Claiming the Prince: Book One (49 page)

“Meer told me there’s a bath waiting in there,” she said, pointing towards the other set of dark wood doors. “And she’ll be bringing our clothes for the party. I’ve asked Honey to attend to you throughout. She understands.”

For half a second, his silver eyes glimmered green.

“You should send the nymph home. She doesn’t belong here.”

“She’s a willing servant. And a nymph attendant is quite rare and desirable. You should be glad that she wishes to repay me in this way, to help us.”

“I shall be glad when all of this is over,” he said through tight lips.

“That makes two of us.” She started across the room towards the bath doors. “Try to rest. If you wish to summon Meer, simply call for her. She’ll come.”

He watched her. “I know how to call a brownie.”

She stopped at the doors, hand resting on the silver handle. “I’m sure you do. But the only brownie I want in this room is Meer. Don’t let any of the others in.”

His eyes narrowed, but he inclined his head, just slightly.

Kaelan readied himself in the bathroom as the day waned.

The light seeping around the curtains faded to whispers.

Meer zipped around Magda, readying her for the evening. Magda frowned at the clothes.

A shining silver-leaf scale corset, both delicate and imposing. Her upper arms left exposed, a sleeveless white cloak trailed down to the ground behind her, fastened across her hip asymmetrically, over skin-tight white silk trousers. Pixie-cloth boots threaded in silver criss-crossed above her knees. The Enneahedron was secured in a pocket under her waistband, pressing against the soft spot of her hip.

Meer ceased her near-invisible racing about and stood back from Magda. “What do you think?”

She held out her arms. The elegant vambraces were silver as well. “Who paid?”

“Your Aunt is quite generous.”

She wondered just how much of her mother’s stolen treasure had gone into this ridiculous outfit. But she’d had to trust Flor with the funds, as it would arouse less suspicion.

Kaelan opened the bathroom doors. In a long black coat, black trousers, and silver vest, he was every inch a Prince.

They regarded each other for a moment.

“We certainly look our parts, don’t we?” she said.

“One last thing.” Meer flashed away and then was back in her spot a moment later. Magda reached up and touched the cool curves of the cornet, which fitted snug to her head, two fine fingers of metal curving over her ears and up to the mid-point of her eyebrows, another interwoven section dipping low to the middle of her forehead. She plucked the hank of her hair out from under it, allowing it to fall over her cheek.

Meer scowled, folding her arms.

She smiled and then turned to Kaelan. “Ready?”

He joined her, standing at her side.

“Meer?” she said. “The doors?”

The brownie vanished.

She edged slightly before Kaelan, nudging him with her shoulder so he inched back. When he was in the proper place, she raised an eyebrow at him.

“You need not feel obliged to stay by my side the entire night,” she said with an imperious air. “But don’t go too far.”

“I have no wish to be anywhere else,” he said.

Down three flights of stairs, out across the terrace, over the bridge, to the garden gate where they met Honey, Damion, Flor, and Toryn.

In the field beyond, a troupe of troubadours recounted the tales that Flor had fabricated about Magda’s return to the Lands, trading off every other line to whomever would give the sentiment its greatest impact, from the soaring soprano pitched high at the heights of fighting the manticore, to the bass when the mysterious Prince Kaelan died. Back and forth the voices bandied as precursor to her entrance.

Flor and Toryn stood before her, partially blocking her view. Flickers of fairies flitted above a sea of glittering, noble Pixie faces.

Kaelan’s hand touched the back of her neck. A soothing wave slipped under her skin, calming the prickles of anxiety and then pulling forth a firm surge of confidence from deep within her. Unsettled as she’d been by his ability to quell her in this way, as the threat of panicked sweat evaporated, she was grateful. She gave him a small smile over her shoulder. His fingers pressed a bit deeper and then slid away.

“And then upon the back of the great lion-semargl she returned,” the female tenor cried, with breathless awe that rang across the field, as though she were witnessing Gur emerging from the river of stars above, “the exiled daughter of our great departed Radiant, Vivanna, the Silver Star of Morning, come home to seize her claim.”

Flor and Toryn stepped aside.

With a deep breath, Magda stepped forward, through the gate to the curious, keen stares and an exuberant applause. Deep in the heart of the crowd, she sighted Lavana’s flashing aquamarine eyes, framed by coils of black hair trailing over her own silver coronet. Behind her, Riker, looking guiltily uncomfortable.

Lavana raised a perfectly arched brow and a silver goblet at Magda, a smile playing over her ruby lips.

Magda returned Lavana’s smile with a deadly one of her own and dropped into a low curtsy for the family.

The troubadours stepped into the crowd, breaking into a victory song that brought smiles to everyone’s faces.

The elders came forward to greet her again. Soon, she was in the thick of the game of fanged smiles and slantwise compliments.

Kaelan kept his hand on her waist, though many attempted to pull him away, he refused to be moved. Old friends broke from the throngs of the crowd, expectant. When Magda couldn’t murmur their names to him, Honey stood up on her toes and whispered in his ear, as though attempting to woo him. Yet, because of her and the mystery voice, Kaelan never failed to know a name or recall some minute detail about the old acquaintances who stepped forward to embrace or scrutinize him. Damion circled through the crowd, never straying too far out of sight, scowling at everyone as a warrior was privileged to do.

“I wouldn’t have believed it unless I was seeing it,” a silken smooth voice slid in as some distant cousins stepped aside.

A tall, sharp-faced young man with gleaming green eyes, like tender spring shoots encased in ice, emerged from the crowd. The straight width of his shoulders seemed to slice the air around him. On his fine vest, icy blue, gold threaded, were the twisting vines of the mountain orchid—the symbol of the Spire.

“Zuriel,” she said, forcing his gaze to her. “It’s been a very long time.”

His nose twitched a bit and her smile broadened, showing teeth.

Kaelan reached out and grasped Zuriel’s upper arms in a gesture of friendship.

Zuriel stiffened.

“Ivy-man,” Kaelan said with a charming smile that caught even Magda off-guard. “I owe you, as much as anyone, a great apology. I wish I could have warned you that day. I can only imagine how distressing it must have been to see me fall, to think me dead.” He clasped Zuriel’s stiff shoulder and leaned in. “But I had to submit to the wishes of my mistress, I know you understand. I can only hope you will forgive me for whatever tribulation I caused you that day.”

Zuriel’s gaze swept up and down Kaelan’s face—Caden’s face—obviously searching for any sign of deception.

“You appeared very dead,” Zuriel said coolly.

Kaelan leaned in even closer, confidently. “And do you remember the crystal wand of the fairy queen that our Mistress held on display in her gallery?”

A slight frown flickered over Zuriel’s face. “Yes.”

“And did you see it again, after I died?” he asked.

Zuriel’s head tilted, his eyes glittering like moonlight on hoarfrosted grass as his mind worked. “Mistress moved it to the vaults . . .”

Kaelan smiled and plucked at his nose, just as his mother did, just as Caden had always done. In that moment, because of that one small gesture, the frozen surface of Zuriel’s gaze melted.

“Yes, that is what our Mistress
claimed
happened,” Kaelan said in that same in-confidence voice. “But if you ever visit the witch on the Isle-Out-of-Current, perhaps you can find a way to bargain it back.”

Zuriel let out a breath. “I can’t believe it’s actually you.”

Kaelan squeezed Zuriel’s shoulder, giving it a good hearty shake.

“And look at you,” he said. “A scribe to the Crown?”

Zuriel’s shoulders pulled back. “Minister of Letters.”

Kaelan stepped back, placing his hand again on Magda’s waist. “And did your mother bribe a witch with a fae wand to make that miracle happen too?”

Zuriel smiled a bit. “I resent your implication that I have not achieved my position by my own merits.”

“As was my intention entirely,” Kaelan said with that same beguiling smile. “Would you care to test my dueling skills now? I admit I’m rather rusty after all of those years in exile with the
humans
, but you were always much better with the pen than the sword, as I recall.”

“I’m happy to say that you are just the same arrogant imphole that you always were,” Zuriel said, chuckling. His gaze flicked back over to Magda, cooling. “I never expected to see either of you again.”

“I’m sure everyone at the Spire finds our return quite shocking,” she said.

He clasped his hands behind his back. “That is one word for it.”

“And another?”

He smiled thinly. “You have defied all expectations. Your story has caused quite a stir. Is it true you possess the Enneahedron?”

The weight of it pressed against her back. “It is.”

“And you have returned my dear friend from the dead,” he said with the half-convinced air of someone attempting to find a loose thread that would set everything unraveling. His gaze skipped over to Honey, who was hovering just behind Kaelan. “And you have a nymph, with a rat.”

Without warning, Hero’s fur bristled and he sank his teeth into Honey’s neck.

Honey shrieked, grabbing Hero and flinging him away. Magda grabbed Kaelan’s wrist as Hero went sailing above the heads of the dumbfounded crowd.

Honey stumbled, bumping into Kaelan and Magda, knocking them both into Zuriel and a number of others standing close by.

Everyone tumbled into a heap, Magda landing nose-to-nose with Zuriel. His eyes had turned cold and hard again.

“What the—?” Zuriel growled.

She struggled to disentangle herself from him.

“What is this?” Flor demanded.

She finally managed to roll off of Zuriel and out from under Honey, ripping her cloak in the process. Honey plopped to the ground, hand on the side of her throat, blood pouring between her fingers and fat tears running down her face.

Flor knelt beside the nymph. “What in—?”

“Hero bit me,” Honey said, wide-eyed and gasping for breath.

“That damned rat?” Flor said. “When I find him—”

“Why would he do that?” Madga asked.

“Because he is a rat,” Flor snapped at her.

Kaelan scrambled up and over to Honey. “It will be all right.” He placed his own hand over hers. While Kaelan healed Honey, Zuriel picked himself up and offered his hand to Magda. She took it, shaking out her cloak as she stood. Not only was it torn, but splattered with blood.

“Damn,” she murmured.

Zuriel shook back his brown locks, teasing them from where they’d snagged in his mouth.

“Life is so much more exciting with you around, Magdalena,” he said. With a bow, he turned and threaded his way through the gawking crowd.

Kaelan pulled his hand from Honey. The blood had stopped, but was thick on her skin.

“Come now. Let’s clean up and rest,” Flor said, easing Honey up to her feet. Honey stared as if in shock, her arms hugging tight to her torso.

Magda peeled off her cloak.

“Meer,” she called.

The brownie appeared at her ankle. “Yes, Mistress?”

Magda held up the cloak for her to see.

Meer rolled her eyes. “What in the Lands—?”

“Long story,” she said as Meer pinched the edge of the cloak, tutting. In the next moment, she and the cloak were gone.

Kaelan approached her again, wiping the blood from his hands with some kind person’s handkerchief.

All around, the crowd spoke anxiously, attempting to ascertain what had happened without asking either of them directly.

“Are you all right?” he asked, bowing his head towards her.

“I’m—” She frowned, struck by a sudden sense of vulnerability. She ran her hands up her exposed arms and shoulders, avoiding eye contact with curious family members, some of them still picking themselves up from the ground.

He moved closer still, as if he could build a wall around her with his presence alone. “What is it?”

She shook her head, attempting to dispel the strange feeling. Yet, she found herself edging closer to him too, wanting to vanish into his shadow.

His cleaned hand slid around her waist. “Magda—?”

When his hand pressed against the small of her back, her heart seized, her breath hitched.

He frowned. “What’s wrong?”

She pursed her lips, gaze searching the crowd. Everyone watched them. Hundreds of people filled the field.

It could’ve been any of them.

She reached up and clasped the back of Kaelan’s neck, brushing her lips along his cheek, kissing his earlobe. Under the breath of her kiss, she murmured, “The Enneahedron is gone.”