Chapter Six: Lessons in Love and Death

I spent a lot of the next few days in the library. Enough that I learned to gauge where I was by the smell and the air currents. I spent my second day as I'd spent my first - in the children's nook. But as I got better and better at the simpler manipulations, I craved a challenge. I got to the point where I gained my first 'intrinsic' spell, which can happen when you repeat a spell in the exact same way often enough. With an intrinsic spell, you get so fast and efficient with it, that you can accidentally trigger the spell just by thinking with it. That's what I did with the 'divine sight' spell that Surburrus taught me. I cracked open my third or fourth book of my study session and realized I hadn't bothered to cast anything. I'd just decided that I wanted to read the book and - voila! - it was legible. Just like that.

Meliswe accompanied me most of the time, though she was pursuing her own projects. Whenever I asked her about it, she was vague. But whenever I snuck a peek, they were books about Elysheim… books about different realms and worlds accessible by magic… tales of strangers from strange lands. She was trying to figure out how to get her princess back from Alfheim and how to get me back to Earth. I suppose the fact that she was worried about my well-being rather than trying to bump me into a grimkey skull was a move in the right direction.

I didn't only spend my time in the library. I did lots of other things, too - for instance, I supped with the queen once or twice more, getting Meliswe to brief me on various interests of mine or bits of biography from my (Laeanna's) past so that I might gush or drone about this or that enough to avoid suspicion. And, since Alathea liked to hear herself talk, I don't think she noticed the American doughboy riding around in her daughter's body.

Every morning, Meliswe would run me through exercises in kalithien, a kind of stretching exercise that fae ladies (and a few gentlemen) engaged in to stay toned in limber. And Laeanna was very limber. I had no idea what I was doing, at least at first, but as soon as Meliswe showed me a pose, I could copy it without much trouble, even when she tried to trip me up. The stretching could be hard, and we'd both work up a sweat, and afterwards Meliswe would have the zephrylite draw me up a bath, and she would insist on sponging me down… I'm not convinced this is in the handmaiden's job manual, but Meliswe insisted it was, and I didn't have the gumption to argue it. Not that first time. The second time, I gave her a little pushback.

"No, absolutely not," I stated, and it vexed her visibly. "You have to lean way over to wash me, your hair gets in my face, and my moving this way and that is more work than if I just did the damn thing myself."

"Perhaps I… I can do better. Let me try, my lady."

I snatched the sponge from her hands and gave her my best frown - it wasn't a particularly frightening expression on my face, but it exuded pathos. "I'm sorry, no. If you want to wash me, you're going to have to strip down and get in with me so you can do it properly. I know you're probably going back to your little room and your little tub right after, so why not cut out the middle man?"

She regarded carefully, maybe suspecting some sort of trick. But the only trick was this: I'd been without a wife or a prostitute for weeks now, and I wanted some companionship… and here was this beautiful woman begging to sponge me down while fully clothed. That wouldn't do at all.

After she'd decided that I was serious, Meliswe loosened her dress and let it drop, revealing her body to me for the first time. She was bustier than me and curvier overall - she had just enough fat to hide her taut abdominal muscles. And her emerald eyes and rose-gold hair reminded me of Abigail's auburn hair and hazel eyes. Abigail had never been so beautiful, though… I doubt there was a woman in Nebraska who could hold a candle to my handmaiden. Her skin wasn't flawless in the way mine was, but those small imperfections - her splash of freckles, the occasional mole, the slight asymmetry of her breasts - they all made her seem more real. And, if you wanted to be technical about it, she was more human than me.

She sponged me down in the hot water, and then I returned the favor. I could see the uncertainty in her eyes, her lower lip trembling as she thought to object, but then she closed her eyes and relaxed as I explored her body. It was an almost religious experience, feeling her supple flesh and feeling my own body pulsing with need in a way I'd never quite felt before. As I explored Meliswe's body, she made a little groan and leaned back, her eyes closed, her pink lips slightly parted, and I was startled to find that I'd crept right up to her. I'd crept right up and was inching closer in the neck-high water until our noses almost touched. And slowly, she opened her eyes and there wasn't the slightest resistance in them, only deep contentment. Before I quite knew what I was doing, I was kissing her on the lips, and when she brought her hand to my chest, it wasn't to push me away.

After a glorious minute, I pulled away from her. "I think I’m done with bathing… do you want to come to bed with me?"

"I… I'm not sure it's proper, my lady."

"That doesn't sound like 'no'."

She nibbled at her lip. "Maybe we don't have to be proper all the time."

We didn't make it to the library until close to noon, but when we made it there, I was so thoroughly relaxed and centered that I made twice the progress I'd ever made before. Apparently a bit of good old fashioned boots-knocking is great for centering the mana. Well… it wasn't exactly old fashioned, what we did - I doubt my maw would have approved, but she was back in Nebraska with Abigail. I was in Alfheim with Meliswe.

And, beyond my book learning, I learned a few new things about the fae. For instance, that we sparkle and our wings come out during our deepest throes of ecstasy. That happened a few times for each of us.

+++++

I thought we might continue like that indefinitely, and it wouldn't have been the worst thing in the world. I was getting the hang of magic, learning about fae, kalithien stretching, and the rulership of the fae realms. I had members of the fae court stop by for advice, usually advice on the queen's disposition or young women wanting tips on needlepoint (Laeanna was apparently an expert). I managed the former with generic boilerplate and the latter by getting them to show me what they were trying and then letting my muscle memory take over, my fingers zipping over the canvas as I tried to describe what I was doing. I was invited to two galas by noble fae houses, both of which I politely declined. The biggest change in my life as a fae princess was that now, instead of having Meliswe see me to bed and plod back to her own small room, she'd curl up next to me.

Sometimes, we kissed for a bit, and sometimes we did a lot more than that. And when I hunkered down and she thought I was asleep, I'd crack my eyes open and her emerald eyes would be staring at me in the dark with the most beatific smile on her face. I know she wished she could have had that with her Laeanna, but I guess I was a close second.

It was the fourth night of our shacking up (or whatever the palace equivalent is) when we got a rude awakening. Literally. We'd been pretty careful about avoiding poisons - anything that might hide a cerulean blue potion I passed up on - only white wines for Meliswe and me. And, while we hadn't caught any additional attempts at poisoning, that didn't mean they hadn't tried. On that fourth night, I awoke to find Meliswe gone - maybe she'd slid out of bed to relieve herself - and I heard somebody in the room. They moved as quiet as a mouse… Meliswe trying not to wake me up, maybe. Then I saw a dark-clad figure creeping through my room, and it definitely wasn't my handmaiden. When I shrieked, the assailant dashed toward my bed.

Muscle memory to the rescue - my wings popped out and buzzed enough that I was carried back from the bed, twenty feet back and ten feet up before I realized what was happening and panicked, tumbling back to the floor. The assassin rolled off the bed and sprinted toward me… he was a dancer.

If you 've never seen a dancer, the first time can be disconcerting. They're tall with spindly limbs with a few too many fingers on each hand. They move quickly, their limbs a jumble, and when they're not in polite company they move on four limbs just as easily as two. And on top of those tall, spindly bodies is a cherubic, rosy-cheeked face with eyes as black and beady as volcanic glass. Dancers are prized as spies because their race has the ability to disguise themselves as just about anybody by changing their proportions and coloration, though they can only do it for a few minutes at a time. This was my first time seeing one, and watching it shamble toward me in the dark made me shriek again. I'd never been a yeller before, but I guess that was a princess instinct that came with the body.

I tossed a candelabrum and he jumped over it… or maybe she? It's hard to tell with dancers. He leapt right up and landed in front of me, a surgeon's steel syringe in one hand, his eyes glittering black in the dark of my bedchamber. He wore a cloth mask, so I couldn't see the rest of his creepy little face. I grappled his wrist with both hands, but he was much stronger than me and pressed in with his body weight, and as the syringe inched toward my skin, I did one of the few magical spells I knew that was any good for fighting: propuls, a generic pushing spell.

My magic wasn't very strong yet, but it surprised the dancer and staggered him back. His beady black eyes knit in confusion and anger. I tried propuls again, but he darted to the side and crouched for a leap, blue liquid glistening from the tip of the syringe. Then the space around him sparked with light and the dancer screamed, a high, keening wail in his reedy little voice. Meliswe stormed in from the privy, her pretty face twisted in fury. The dancer was on fire, writhing about and trying to put himself out, when she cast propuls on him, knocking the syringe from his grasp and sending him skittering all the way back out to the atrium. She stalked after him, blue energy arcing from her fingertips like she might call down a lightning strike. By the time I recovered enough to follow her, the dancer had climbed back up his rope and fled out the hole he'd made in the atrium window.

An instant later, the doors to my suite boomed open and a dozen guards rushed in, weapons drawn. They'd heard my shriek and come to the rescue. I figure their response time was pretty good - under a minute - but it would've been too late if Meliswe hadn't saved my bacon. I still wasn't ready to defend myself.

+++++

The queen called for me the next morning, and not for brunch. She called me to her private solarium - Meliswe was expressly prohibited, so she had to drill me on the directions until I had them memorized. If I haven't made a point of mentioning it, the Palace of Vernal is a big, big place. I dressed up nice and made my way to the solarium deep within the queen's court - I only made two wrong turns, which I considered pretty admirable, given that there were about fifteen turns to take.

I figured the queen wanted to grill me on the assassination attempt, and I was right. Whenever there's a foul up, officers always want to talk about it ad nauseam, even if whatever happened wasn't your fault at all. Queens are basically the same way. Only, Queen Alathea wanted to talk about a lot more than the assassin. That was just the straw that broke the camel's back.

Alathea was sipping tea and looking out over the little indoors garden of the solarium. The roof was all glass and the shrubs and flowers were planted in little squares islands of soil separated by a grid of spotless marble. I sat on the bench across from her and made my best attempt at a disarming smile.

"You wanted to see me?"

She regarded me coolly and nodded. Her eyes, matched her hair - a pale green that I don't think I'd ever seen on a human. "What happened last night, Laeanna?"

Worry played across my face - bad memories from last night, and worry about whatever Queen Alathea was angling at. I was learning that my face, expressive and beautiful, was a useful tool for getting what I wanted… but Alathea surely had the same experience, and her heartstrings wouldn't be easily tugged. "An assassin slipped in through the window… he must have climbed all over the palace roof to get there… a dancer. He tried to kill me, but I chased him off with magic."

"With your magic?"

I nodded. "Mine and Meliswe's."

The queen set her teacup down - uh-oh. "How does a handmaiden, a mere adept, assist the Princess of the Vernal in magical matters?"

"That's complicated…"

"Well, my sweet, uncomplicate them. Do you think I don't know what happens in my own palace? Surburrus informed me of your 'memory issues'. That's how he put it." She chuckled, but it wasn't a kind laugh. "He made me journey all the way to his library before he'd tell me - he said he'd made a pact with you."

I probably let out a little gasp - that old goat had tricked me! Thinking back to our pact… sure enough, he'd said the information wouldn't leave the walls of his library. So he'd brought the queen there to tell her. Technically, he'd kept his word. That's the way of wizards - they don't like to lie because of the magical consequences, but damn if they don't trick you with their words, and sometimes even your own. "It's true… it's not the first time the assassins tried, but I didn't want them to know they'd almost succeeded. They… they almost killed me, and now there's a lot that I can't remember."

The queen's hand shot out and gripped at my wrist. She gripped at it so hard I was worried her emerald-green fingernails would pierce my skin. I'm sure I winced at the pressure. Her eyes gazed into mine, green and endless, and I felt like I was tumbling forward into them. When she spoke, her voice resonated in my head. "Were you really resurrected?" she asked.

Something in my mind welled up to answer her - she'd put me under some kind of magical compulsion. And I resisted it. Maybe I oughtn't to have, but I shook my head and huffed and frowned that adorable frown, and I even pulled free from her grip. "Look," I said. "I'll give it to you straight, but you have to promise not to do anything cross until I've told you the whole tale."

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

"Very well. Speak."

"Yes, I was resurrected," I said.

Fury flashed in the queen's eyes… and when fury flashes in a powerful sorceress's eyes, it really flashes, arcs of energy as frightening as any midwestern lightning storm. To her credit, she didn't do anything cross. But she thought I was lying, even though I wasn't, and she said so. "You cannot resurrect half a soul."

"You're not wrong," I said, and I told her my whole story, pretty much all of the information that you now know, minus a few of the more lascivious details.

I guess the queen believed me, because by the end of it, she was crying. She wasn't weeping - beyond her eyes, her face didn't belie any emotion. But tears streaked down her cheeks and fury sparkled in her eyes… and, thank you Jesus (or maybe Gaia), that fury wasn't directed at me.

"Lariborn…" she mispronounced my name in the exact same way that Meliswe did. "You truly have no ill intent toward the fae realms?"

"Queen Alathea… before I wound up in your daughter's body I'd never even heard of Alfheim, to say nothing of Vernal and the fae realms. On my world, humans are the only intelligent species, and even that's debatable. But here's what I can tell you: I come from a world that’s gone insane. Pretty much every nation at war with one another because some archduke… I'm not sure if you've got anything like that here, but it's half a step lower than a king… got himself killed by an assassin. We call it the Great War, because nobody's ever seen anything like it. A million men died in one battle… and they broke that record a couple of times after that. I'll be damned if I'm the one that plunges a whole other world into a war like the one that killed me."

The queen nodded sadly, and then she wept - she actually wept. A prouder woman than I've ever seen (except maybe my maw) breaking down in front of me. I pulled her into a hug and rubbed her back in the way that always calmed Audrey down. "There, there," I said. "There, there… we'll figure it out…"

She took a minute to compose herself, drawing a stony face over her tears. She adjusted her posture and checked her hair. "I have heard of other strangeness in summonings of late… spirits from unheard-of realms being summoned where they ought not. This calamity in your world may have weakened the veil between distant realms. And, if what you say is true, and it rings true, I shall never see my daughter again… not in this lifetime. My daughter is gone, and yet the Princess of the Vernal lives… if Meliswe's dream is true, and I suspect it is, then Laeanna is in Elysheim, and I might one day join her there. But there is much to be done here in Alfheim, and I will not let cowardly assassins ruin our plans to unite the courts. In time, Lariborn, perhaps you and I can be friends and colleagues. But, for the time being, you are the Princess of the Vernal, and you shall do exactly as I ask. You will agree, I think, that being captive in a palace is preferable to being captive in a cell. Therefore, this is my decision: you are to act as the princess… your handmaiden will continue to assist you and protect you, and she and I will both teach you how to better behave as princess. You may give orders as you deem appropriate within this role, but have no doubt - every scintilla will get back to me, and if I suspect you mean us ill, I will imprison you in the furthest nunnery until I find a way to replace your soul within my daughter's body. Do I make myself clear?"

I nodded and grasped her hand to shake it. "No funny business," I said.

+++++

It was another week before we finally got word from the King of the Estival inviting me to meet with Prince Calivar and, if all went well, go through with a betrothal. I had no particular desire to be betrothed to a prince - I was perfectly happy with Meliswe in my bedchamber - but I'd promised it to the queen and it was my agreed-upon duty as a princess.

And Meliswe, bless her soul, took it in stride. "You must unite the realms, princess," she stated. "But I will always be your handmaiden, and the prince will not always share your bed. Your mother… Queen Alathaea, rather… wed the King of the Hibernal, when they were princess and prince. And Laeanna was their daughter, of course. Now, these three centuries after the union, Alathea and Fostolas see one another but once each winter and spring. It will be best if you are fond of your husband, but I ask only that you remain fond of me."

I kissed her forehead. "You saved my life twice," I said. "I'd love you even if you weren't a beautiful and wonderful person… which you are. If I have to dance and curtsy and spread my legs for some ninny of a prince, I will. But I'll always wish it was you in my bed."

Meliswe blushed. "Thank you, my lady. Now… if we're to leave in two days' time, we'd best teach you how to ride a horse."

It's worth asking why the fae need horses, roads, and the whole nine yards at all - after all, they can fly. But, even as magical beings in a magical realm, certain elements of physics apply. A typical fae can hover in the air for about ten minutes and fly at full speed for maybe five. They're as fast as charging freight trains and can cover five or six miles in that amount of time, but that's as exhausting to them as running for five minutes is to a sprinter, and they need to rest for an hour or so after. If they're soldiers with weapons and armor weighing them down, they're lucky to get a mile before they have to stop. On top of that, only about a tenth of the Vernal military are fey-kin (three-quarters fae or higher) capable of flight. Most half-fae can barely fly, if at all, and none of the other races can even glide. So ninety percent of the realm’s fighting troops need to march, regardless. Thus, to make the hundred miles between Vernal City and Estivalia, we needed a big procession of royals and their guards rolling, tromping, and clopping down the main road.

There were about a hundred soldiers in all, led by Vittoro, the human captain of the cavalry, along with five carriages for carrying us VIPs and our non-fighting retinues. Meliswe and I shared the extra fancy royal carriage with the queen and her handmaiden, who apparently knew all about my status. She was blandly pretty in the way most fae women are, lacking the impossible celestial beauty of the queen and her daughter or the rosy-cheeked vitality of my own handmaiden. Her name was Chelaean (don’t try to pronounce it), and she kept on squinting at me or casting suspicious looks in my direction, as if I might start yukking it up like a country bumpkin at any moment.

"I thought Morwen usually accompanied you, mother," I said - I was to be acting the part of princess, no matter the company. The lush springtime forests of Estival rolled past us, the air pleasant and smelling of springtime flowers.

"Morwen is no longer in my good graces after she nearly got this killed." She poked my arm. In a very literal sense, the only part of me that held value to her was my living body. She didn't know me from Adam (or Eve, I guess) and would have just as soon had an accomplished courtesan swapped in my stead. "I haven't yet decided whether she'll continue in my service at all… I find it's best not to make rash decisions, such as terminating a century of service over one phenomenally stupid mistake."

"As it says in the good book: forgiveness is divine," I said. "I hope you'll keep that in mind with me - I'm doing my best in a tough situation, and I'm making decent progress."

The queen nodded pensively. "Decent but not phenomenal." She handed me something - a phial of intensely violet liquid. "You will be expected to display your magical skills in court. Since your own native skills are… quite limited… you will drink this."

"Morwen made this?"

"She still has her uses," the queen agreed with a slight smile - she appreciated my attempt at manipulating her into showing her alchemist leniency. "It will allow me to control you, including shaping the magical reserve within you. All of the magic you demonstrate will be from your own mana… that I cannot fake… but I will control your movements as well as the expenditure of mana. In this regard, we will display a true show of your mystical energies and overcome your complete lack of instruction."

From what Meliswe had told me, and even Surburrus agreed, I was making phenomenal progress. I was churning my way through third year magical tomes. But, even if I kept up that frenetic pace, it might be another year before I was close to the old Laeanna's skill level - and Alathea wasn't willing to wait that long to unite the realms.

We stopped for the night at the fortress in the mountain pass. There was a small town there, two or three thousand souls, and a big gate fortress built right into the mountainside. Beyond that was the great tract of wilderness, around twenty miles wide, that separated Estival from Vernal.

"It would be best if your handmaiden slept in the appropriate quarters tonight," the queen stated.

That was her way of saying that she was willing to overlook my boudoir indiscretion within her own palace, but soldiers in the fort might gossip about the Princess Laeanna being too familiar with her handmaiden. I slept alone for the first time in two weeks, the strange bed feeling unwelcome and empty from her absence.

The next morning, we trekked through the wilderness, the stone-paved road becoming rough and intermittently maintained. People lived in the wilderness, and there were even villages and a few towns out there, but they were hidden far away from the roads. The armies of Wisthelm sometimes passed through, looting and pillaging whatever supplies they needed on their way to the lands southeast of the fae realms, which were also part of their scattered confederacy of principalities. So every permanent settlement in the wild had to be too well-hidden or too well-defended to be an easy target. The only traffic we passed on the road were merchant caravans bringing goods from Estival to Vernal, each with their own escort, some of them with a dozen soldiers or more, steely-eyed men and even a few women, all of them with battle-pitted armor and well-used weapons. The wilderness sure wasn't a fairytale kingdom.

Around midday, we reached the great gate at the other end of the wilderness, a huge portcullis of brass and gold with the crest of the Estival Court emblazoned on the front like a huge shield. Trumpets echoed over the countryside and the gate rumbled upward to allow us to pass, a formation of summer soldiers saluting as we entered their kingdom. Their captain shared a few words with our Captain Vittoro, and then we rolled over smooth roads and through balmy breezes smelling of spices and jungle fruits. We rolled toward the Estival Court of the Fae.

+++++

When we arrived in Estivalia, the realm's capital, it was nearly nightfall. Torches lit our way to the palace, a wonder every bit as impressive as the palace in Vernal. People gathered in the streets and plazas, lining up to spot Queen Alathea and her beautiful daughter. Alathea had me open my window to give the people something to gab about back at home.

These people were different than the folk of Vernal - a different mix of races, and the human, fae, sylvast, and hybrid races of the realm mostly had golden brown skin, warm like burnished bronze. A fair-skinned princess was an unusual sight for them, and they pointed. Several of the young men lost their wits at the sight of me (or at the sight of the queen - the folk on the other side of the road might easily have mistaken her for a beautiful princess, since she didn't look that much older than me and was every bit as easy on the eyes). They ran after our carriage, trying to give me tokens of their esteem - coins, semiprecious jewelry, or even pieces of exotic fruit. But I was not to accept any of the gifts. Our guards pushed them away with the butts of their spears in the off-chance that one of my 'suitors' was an assassin in disguise.

I waved and smiled and tossed handfuls of mithrins - the small silver coins of the fae realms - at the crowds, sending children and sometimes grown men and women scrambling and arguing with one another over who got the money. Queen Alathea had a big chest of the things - it must have weighed as much as I did - but she didn't think anything of throwing them away. Later, I'd learn that a mithrin was about what a laborer made in a week. Imagine that - a queen tossing months of income out of a carriage window like it was confetti and the people loving her for it. It may sound strange, but that's exactly what happened.

Eventually, we came to the great granite walls of the palace, huge walls soaring up from the palm trees and squat adobe buildings surrounding it. Towers with great domed tops like the Taj Mahal rose higher still. If they weren't as tall as the Eiffel Tower, they weren't far off. As we debarked from our carriages, we were greeted by the king and his retinue. He was the oldest-looking fae I'd ever seen… which is to say he looked to be in his forties, with a single silver lock streaking through the forest green of his hair. Fae came to look like this when they felt the call to Elysheim, though they never aged past 'gracefully middle-aged' no matter how long they resisted the call. From what I gathered, King Alvaelic was just shy of two thousand years old - but he didn't look a day over fifteen hundred!

"Welcome, Queen Alathea… Princess Laeanna." He did not bow - kings and queens did not bow to one another. I was expected to curtsy, as I wasn't quite the equal of a king, and I did so. I'd practiced it with Meliswe critiquing me and tutting over my form - it wasn't part of Laeanna's muscle memory, apparently. "You must be exhausted after your long journey."

What he was referring to, I couldn't say. My 'long journey' had consisted of getting my bum sore in a bumpy coach while engaging in reading or else chatting with the queen and our respective handmaidens. I didn't want to hunker up for the night - I wanted to stretch, to walk around, to take in the spicy, dusky air of the place. "I'd like to stretch out a bit, my lord," I said.

King Alvaelic smiled and gestured vaguely to his retinue. "So young and full of energy," he chuckled. "Calivar, would you care to give the princess a brief tour before showing her to her rooms for the night?"

"I would, father," the prince replied.

The prince was one of the comelier fae men I'd seen, and I was gradually coming to terms with the fact that there were certain looks among men that sparked the same reaction in me that Meliswe's feminine wiles could. I’d always had a bit of a funny feeling about men of a certain look, but those were the sorts of feelings you just didn’t entertain in rural Nebraska. And, thankfully, most fae men did nothing for me. They were slender, and to me they looked like effeminate versions of the skinny eighteen year-olds who made up about half of my draft group at Camp Funston.

It so happened that Prince Calivar was not a limber-limbed man-child. In fact, he was so broad for a fae that he made our bulky human guards look average-sized. His skin was like burnished bronze and his shock of coiled, braided hair was an intense maroon color. His eyes were golden and lustrous like a hoplite’s shield, and something in his cocky smile sent my heart to fluttering. I promised myself that I wouldn't cheat on Meliswe… I couldn't. Especially not right after meeting this strange prince… I didn't know the man from Adam.

"I'll take you through the garden, and you can see the chapel if you're one for nighttime vespers."

"I'm not big on praying," I said, and my voice sounded soft and unsure. His hand barely brushed across my lower back as he escorted me off, peeling me away from Meliswe and my countrymen a mere two minutes after stepping foot in this strange kingdom. So much for solidarity.

"I'm glad to hear that," he said. "My father said, 'she is the purest of blossoms', which can be construed… well, a number of ways, can't it? I was worried you might be half-nun. Would you like to see my suite?"

I shrugged. "Only the antechamber, my lord. I'm no virgin, but I have a reputation to uphold." Virginity was not expected among unwedded women in fae, though their dalliances weren't expected to be serious.

"We'll leave the door open… I hope your trek through the wilderness was uneventful?"

I nodded. “I don’t think it’s as dangerous as everybody seems to think – not if you’ve got guards.”

We chatted idly and he led me through the palace gardens, a tract close to the size of Vernal's palace gardens, though with vastly different flora - jungle flowers, blooming cactus, and strange, gnarled trees from which perched small monkeys and many-colored jungle birds. He took me down a long hallway lined with about a hundred suits of armor, most of them adorned with looping fae symbols and little minaret hats like an armored Ottoman sultan. Finally, we reached his antechamber - slightly larger than mine, but without the grand expanse of a domed, stained-glassed ceiling. Presumably, that made his domain less accessible to death-from-above dancer assassins. Lucky man.

"I've taken up painting recently," he said. "Something to spruce up the place. Not to brag, but I think I'm getting the hang of it."

He took me to the little gallery to the side of the antechamber, about a dozen hand-stretched canvasses nailed to wooden frames. I'd never seen a proper museum-style painting anywhere in Vernal, but that didn't mean they couldn't exist anywhere in Alfheim. I'd never seen a cactus in Alfheim, either, and I'd just passed a dozen of them on the way to the prince's suite. There was plenty I didn’t know yet.

He showed me his paintings, and they were quite good. He wasn't Rembrandt, but they were nothing to be embarrassed about showing. He had a nuanced understanding of color and composition, from the bold primary colors of the bird of paradise curled up in repose to the browns and muted blues of a teeming harbor. I reached the final painting in his little gallery and gasped…

"Wh… what is this?" I said.

I needn't have asked. It was an ornate, black bird wearing a crown; in its talons, it grasped a sceptre and a jeweled orb. It was a near-perfect rendition of the flag of Prussia.