After twenty minutes, I was near fidgeting. After four hours, I stopped hearing entirely.
They kept coming, the emissaries representing every town and people in the Spring Court, bearing their payments in the form of gold or jewels or chickens or crops or clothes. It didn’t matter what it was, so long as it equated to what they owed. Lucien stood at the foot of the dais, tallying every amount, armed to the teeth like the ten other sentries stationed through the hall. The receiving room, Lucien had called it, but it felt a hell of a lot like a throne room to me. I wondered if he’d called it that because the other words …
I’d spent too much time in another throne room. So had Tamlin.
And I hadn’t been seated on a dais like him, but kneeling before it. Approaching it like the slender, gray-skinned faerie slinking from the front of the endless line full of lesser and High Fae.
She wore no clothes. Her long, dark hair hung limp over her high, firm breasts—and her massive eyes were wholly black. Like a stagnant pond. And as she moved, the afternoon light shimmered on her iridescent skin.
Lucien’s face tightened with disapproval, but he made no comment as the lesser faerie lowered her delicate, pointed face, and clasped her spindly, webbed fingers over her breasts.
“On behalf of the water-wraiths, I greet thee, High Lord,” she said, her voice strange and hissing, her full, sensuous lips revealing teeth as sharp and jagged as a pike’s. The sharp angles of her face accentuated those coal-black eyes.
I’d seen her kind before. In the pond just past the edge of the manor. There were five of them who lived amongst the reeds and lilypads. I’d rarely glimpsed more than their shining heads peeking through the glassy surface—had never known how horrific they were up close. Thank the Cauldron I’d never gone swimming in that pond. I had a feeling she’d grab me with those webbed fingers—those jagged nails digging in deep—and drag me beneath the surface before I could scream.
“Welcome,” Tamlin said. Five hours in, and he looked as fresh as he’d been that morning.
I supposed that with his powers returned, few things tired him now.
The water-wraith stepped closer, her webbed, clawed foot a mottled gray. Lucien took a casual step between us.
That was why he’d been stationed on my side of the dais.
I gritted my teeth. Who did they think would attack us in our own home, on our own land, if they weren’t convinced Hybern might be launching an assault? Even Ianthe had paused her quiet murmurings in the back of the hall to monitor the encounter.
Apparently, this conversation was not the same as all the others.
“Please, High Lord,” the faerie was saying, bowing so low that her inky hair grazed the marble. “There are no fish left in the lake.”
Tamlin’s face was like granite. “Regardless, you are expected to pay.” The crown atop his head gleamed in the afternoon light. Crafted with emeralds, sapphires, and amethyst, the gold had been molded into a wreath of spring’s first flowers. One of five crowns belonging to his bloodline.
The faerie exposed her palms, but Tamlin interrupted her. “There are no exceptions. You have three days to present what is owed—or offer double next Tithe.”
It was an effort to keep from gaping at the immovable face, and the pitiless words. In the back, Ianthe gave a nod of confirmation to no one in particular.
The water-wraith had nothing to eat—how could he expect her to give him food?
“Please,” she whispered through her pointed teeth, her silvery, mottled skin glistening as she began trembling. “There is nothing left in the lake.”
Tamlin’s face didn’t change. “You have three days—”
“But we have no gold!”
“Do not interrupt me,” he said. I looked away, unable to stomach that merciless face.
She ducked her head even lower. “Apologies, my lord.”
“You have three days to pay, or bring double next month,” he repeated. “If you fail to do so, you know the consequences.” Tamlin waved a hand in dismissal. Conversation over.
After a final, hopeless look at Tamlin, she walked from the chamber. As the next faerie—a goat-legged fawn bearing what looked to be a basket of mushrooms—patiently waited to be invited to approach the dais, I twisted to Tamlin.
“We don’t need a basket of fish,” I murmured. “Why make her suffer like that?”
He flicked his eyes to where Ianthe had stepped aside to let the creature pass, a hand on the jewels of her belt. As if the female would snatch them right off her to use as payment. Tamlin frowned. “I cannot make exceptions. Once you do, everyone will demand the same treatment.”