made my blood run cold.
“It … it was a gift,” I said quietly.
Irena raised her eyes to mine and hers were now pure gold with those long black slits. Any friendliness that had been there previously had vanished as if it never existed. Right then I knew I’d been wrong when I’d mistaken her for completely human. She wasn’t. The magic poured off her now, making my skin tingle. I could practically see the green scales, the sharp spikes running along her spine, the long heavy tail whipping back and forth angrily, the wisps of smoke from her nostrils.
“The magic of one of my brothers or sisters dangles from your wrist. You wear the evidence of murder as if it means nothing to you. I didn’t even sense it when you walked in here, which means you rarely, if ever, have used it. You take such an ultimate sacrifice for granted?”
“No, I … of course I don’t.” I flinched as her nails dug into my skin.
“Irena,” Rhys said sharply. “Let go of her.
Irena clenched her straight white teeth, and I felt I could almost see the long, sharp incisors there, waiting for her to shift to her true form and take a big bite out of me. She let go of me so abruptly that I staggered back a few feet.
“Leave now, Princess,” she said evenly. “King Rhys’s reading is to be given in private.”
I looked at Rhys. He nodded. “Wait in the hall. It’s okay. I won’t be long.”
He looked disturbed by what had just happened. About what Irena had said? Or because he now knew a dragon had died to give me my pretty wrist accessory? After all, I’d already seen him get upset about a dead frog. This was … well, a bit bigger than that. To say the least.
Ten minutes passed, but it felt more like ten weeks before Rhys finally emerged from Irena’s office. While I waited, I tried my best to process what I’d heard, but I didn’t know where to begin. None of it made any sense to me. And none of it was particularly helpful.
“Here,” Rhys said as he thrust something small and rectangular at me. “Thought you might want one.”
It was Irena’s business card with her phone number on it. Not that it was likely she’d ever want to talk to me again.
“Thanks.” I shoved it into my wallet inside my backpack and scurried to keep up with Rhys as he quickly walked toward the waiting car outside. “So how did it go?”
“Fine.”
“You got the answers you were looking for?”
He didn’t look directly at me. “I did.”
If nothing else, I was grateful to be with Rhys right now. No one else in the human world knew what I was going through, but he did. He might be able to help me make sense of everything. Plus, Irena had all but confirmed I was no threat to faery life. Maybe Rhys and I could be friends, after all. The thought gave me a weird sense of hope in the middle of a bizarre situation.
“Do you think I should find another dragon oracle and try again?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
The flippant, disinterested way he said it was anything but reassuring. Snow blew past me as we reached the car and I felt the cold bite into me. “Is there something wrong?”
He looked at me. “What?”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Are you upset about the dragon’s tear?” I covered it with my hand. “I feel terrible. I never would have worn it if I had known it would upset her.”
“I don’t care about your bracelet.”
“You don’t? But a dragon died.”
“Did you kill it?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Then I don’t care.”
He looked away as he got into the backseat of the car before I did.
I sensed a major chilliness between us. What happened? Had I said something to upset him?
I got in the car and tried to catch his eye. He was looking anywhere but at me.
Tears pricked at the backs of my eyes. I felt utterly alone at that moment.
There was a long pause after the chauffeur shut the door behind me. I sat as far away from Rhys as I could and put my seat belt on.
The car began to move, starting on the half-hour drive back to Erin Heights. I pressed my lips together, my arms crossed tightly in front of me.
“Look, I’m sorry,” Rhys finally said after several minutes passed. “I know that was rough for you. You wanted a clean answer — to hear that the prophecy’s a complete and total lie. I thought that’s what you’d get, but it doesn’t always work that way. Dragon oracles are never completely cut-and-dried when it comes to seeing the future. Even with the best readings there’s always a great deal of interpretation that needs to happen. My advisers usually spend ages trying to decipher a dragon’s visions. But … she didn’t tell you it was absolutely the truth, either. There’s still a spark of hope, isn’t there?”
“A spark,” I agreed. “A teeny, tiny, pathetic little spark.”
His jaw tightened. “And yeah, I got answers. Mostly vague, and mostly not what I wanted to hear, either.”
Despite his breaking the uncomfortable silence between us, I couldn’t help but feel a major amount of tension in the car. Rhys wasn’t happy right now, to say the least. Even less happy than I was, if that was humanly — faerily? — possible.
I struggled to find something else to say.
“Did she help you figure out who you’re supposed to marry?” I asked.
He snorted. “You could say that. But she’s wrong.”
“You think she was lying?”
“No … not lying. Just …” He shook his head and sighed. “I figure she’s unclear. She couldn’t see your prophecy clearly, so I bet the same applies to mine.”
Wow. Majorly unhappy reaction. Was this what had put him into cranky-faery mode? He obviously didn’t approve of his intended. Maybe it would make him realize that getting married at sixteen was stupid and unnecessary, even for otherworldly royalty.
“So, what?” I asked, latching onto this as a good subject for us to discuss. “Is your future faery bride too ugly for you?”
Rhys leaned back against the head rest and studied the seat back in front of him. “That’s not it.”
“Too old or too young?”
“No.”
I rolled my eyes, but smiled. This was why he was upset. He hadn’t landed the perfect bride-to-be. “Her pretty faery wings aren’t the right shade of sparkly lavender and pink?”
His eyes flashed with anger. “Actually, she doesn’t have faery wings.”
“She doesn’t?”
“No. As a matter of fact, the dragon oracle tells me the girl I’m supposed to marry, the one destined to someday become the queen of the faery realm, isn’t a faery at all.”
Okay, that was surprising. Not a faery?
“She isn’t?” I said. “Then who is she?”
His expression was severe as he turned to look me right in the eye.
“You,” he said.
I stared blankly at Rhys for what felt like about three days.
“Me?” I finally sputtered.
He nodded.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Not kidding.”
