The prince glanced over his shoulder, his expression as cold as ice. “You’re coming with me.”
CHAPTER 4
“No!” Cailis leaped from her seat and positioned herself in front of me.
Denial jolted through me as my breaths came faster. Surely, I hadn’t heard him correctly.
“You’re not taking her! She’s done nothing wrong!” Cailis yelled.
But the prince merely walked toward the door. His steps didn’t falter. He didn’t even deign her with a reply.
“Cailis,” I whispered as the rest of the villagers wore shocked expressions. Mother Below, is this really happening?
“He can’t!” Cailis wailed.
I grabbed her shoulders. “Cailis! Don’t. Please. I can’t lose you too.” Because if she fought the prince, he would end her without a second thought.
“But, how can he—” A sob shook her chest as her wings extended, then retracted. “Not you too.”
“See to it that her last wages are given to her next of kin,” the prince said to Vorl, as though he didn’t know—or care—that Cailis was my only next of kin. “She won’t be returning.”
I won’t be? My heart beat so rapidly that it felt as though it would beat out of my chest.
“My prince, what did I do?” I called.
The prince dipped his head to his four guards and began speaking quietly, my plea entirely ignored.
“No, no, no,” my sister wailed. She wrapped her arms around me and pulled me close, burying her face in my neck.
I clung to her, holding her tightly, as the shock of what the prince had just said slammed into me like a tidal wave on the Tala Sea. She won’t be returning.
But why? Did he mean to kill me? Apprehend me? End me because I was different?
It was as though he’d known when he’d asked me to remove my scarf that he’d find me without silver hair, but since when was being an outcast cause for the Court of Winter to intervene?
My thoughts tumbled around in my mind like a swirling cyclone.
“But I’ve done nothing,” I whispered. “Absolutely nothing against the court. How can he be allowed to take me?”
Cailis sobbed harder.
“The prince has summoned you,” Vorl called from the corner. A glint filled his eyes, and I knew he would relish bringing me to heel if I resisted.
I held my sister tighter. “I love you,” I whispered and stroked her hair. “I love you. I love you. I love you. Please know that, sister. I will always love you.”
Another sob shook her frame as tears pricked Birnee’s eyes, and pity filled Finnley’s. The rest of the room was silent as the fire flickered in the hearth. In the serving line, both Krisil and Evis watched everything slack-jawed.
“Look after her. Promise me that you will,” I said to Birnee and Finnley as my sister dissolved into a bigger mess in my arms.
Birnee nodded quickly as Finnley stood in a swift move and wrapped both of us in a hug. His large muscular arms felt warm and comforting. He’d been like a brother to me, even more so since Tormesh had gone. But the joking expression Finnley usually wore, an expression my brother had also commonly bore as he teased Cailis and I mercilessly, was absent. Stoic resolved filled his face.
A soft wail came from Birnee, and then she was there too, standing with us as we all held one another while the rest of our village’s laborers looked on. The four of us had been best of friends since childhood, and I knew Cailis would need Birn and Fin now more than ever.
We gripped one another harder.
The Death Master stood with thinned lips and a hard stare, but damn the Winter Court and its heir. He was robbing my sister of the only family she had left.
Glaring at him, I gave him my back and cradled my sister’s cheeks in my palms.
One of the prince’s guards, the one with hair shorn close to his head, said loudly, “The prince has demanded you come with us. If you do not come willingly now, we shall have to use force.”
Vorl’s shoulders tensed, his hand going to his club.
“Stay strong, Cailis.” I kissed her on the forehead as she turned to Finnley and buried her face in his chest. Birnee gave me one last pleading look. “Take care of her,” I begged. “Please.”
Birnee and Finnley nodded solemnly as my sister’s shoulders and wings moved up and down with each sob.
Standing tall, I locked down the pain that threatened to overwhelm me. I might have been the weakest fairy in our village, but I wouldn’t let that define me now. Not here. Not in this moment.
Vorl’s focus burned into me as I walked stiffly toward the prince and his guards. A moment of hysteria filled me, but I managed to contain the ironic laughter that almost spilled from my lips. Without me in the village, who would Vorl torment now?
My village archon’s expression was filled with mixed emotions. Disbelief. Anger. Perhaps even resentment. But his hand remained on his club, just waiting for me to balk.
The prince cut Vorl a sharp look, then brought his attention back to me. For the barest second, the prince’s gaze dropped to my throat again.
“This way,” one of the prince’s guards said. A braid whipped from around his back as he gestured toward the door.
The prince did a one-eighty, and I followed blindly, my feet moving of their own accord as I put one foot in front of the other.
“My prince?” I called to Prince Norivun again. He towered over me, his midnight attire shining like obsidian. His aura screamed of death and violence, but I still stepped closer to him. “If I’ve done something against the court, I can assure you it was entirely in ignorance. Please tell me what I’ve done so I can make it right.”
“You’ve done nothing against the court.” He slipped on a pair of supple leather gloves and disappeared out of the barn. He hadn’t even glanced at me when uttering the words that proved my innocence.
My jaw dropped as confusion froze my tongue. The guard with shorn white hair nudged me through the door after Prince Norivun, and I nearly slid on the ice when a burst of wind hit me in the chest, but I managed to right myself as the rest of his guards joined us and closed the door behind us.
Inside the field kitchen, an eruption of conversation broke out. I couldn’t decipher what anyone was saying, but I could just imagine what their whispers and hisses hinted at, though nobody dared open the door to see what was happening. I did catch a few hovering near the window, as though I was a side show at Firlim’s market and they were debating if they should drop a few rulibs in payment for the entertainment.
If the prince used his affinity on me now, it would indeed be a show. Albeit a quick one.
Shivering, I wrapped my arms around myself as the sun blazed all around. Since we stood outside of the field’s land that was infused with orem, it was freezing.
I held up a hand to shield my view as the sun’s reflection on the snow made the landscape blinding. Another gust of wind shot through the valley, and without my scarf, my hair flew around my face as coldness seeped into my bones. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been so exposed outside. I never left my home without my hooded cloak or headscarf.
“How shall we proceed to the capital, my prince?” one of his guards asked. He was of medium height with a thick white beard, yet his stance was strong, his hands large, and like the prince, two swords peeked out from beneath his wings.