Eventually, his heaving chest calmed and he dropped my sleeve. After several turns and a flight of stairs, we reached the corridor that housed his office. Coming the opposite direction, almost blocking the hall, was a huge man. His dark grey hair matched his dark glower.
It took me a moment to realise there was someone else at his side—a woman with strawberry-blond hair. Her freckled face broke into a broad smile when she spotted us.
Bastian sighed, shoulders sinking. When we reached them, he turned, but didn’t look directly at me. “This is Faolán.” He gestured at the giant. “I’m the queen’s right hand, and he’s mine. And this is Rose. Meet Katherine—or Kat.”
Somehow, Rose’s smile grew broader. “Katherine.”
Faolán’s eyes widened a touch as he looked down at me, and I realised his lowered eyebrows were more a sign of curiosity than irritation. “Kat.” He nodded. “She’s so small,” he muttered out the side of his mouth.
I couldn’t help chuckling.
Bastian arched one eyebrow at him. “And yet she still has ears.” He clapped the giant on the shoulder. “Rose works for me and for some reason agreed to marry him.”
“Her life was in danger,” Faolán muttered.
Rose swatted him. “But I chose to stay married to you, didn’t I? No danger involved. And as for you…” She pointed at Bastian and narrowed her eyes. Shaking her head, she turned to me. “Anyway, ignore these two. I am so pleased to finally meet you properly.”
I threw a questioning glance at Bastian, but he was still studiously avoiding my gaze. “And I—”
“Rose is going to be your bodyguard. I’ve already briefed her about”—his eyes flicked to my gloved hands—“precautions.”
She eyed us, then peered down the hall. “What have you two been up to that’s got you looking so flustered?”
“Archery practice,” Bastian answered too quickly. “Turns out Kat doesn’t need much of it. I’ll leave you two to your day.” Clearing his throat, he opened the door and I caught a glimpse of Brynan at his desk. He disappeared inside, calling back, “Faolán, my office.”
Faolán frowned from the spot where Bastian had stood a moment ago to me. “What—?”
“Now,” Bastian’s voice clipped through the open door.
“Sorry, little flower, duty calls.” Faolán kissed Rose on the cheek.
As he held her shoulder, I had to bite back a gasp. At the tips of his fingers were claws instead of nails, short and blunt like a hound’s.
Nodding to me, he followed Bastian.
I stared after them. It felt like I’d been hit by one whirlwind after another.
“Bastian… can be like that sometimes.” She winced and gestured back the way she’d come. “I’ll show you the city. I hear you haven’t seen much of it.” Her lips pressed together, an expression that ill-suited her. Her face was made for smiles and laughter.
The city meant venturing out from the palace’s protection, but it might also give me a chance to find out about unCavendish as well as go to my appointment at the Hall of Healing. At least I’d touched Bastian for the day, so I didn’t need to worry about that.
I stole glances at her as we walked through the palace and she explained how the hill it was built on had once been a volcano. Natural hot springs fed the baths in the basement levels and were channelled out into the river that cut the palace off from the rest of the city.
It was only now Faolán wasn’t next to her that I could tell, despite what he called her, she wasn’t a “little” anything. She had to be six foot tall and well-muscled. And it took a while longer before I realised why she put me at (relative) ease. “You’re human.”
She shot me an infectious grin. “Mostly.” She peered along the corridor. We were alone. “Until not so long ago, entirely.”
I squinted at her in question, but asking what she was had to be considered rude, even for non-fae.
She winked as we turned a corner. A handful of guards waited at the end. “I’ll tell you later.”
Before we stepped through the doorway, she warned me we were passing into a lodestone, and I steeled myself for the lurch that felt like walking down a staircase with one more step than I expected.
A columned chamber stretched before us, wide and long, the high ceiling showing a sky full of racing clouds and the tinge of sunrise gold. The image moved, and when I gave Rose a questioning look, she shrugged. “Magic. You’ll get used to it.”
In fact, the buzz on my skin was less noticeable than it had been when I’d left the Hall of Healing, growing clearer when I focused.
Ahead, at the chamber’s centre, a fountain glittered, and beyond that stood two huge doors, wide open to the outside. The grand hall Bastian had mentioned. He’d brought me a different route that first day.
I could probably find my way from here back to his offices and the practice yard, even if it wasn’t the most direct way. That was progress.
Before we stepped out into the burgeoning day, I glanced back. The door we’d entered through cut off the far left-hand corner of the chamber, while another matching door cut off the right-hand corner. That had to be Dawn’s entrance.
We crossed the same bridge as that first day, and since I avoided looking over its edge (or even acknowledging it had one), I spotted that the sky above matched the one from the hallway. Magic, indeed.
“You’ll get used to it all.” Rose gave me a lopsided grin. “It took me a little while, but now I love it here. Ari, too. That’s my friend—she’s one of us.” She tapped the rounded tip of her ear.
“Mostly” human—yet her canine teeth were long and sharp like a fae’s.
Curiosity ate at me, but the bridge deposited us into a busy street and fae stared as we passed.
So many people—people I could kill with a single touch.
I clutched at the buzzing sensation on my skin, desperately trying to will the magic inside me to be small. I was a girl again, my father rapping a ruler across the table, making me jump.
Sit straight.
Knees together—you’re not a whore.
I hated myself for leaning on those lessons—what had they got me? I’d been poisoned—not just by the aconite, but by all the words my father and uncle had dripped into me for so, so long. Except… without those lessons, without their tight boundaries, who the hells was I?
That was too big a question. Far, far too big.
And right now, I needed to keep this magic under control. Much as I hated their rules, they had taught me to be quiet, small, contained, and I needed this power in my veins to be the same.
Still, the fae watched.
“What are they looking at?”
“Us.” Rose shrugged. “But mostly you.”
I frowned, every inch of me rigid from holding on. “They didn’t stare as much when I came this way before.”
She gave me a sidelong look. “Were you with Bastian, by any chance?”
“I suppose he’s enough to scare the curiosity out of most people.”
Another flashing grin. “Mm-hmm. We’re human, which is unusual enough. But I’m old news now. You’re still fresh and new, and you must know about fae and red hair. I’m sure Bastian’s told you the effect—”