“Maybe. Maybe not. Has Prince Iason even given you a token or did you make that up? The token he gave you… can I see it?”
“Are you saying I’m a liar?”
“Then show it to me.” She sighs. “Hey, I’m curious. I’ve never had a love token bestowed on me. Humor me.”
“Not yet,” I mutter. “I’m sure that soon a handsome prince will see you and fall head over heels in love with you. Then he’ll give you his token and court you and make you his bride.”
“You can’t distract me like that, Selina.”
“It’s the truth,” I whisper, bowing my head.
“So where is the token?”
“Just go. Please?”
“Oh, cousin… I hope for your sake that you haven’t done anything stupid.”
“You mean more stupid than going to the haunted woods to pick flowers with Mina?” I say harshly. “Something like that?”
Her brows go up and her eyes abruptly fill with tears. “Not fair,” she whispers. “I didn’t know that would happen. Why am I trying to help you?”
Turning on her heel, lifting her long skirts, she runs out of my room.
Leaving me to feel like a villain.
The worst thing about this is that my cousin is right. What am I doing? Am I about to throw my future away? And for what? Nothing has changed. If anything, my encounters with the Fae King at the lake should be a lesson to me. The Fae are wily and devious, they’re beautiful and dangerous. My mistake was dealing with one of them in the first place. I should have told my grandfather the King of Kyrene about Adar, taken the royal guard to the woods to have him killed. That’s what we do with Fae.
But I can’t. Because everyone would know I lost my pendant.
Yes, that’s why I can’t take the guards. Not that I care about a nasty Fae’s life. After all, the Fae have haunted and tormented us for centuries. Handsome or not, he’s not my problem.
No, my problem is retrieving the pendant. I have to go back to the lake. One last time. And this time I’m not leaving without Iason’s token.
“Adar!” I shout, pacing the lakeshore, my arms folded over my chest. “Show yourself! Adar!”
This time it takes much longer for the ripple in the placid lake surface to appear. Panic had begun to fray the edges of my resolve, and my heart had started a manic beating, thinking that the pendant was gone forever.
That Adar was gone.
Focus, I tell myself.You’re here for the pendant. Don’t let the Fae’s wiles get to you again. You know that’s how they bespell people. Don’t fall for it.
So when he appears, slicing through the water, all blue and silver, all strange and beautiful, I’m prepared.
Or so I think. Seeing him is always a punch to my heart, a shake to my senses. Today is no different.
He stops waist-deep in the water, casually leaning against his favorite log, toying with the end of his braid with the other, smiling. “Back for more, huh?”
I roll my eyes. “You really like yourself, don’t you? I bet if you had a mirror, you’d spend your day admiring yourself.”
“Who says I don’t?” He winks. “After all, I live inside a mirror. All day I stop and look down at my reflection and tell myself, King Adar, you look damn fine today.”
“Adar…” I shouldn’t be laughing, but the image he paints is just so… not like him, somehow.
“It makes hunting for food easier,” he goes on. “The fish simply jump to me, unable to help themselves, enamored. The birds of the lake come into my arms, hoping for some loving, but get eaten instead.”
I’m laughing so hard tears leak from the corners of my eyes. “Stop…”
“That’s what happens to anyone who falls in love with me,” he finishes, his voice turning sharp.