I recognized the one in the middle, and my nails dug into my palms. The man who’d been dancing with Poppy earlier. Who’d come out on the balcony looking for her. A possessiveness rose up in me, such a foreign feeling I didn’t recognize it at first.
The guards didn’t say anything, and I quickly shut the door behind me and summoned my most charming smile. Unsurprisingly, they didn’t return it as they marched closer. I tried to push my way past them when they lifted their hands, air picking up from out of nowhere and swirling, trapping me in some kind of vortex.
Well, fuck.
“You don’t want to do this,” I said.
“And why is that?” the middle guard asked—Erasmus, I believed Poppy had called him.
I had no choice but to reveal my identity so I could get the bloody waters out of here in one piece. “I’m Prince Lochlan, and I can assure you the water court will not be happy to hear Valoris is treating their prince so rudely.”
This was the last thing I wanted. Mal had a lot on his plate as the new king, and he didn’t need to find out his brother had been arrested in the sky court. I could already picture him rolling his eyes, the way he’d cross his arms and cock a brow as if to say, “Really, Loch?” Not to mention my mother, who would be humiliated and worried.
The guards stared at me for a minute after my admission, then they all burst into laughter.
“You hear that, boys?” the one on the right said, swiping at his bald head. “This is Prince Lochlan.”
“Well, we better bow before the prince,” Erasmus said, and they all dipped mockingly.
I rolled my eyes. Great. They didn’t believe me, and I had zero proof. I might be recognizable to most women—and quite a few men—but not them. They hadn’t joined the playboy prince fan club, it seemed.
Erasmus stepped closer, his hands still out, the wind tightening around my throat and making it hard to breathe. “Little tip: we’re used to imposters around here. Have been dealing with them for years since the princess disappeared.”
Shit. This was not going well.
“Ask Poppy,” I said, struggling against the constraints.
Anger flashed in Erasmus’s eyes. “It’s Princess Arabella, and you’d do well to remember that.”
“Can we get this over with and throw him in the cages?” the guard on the left said, like I was an inconvenient hiccup in his night.
My muscles bunched as I fought against the wind constricting around me, but without my magic, I was no match for the three of them.
“Let me come before the king and queen,” I said, “and I’ll explain everything.”
“Or”—Erasmus stepped closer, raising his hand and closing his fist so that the air closed around my neck—“we could throw you in prison and go back to enjoying our night. The princess owes me another dance.”
The bald guard smirked. “That option. I like that one best.”
“You haven’t even told me what I’ve done,” I choked out.
Erasmus’s eyes gleamed. “Breaking and entering. We saw you attempting to enter the princess’s rooms, and we’re going to discover why.”
They thought I was a threat to her. That I might be after her for some reason, and I couldn’t even defend myself because they wouldn’t believe a word out of my mouth, likely wouldn’t even tell Poppy they’d apprehended me. She’d think I left, and I’d be wasting away in their infamous cages, placed high above the castle.
I was so fucked.
I tried to speak again, but my throat burned with the wind wrapping around it, and my lungs screamed for air. I tried to suck in a ragged breath, but no air could squeeze through. Dots spotted my vision, and the last thing I saw as I lost consciousness was the cruel smile spreading across Erasmus’s lips.
Chapter Thirty-Three
POPPY
The queen, Saestra, and I sat in a green courtyard filled with hedges, trimmed to look like sky elementals, wings flared wide and bodies in various positions: one with arms outstretched, another with a hand reaching toward the sky, another with hands clasped together in a fist, another holding a bolt of lightning.
The courtyard sat right on the edge of the chunk of land that floated in the sky, flowers, trees, and bushes I’d never be able to name surrounding us, as well as a maze that stretched over the other half of the courtyard. Queen Bronwen had told me she’d played in that maze, gotten lost in it as a little girl when she’d visited the castle with her mother.
She stared out at the view, sipping her tea. It felt so easy with her in a way I wasn’t used to. With Gran, silence always had me wondering if I’d done something to upset her, if there was some need I wasn’t meeting.
