jolter, and I couldn’t think of any good reason for them to be touching my books.
When I rounded the twenty-foot-high wall lined with bookshelves that they argued behind, I saw them both with an armful of books. Koan dropped his books as he lunged at a volume that Jolter held just out of his reach. They fell on top of each other right in front of me.
Jolter noticed me a moment later, kicked Koan, and hissed, “King!” Both of them rolled over to their knees and bowed their heads.
I surveyed the books they’d dropped and splayed all over the floor. “What are you doing? In. My. Library.”
Koan tipped his head up with all the entitled arrogance he usually wore. “I thought you invited everyone in.”
I tightened my control on the anger that wanted to burn these two. I did not need my own heat to light my books on fire. “Everyonewho wants toread.”
Jolter side-eyed his brother and dipped his head toward me again. “Your Majesty, Callista asked us to bring her some reading material. We thought it was a harmless request since she’ll be trapped in that room for the rest of her life.”
“Callista?” Was that—
“Yourprisoner,” Koan answered. “She’s harmless, you know, and letting her read a little won’t hurt anything.”
I ground my teeth as my brain tried to make sense of their discombobulated answers. “My prisoner asked you to bring her books?”
