6
My days without the prince are terribly dull.
Terry is my only reprieve from all the boredom. We spend most of our time at the lake. She’s teaching me how to swim. Now I can at least stay above water long enough to clutch onto gasps of breath.
It’s a useless skill to me, though. Once I’m out of this world and back in my own, I’ll never have need to swim.
And I’m out of here soon.
Today, though, I’m out of the castle, not so much the bargain. Today, the prince sticks to his promise to take me to the markets.
I’m a regular at the market stalls back in my village, so I thought I was somewhat prepared for this outing. I was wrong. Terribly wrong.
I’ve never seen anything quite like it before.
We are an hour outside The Valley of Royals, deep inside the Crooked Wood, where all the trees are blackened and curved and bent all the way around to touch the black grass with their branches.
The carriage rides under the trees, as though they are nature’s archways, and takes us into a scorched glade.
Fingers pinching the curtain in the carriage, I look out the window, watching the scenery pass me. The carriage rolls to a slow stop at the mouth of the glade, whose grass is dead and crisp beneath us.
It resonates with me. A part of me feels crisp and dead, like a withering flower in my heart.
As the carriage rolls to a stop and the prince jumps out, I take his hand and follow him outside, my hand pressed against my chest as if to soothe the ache there.
Dressed in his casual trousers and black shirt, the prince wears a weapons belt loose around his hips. It houses daggers and short knives meant for throwing.
Two guards shadow us through the windy maze of market stalls.
Whenever I pause at drapes of fabrics, they all stop, and the prince comes up to my side. Out here, he doesn’t touch me—yet, he’s not as icy and distant as he is in the Hall or when he passes me in the atrium.
There’s something significant about this trip, I decide. Sharp eyes follow us, suspicion narrowing them, distaste slitting them, surprise widening them. Whatever the reaction, there is attention focused on both the prince and me.
He’s making a statement by bringing me here. He’s announcing me as his lover.
And it brings a small smile to my face as I look up at his stony profile. His glass-blue eyes, unreadable, are on the netted beige fabric that my fingers graze.
“That would make a fine dress,” he decides, before he adds, “for my bedchambers and nowhere else.”
My smile lifts. “I was thinking less of a dress and more like a bodice and trousers.”
His brows knit together as he throws a side-glance at me. “No,” is all he says. His fingers graze along the side of my low-cut, beige-silk dress.
My smile crumples into a frown. “Why not? If it’s just for your bedchambers then why should it matter? I’ve always wanted to wear trousers—”
Drawing back his hand, he sharply cuts me off, “I gave my decision, April. I am not playing with you now.”
I hide the moodiness that steals my face and step back from the stall. “Fine.”
Ignoring me, Daein looks up at the stall worker—a thin, elderly fae with a thick rope of white hair tied down her back. Her age isn’t in wrinkles, like it comes in humans, but in the grim set of her thinning mouth and the tired, darker edges of her fading eyes.
“She will have this,” he tells the fae, tapping his fingertips lightly on the netted fabric and, flicking his gaze at me, he adds, “for a dress.”
Wrapping my arms around myself, I give a lazy shrug.
This outing was supposed to be pleasant. Exciting, even. Instead, as we move through the stalls and pick out silks and satins and creamy linens and sandals, the prince holds onto his iciness as much as I cling to my mood.
After we have ordered over a dozen fabrics and some shoes to be delivered to his castle, he leads the way to the far stalls that serve up food.