Page 52 of Fae Unleashed
The princess sulked.She kept picking up her curls and glaring at the icy whiteness. They were so pale that they were almost translucent. The black tattoos were a stark contrast. I could see them snaking across her skin, even through her cotton shirt. They’d spread further, taking over her back and curling across her chest.
Cerridwen was no longer Seelie. She didn’t strike me as Unseelie either, though. Had she turned completely Unseelie, the raven feather colors would have stained her golden hair. The complete lack of color was…something else that I didn’t understand.
It was like…I cocked my head as I tried to rationalize my own thought process. Was it possible? Could such a thing happen? Cerri’s aura wasn’t that much different. There was a rich green color around the edges. At the center, closest to her core, I could see a blood-red. It’d been growing for a while, spreading across her arcana like a lichen she couldn’t shake.
But it didn’t reek of evil the way the red in Beryl’s aura did. While Beryl’s aura emanated an ominous stench, the air in here remained clean and clear.
Tal sidled up to me and whispered, “This might become a problem. We cannot hide it from the court anymore.”
Everyone was so damn concerned with looks, with what side of the fence someone stood on, and with things thatdidn’t actually matter. I gave Tal a stern glare. The man remained unmoving. He’d been calculating the position of all the pieces on our gameboard, and he thought this set us back.
As someone who saw Unseelie magics when I looked in the mirror, I couldn’t be the one to cast the first stone. I knew exactly who Cerri was down to her core. The woman had shed more blood for her court than any of the nobles ever had—Tal excluded.
“I think we should make an announcement.” Tal raised his chin in a way that told me I wasn’t going to like what he said next. “We need to tell everyone that the curse has been broken.”
That wasn’t quite what I thought would come next. My beast had perked up, a growl rumbling inside me at the thought that he might announce Cerri’s engagement to Foxglove against her will.
Nothing could take her from me.
The thought tightened my skin. My jaw clenched tight before I realized what I’d done.
Breath rushing out of me, I shoved the stray thoughts back. I slid my feet apart like I was gearing up for a fight, except the fight was against myself. The beast snapped and snarled at me. It didn’t like that I kept pushing my feelings back.
The damn beast needed to remember that we would be of no use to our princess if we couldn’t keep it together. Whatever I felt for her mattered little so long as there was something greater at stake. I would help my princess save her court, or make a new one altogether, whatever came first.
Tal nodded. “I’m going to tell everyone to gather at the Castle. We will make a formal announcement before Lady Ostara’s court, Lord Foxglove’s people, and Cerridwen’s small fae. Bringing them all together should rally them for the fight to come.”
I straightened. “The fight to come?”
Tal gave me a pointed look before turning his attention back to the sulking Cerri. Realization rocked through me like a bolt of lightning. Now that Beryl’s curse had taken full effect, Beryl would be waiting for Cerridwen to step over and join the ranks of the Unseelie.
When that didn’t happen, Beryl would choose to strike. The time that the curse had brought us was over, and now we would have to be on guard.
“You should seek out Faust and deal with him once and for all,” Tal suggested. “Meanwhile, I will handle our princess here and get her back in order. She will need to look the part if we’re going to lie to the court.”
I had a bad feeling about this. Not just about the lie. Cerri was going to fight Tal every step of the way, and I wouldn’t be here to watch.
Turning, I shoved my hands in my pockets and pulled up the magic to step in-between. “Good luck.”
21
CERRI
Icouldn’t believe that rat-bastard left me alone with Taliesin. It wasn’t that Tal was particularly bad. He wasn’t evil or out to kill me. He didn’t want to marry me for my crown, which was a plus in my book.
No, Tal wanted to slather my hair with dyes and paint my face with glamoured makeup. The man treated me like a fixer-upper that he’d bought right before it should have been condemned. Every time he turned his back to get some other magical beauty product, I sneered and considered stepping away.
Anywhere would be better than here, in front of this mirror that wanted to rub my new reflection in my face. My hair was trapped under a plastic bag as the dye cured on my head. The shade of red was much deeper than I would have picked, but I didn’t really have a say in it. Tal had turned on his anti-gravity magic and suspended me in the air while painting my scalp with the stuff.
“Bastard,” I muttered.
“Which one?” Del asked, suddenly appearing beside me.
I startled and fell back off my stool. Del gave me an unimpressed look. The sight of her gave me pause, though. Her eyes were shadowed. Dark bags dragged them down. It was like she hadn’t slept in days.
An uneasy feeling stirred in the pit of my stomach, but I couldn’t quite figure out where it was coming from. There was something…offthat set off alarms. Where was the danger? I had no idea.
Del offered me a hand. When I took it, her skin felt real. She wasn’t a nightmare or an illusion. I crossed that off my list.
