She nods. “The only full-blooded sister he has.” Her smile is large and proud.
Her father hates fae... and she is one. Whether the pompous Vampire King knows it or not. And Christian... he must be, right? Half fae, at least. I try to think back to the shape of his ears, but all I can picture is the sharp cut of his jaw. The fullness of his lips.
The fucking girl that was sitting in his lap.
My lips purse, and I force myself to think about the task at hand.
“We could try a black, maybe?” The seamstress lifts the sheer black fabric, but the idea of a simple color pissing off King Boris is too much to pass up.
“I’ll take the green, please.” A smile fills my cheeks despite both women wincing at the apparent idea of a green gown being made in this regal castle.
“Are you excited about the event tonight?” The young girl looks at me with pure curiosity.
Am I excited? To be given away as a meal to this woman’s daddy?
“Very,” I say with a nod and a plaster-perfect smile.
A heavy sigh shoves from the princess’s lungs. I didn’t think their kind needed to breathe. It seems it’s mostly for dramatics but I don’t question it.
“I’m dreading it,” she mumbles
Oh. The breathwasfor dramatics. Got it.
“Why?”
The seamstress comes toward us with a length of measuring tape, and we both stand. She circles Delilah first, pulling the white tape this way and that as she jots down numbers on the back of her hand.
And then it’s my turn. She moves my arms for me, and I stiffly oblige.
“I’m promised to the Thorn King.”
My head turns sharply.
“The Fae King?”
She nods without looking up from the floor.
“Your father promised you to his enemy?”
Her lips pull at the corners, but the force of the smile never fully forms.
“The Thorn King said he wouldn’t give away something so powerful without a fair trade.”
Something so powerful...
Me? New York’s finest dropout? He must be talking about something else. Kings make trades every day. These two men have more important things to discuss than a girl from the trailer park.
“Is he a good man? I mean—at least he won’t eat you, right?”
Jesus, how do I evenlikemen at this point in my life?
She shakes her head hard. “He’s an ugly, cruel man. Thorns pierce from his skin like a disease. He has a fleet of strange dragons. And he burns his enemies alive, charring them slowly so the others can hear their screams and smell their broiling flesh all through the night. So they know never to cross the King of the Dark Lands.”
A gag stings my throat at that thought, but too many questions fill my mind.
“I thought King Boris was the King of the Dark Lands?”
The seamstress scoffs, but when the princess eyes her, the woman gets back to work at the table filled with messy fabrics.