I stepped around him. He let me go. At the door, I turned back to look at him. His smile was broad. I waited for him to say something, anything at all. A second, more urgent knock sounded.
“I think you’re wanted,” I said softly, then I left the room, completely ignoring the red-faced faery standing in the hall.
Chapter Twelve
A woman with needles for fingers nodded, and a group of pixies each held up a dress.
“They’re all so beautiful,” Anya said. Just like me, she had her pick. She wasn’t used to it yet. Her hand trembled in mine. She was going to have something for her own. Something nobody could take from her. Something she didn’t have to share with the other pixies. I had a feeling she had been hiding in her room before I returned.
“You first.” I gave her a reassuring smile. “Pick one.”
She took a deep breath and stepped away from me. Arlen had become more than a bodyguard, and she had risen with him. The other pixies scowled at her. I watched them carefully, ready to defend her if any of them tried something. They were spiteful little beings as a race, but there was something pure in Anya, a desperation to be a better person.
She strolled past the dresses, reaching out her hand but barely touching the fabric. I swallowed hard. If it wasn’t for the things we had gone through, she would be invisible, just another pixie holding up a dress.
She came to a stop at a brilliant royal-blue dress. The colour matched her hair. I plucked a bronze ribbon from a basket at my feet and held it next to the dress. She let the ribbon run through her fingers and nodded, apparently unable to speak.
“It’ll be beautiful.” I nodded at the seamstress. “She’ll take this one.”
The seamstress’s sharp eyes took in Anya’s figure as if mentally sizing her up. A tearing sound made me gasp.
The cream-skinned pixie holding the blue dress sneered. “Oops.”
Anya took a step back. The dress was ruined. The day was spoiled. But I wasn’t about to allow some bratty pixie ruin my friend’s experience.
I grabbed the dress out of the pixie’s hands and threw it at the seamstress. “Fix it.” I closed in on the pixie, fire in my eyes. “Get out, and don’t come back. You’re lucky I don’t tear your wings off and see how you like it.”
She blinked a couple of times, her silver eyelashes so long they brushed against her eyebrows.
“Did you not hear me?” I reached for my dagger.
She ran from the room. I turned and raised my eyebrows at the seamstress. She nodded at the dress. She could fix it.
“See?” I said to Anya. “No harm done. It would have to be adjusted for your size anyway, right?”
Anya nodded, but a little of the light in her eyes had faded.
“Wanna help me choose?” I asked. “I have no clue about this sort of thing.”
My attempt at distraction worked. She began sorting through the dresses, the incident apparently forgotten for the moment. All of the gowns were long and flashy, typical of the faery court. In my limited experience, most of the female faeries of high ranking wore similar clothes on a regular basis. In fact, the dresses probably weren’t showy enough for Nella, if her everyday appearance was anything to go by. She still wore old fashions, and the courts were desperate to follow her, even Sorcha, as if it would make them more royal, more important, just… more.
They were all lovely, but they weren’t me.
“We could take the white one and spruce it up with green ribbon.” Anya looked at me. “Green for Brendan. So everyone knows you’re a part of his court now.”
I froze. Green for Brendan. Owned by Brendan. Taking a side. The thought made me feel a little sick. How many times had I told everyone I didn’t have a king?
The pixies left, leaving the seamstress behind who listened to Anya discuss the changes she saw in her mind.
“Pick a green ribbon that you like,” Anya told me, still looking at the white dress.
I rummaged through the ribbons and found some beautiful forest-green fabric that looked like lace. I was about to hand it over when something else caught my eye—a slim piece of silver. The silver court. Drake’s court. I fingered the silver ribbon wistfully then stopped when I noticed the seamstress watching me carefully. Putting back the silver ribbon, I handed her the green fabric.
“That’s perfect,” Anya said. “Do you need to measure her?”
The woman shook her head and departed with both of our dresses.
“How does she do it so fast?” I asked, my voice shaking a little. Why was my face so hot? It was just a piece of ribbon, a colour. It wasn’t that important.
“It’s her job,” Anya said. “And thanks for dealing with… that. I froze. That was my mistake. They pounce on weakness.”
“Anytime. They don’t know me well enough not to take me seriously.”
“They know I have a friend.” She took my hand. “I’ll make sure some rumours spread about your ruthlessness,” she added with a giggle. “Come. We should get ready. I plan on making the most of this.”
The next few hours were spent getting ready. I wondered if Sorcha did the same, if queens wasted time on their appearance when there were more important things to do.
Later, I returned to my room to find the dress hanging from the poster of the bed. It looked completely different, but I couldn’t help feeling like a doll again—always being dressed up to look a part I didn’t fill.
Soon after, the seamstress arrived to dress me. She was silent, as usual, but I was panicking about pretty much everything: the ceremony, seeing the newlyweds, my reactions to Brendan, and the fact that I kept letting my insecurities show.
The seamstress took some silver ribbon from her basket and held it out to me. I almost passed out. She pushed it toward me. With shaking hands, I picked it up and grabbed some green fabric. I plaited the two together. The dressmaker whipped it out of my hand and sat in the corner, moving her needle fingers rapidly to piece the material together.
When she approached me, I held my breath. She moved her needles close to my wrist, sewing the fabric bracelet she’d made closed. She pushed the bracelet up onto my forearm.
“Thanks,” I whispered.
She nodded then carried on with the dress. The current fashion was corsets—thanks to Nella—but there was no way I was going there again. I wore normal, human underwear under the faery dress, which shimmered whenever I moved. It showed a little too much skin for my liking, but it was so pretty I didn’t complain. The fabric was loose and strategically hung. My shoulders and back had bare spots that drew the eye, but the material covered my arms and ran almost up to my chin.
There were no shoes. I wanted to whoop with relief. My pregnancy was weighing heavily on the soles of my feet, and I was pretty sure my legs were swollen. In the mirror, the curve of my stomach looked more obvious than usual. I ran my hand across my torso with a little sigh. I looked exactly as I was: a pregnant human trying to be a faery. The seamstress gave me a long hard look before leaving.
Anya soon joined me. “I was hardly going to let anyone else do your hair. You look beautiful.”
My appearance paled next to Anya’s. The blue of her gown was so striking that I imagined all eyes would be on her and felt a modicum of relief.
“You’re going to distract Arlen,” I teased.
“That’s the plan,” she said coquettishly.
She sat me down and set to work. Having her work on my hair was way more relaxing than a whole gang of pixies doing it. She pinned one half of my tresses tight against my head, and the rest was piled in curls. She dropped green glitter into my hair after she tied a green headpiece to the front of my head.
“That’s a bit… crowny looking,” I said, feeling weird about it.
“That’s also the plan,” she said.
“Anya…”
“Let me have this one thing,” she pleaded. “Just let me see Sorcha and Nella’s faces when they get a look at you. Both would kill to stand next to Brendan.”
“I thought Nella hated Brendan,” I said. “And Sorcha’s married to Drake.”
“Brendan is old blood, old power. No matter what, many fae see him as the true king. And I heard a rumour about Nella, that she turned to Sadler only because Brendan turned her down. And Sorcha… Sorcha wants everything. She wanted the one king with the one court. She wanted to be queen of it all. And now it’s impossible. Nobody can be queen of all without killing two kings.”
“Why would anyone even want that? Brendan is miserable as it is.”
“There are upsides to everything,” she said cheerily. “Let me look at you.” She stepped back and studied me. “Perfect.”
“Why can’t you wear a crowny thing?” I asked.
She froze. “No, Cara. I can’t do anything like that. I’m just a pixie, even if I’m seen as a favoured one right now. There are some things we can’t do.”
“But I’m a human. I’m even lower than a pixie. Why can I?”
“Because humans can be useful in a way pixies cannot. Trust me.”
I felt as though there was a mountain of history I didn’t know, so I just nodded. I wished Zoe could be with me, could see the things I had seen and experience the good parts of life with the fae. There were always two sides of the coin, and the dark side weighed on me heavier than the good.
“We’ll have fun,” she said. “It’s a beautiful ceremony.”
“Any idea what I have to do?”
“It’s almost like a marriage,” she said softly. “But it’ll be a marriage of a different sort, one between your child and the crown. You stand in proxy because the child is unborn, but that doesn’t make it any less important. When this is done, your child will be one of the most important people in the court.”
I sighed. “All before her own birth.”
Anya smiled. “She’s a special baby.”
We were late to the party. Grim greeted us at the doors to the feast hall. Realtín and Anya walked in with me, and Grim led us to the centre of the room where Brendan was waiting.
Brendan was wearing dark green leather trousers and a white shirt. We were all kinds of matchy. His hair was too short for plaits. I sensed eyes on my back, but I refused to turn around.
Brendan took my hand and led me to the front of the room. “We’ll get this over with and then we can relax.” He seemed nervous.
That made a giggle bubble up in my throat. I held it in, barely. “Stop freaking out,” I whispered. “Or I’ll blurt out inappropriate things and ruin everything.”
“Please do. It’ll help me look less nervous.” He glanced at me. “Green suits you.”
I tried to smile. “If you say so.”
“I do say so.”
I was surprised to see the hedge-witch standing under a white and green arch. I had assumed it would be a small, last-minute ceremony, but an awful lot of fae had gathered to see the show. I wondered where everyone had come from.
When we stopped in front of her, the hedge-witch asked, “Cara Kelly, are you here under your own free will?”
I nodded, cleared my throat, and whispered, “Yes.”
“Do you agree to give up your child to be Brendan’s heir?”
I stared at Brendan, terrified. “Give up?”
“It’s a figure of speech,” he said hurriedly. “I’m not actually taking your child. You’re still looking after the thing.”
I glared at him. “Thing?”
He shrugged, his lazy smile returning.
That settled my nerves. “I agree to let Brendan name my child as his heir.”
The hedge-witch hesitated before turning to Brendan. “And do you, ruler of the Green Court, name this unborn child as your heir, knowing all of the responsibilities that may fall into its hands?”
“I do,” he said.
I flinched at the words. What was I getting myself into? I was wearing a white dress and standing next to Brendan who was saying, “I do.” I looked around in a panic and met Drake’s eyes. He stood next to Sorcha, but I didn’t even see her. I just saw violet eyes staring at me accusingly. I waited for him to say something, do something, but he stayed still. He didn’t claim the baby or tell everyone they were making a huge mistake. He let Brendan take ownership of the child we had created together.
And right then, I knew I was doing the right thing. I poured everything in my heart outward, letting all of my emotions flow to the fae. Gasps rang out, and Brendan gripped my hand. I turned back to the hedge-witch, determined.
“Is your child the heir of the green court?” she asked softly.
I pressed my free hand against the bracelet hidden under my sleeve. No one but me knew that I had been torn in two, that I belonged everywhere and nowhere. My child would be safe. That was all that mattered.
Brendan was staring at me. Everyone was staring at me. I knew they all felt my pain and anger and determination. They all felt me, even the man who was pretending I didn’t exist.
“My child is heir of the green court,” I said, louder than expected. My words were full of spite and bitterness and… gratitude. I turned to Brendan. “Thank you.”
He looked shocked, but he nodded. He held up my hand, his fingers entwining with mine for all to see, then he leaned down and whispered, “What was that all about?”
“I don’t know,” I said with a little laugh. “I didn’t want to be forgotten for a moment there.”
“I noticed. Are you…?” He bit his lip and stopped when a tall faery had approached us with a long piece of ribbon.
The green ribbon was wrapped around our wrists, tying us together. I wanted to cry, and I had no idea why. All around me, faeries grew teary-eyed. They pressed closer to us, desperate to feel my emotions. I glanced around the room. Drake was gone. Sorcha remained, but she had an unreadable look on her face. For a split second, I could have sworn I saw sentiment there.
The hedge-witch gave a little speech that I didn’t hear. I kept staring at my hand and Brendan’s, tied together. I couldn’t break free, and I had tied my child to him.
I held his gaze. “You had better fucking protect her.”
He nodded, looking a little dazed himself. The atmosphere was crazy. All of the fae were chattering and twirling and dancing around us, some crawling around my feet to touch my ankles. And the ceremony wasn’t even over yet.
The hedge-witch lit a long taper. The flame was green. I watched, a little scared, as she set the ribbon on fire. It burned around our wrists, eating up the fabric, but there was no heat or pain.
“And now it’s done,” the hedge-witch said as I was still flexing my fingers in wonder.
“It’s over?” I asked.
“Well,” Brendan said, “now it’s time for us to celebrate.”
The faeries cheered and squealed. Brendan sedately led me to a long table. His chair wasn’t larger than anyone else’s, and his table wasn’t separated or on a higher level. He was going to eat amongst his people.
I sat between Anya and Brendan. Arlen was next to Anya, and Grim was on the other side of Brendan. I caught Grim’s eye once, and he smiled at me, looking completely relaxed, so I hadn’t done something stupid. There wasn’t been some hidden part of the ceremony that would be thrown in my face later. It was done. I rubbed my stomach. My child was safe.
Faeries began to step up to the table and greet us, congratulate us, and tell me that I would have a strong, lucky, beautiful, powerful baby. I hoped I had a lucky baby inside of me. Luck seemed to be the only thing that made a difference in the fae realm.
Líle approached with a bunch of white flowers. The room fell silent. She purposefully handed them to me.
I took them without hesitation. “They’re beautiful.”
Brendan thanked Líle through gritted teeth. She blinked as if surprised, and I wondered if she had been expecting trouble.
“Sit with us,” I said on a whim. “We miss you. All of us.”
Nobody disagreed with me, but I heard someone give a sharp intake of breath
.
“Perhaps another time,” Líle said with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
“Líle,” I called as she walked away, “thank you for the flowers. I hope… I hope she gets to know you some day.”
“She,” Brendan said with a snort when Líle had left the room. “The pixies insist there’s a boy in you, something about the shape of your stomach or some such nonsense.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Nonsense. I just hate saying it, so I say she.” But I wanted a little girl. Desperately. I wanted to give her the life I didn’t have, along with a father who wanted her and loved her. But I had already screwed up in that regard.
Nella and Sorcha were next. I steadied my expression and waited for whatever would come.
“We’ll send on our gift,” Sorcha said, holding Brendan’s gaze.
Nella looked at me with amusement. “Maybe you’re smarter than you look. A descendant of mine, heir to the green court.” She threw back her head and laughed harshly. “How the fates like to play their games. I wonder if we will ever get to see this child, human, and who it will resemble. We already know it won’t have red hair.”
Brendan cleared his throat in warning.
Nella continued. “You’ve played a good game so far, but the game is far from over. Remember that when you lose it all.” She walked away.
Sorcha stiffened, looking unsure of herself for the first time ever. Close by, fae began whispering.
“I…” Sorcha held her head high. “We leave soon. I wish you well.”
She turned away and followed Nella. Dymphna stepped forward. She asked Brendan something, but I wasn’t listening. I was thinking about the ways I could lose it all.
My child was heir to a faery court. The ways I could lose were many.
Chapter Thirteen
All of the drama died down, and the faeries moved on to other worries. I watched from my window as the last of Drake’s court left for home. Over the next week, I sat in my room for hours at a time, feeling lonely, or wandered in the garden, followed at a distance by Ronnie, who never spoke to me again.