But lowering my eyes would mean submission. I’d known that by the time I was two years old. I didn’t submit unless I had to in order to get away with something. Or a guard was beating me with a rope. Then I submitted. I wasn’t stupid.
Here, it wasn’t that situation...I didn’t think.
He put out his hand, and I took it. “I have no idea how to dance.”
“I’ll lead. You’ll be fine.”
I didn’t doubt that if he said that was true, it would be. “You’re the most powerful person in here, aren’t you?”
The Fae prince smiled, a real one and not a smirk. “Other than you, I suspect.”
Me? I could shoot vines. I wasn’t...powerful. Not really. I let him lead me to the center of the room. All eyes were on me, but one gaze bore into my back. Cypress. I didn’t let myself look at him, or I’d run from the prince. I had to do this. My parents expected it. I needed to fit in here.
Dancing with these men was how I could get them to welcome me home. Even if I hated it. Besides, it wasn’t like Cypress had even spoken to me since I’d come in the room. He’d left me to endure this alone. This was how I did just that.
“You must be happy to be home,” the Fae said. For the sake of polite conversation, the right thing to do probably would’ve been to say yes. But instead, the truth fell from my lips like rocks tossed into a river.
“Not really. This doesn’t feel like home. The prison was all I’ve ever known.”
The Fae man paused to spin me around, then pulled me closer against his chest. I braced my palm on his shoulder and peered up at him with wide eyes. “My people are nomads. We never settle in one place for long. Castles like these intrigue me, but I couldn’t imagine spending the entirety of my existence in one. You will learn to adapt.”
I let out a sigh as he dipped me. The curve of my back allowed me to look around the room. I couldn’t see Cypress anywhere. And when the prince pulled me back up, my gaze clashed with his ethereal one. “Your parents are already looking to marry you off, you know.”
I gasped at his words and jerked backward, effectively ending our dance. “Excuse me?”
The man simply chuckled before bowing slightly. “Don’t worry, little Druid. I don’t take what’s not mine to have. But you’ll do well to remember that you’re more powerful than all of us.”
I shook my head in disbelief. I had met quite a few Fae men and women over the course of my life, and understood that they liked to speak in riddles, but none of what he was saying made sense. I had only been back for a little while; certainly my parents weren’t already trying to marry me off? Wouldn’t they want to get to know me first?
“You look distressed, Princess.”
I swallowed. Should I tell the truth? I had no idea. “I am. They’ve met me for ten minutes. Then we had this. Then marriage?”
“You weren’t raised in this life, so you don’t know that the purpose of royal children is to continue the line, to procure future children. You are a child they had so that you’d have a child. They were distraught when you died. Or didn’t. But, now, as they don’t know you, they see you as a baby-maker for a child they can know.”
My stomach clenched. “I’m not sure I want children. I don’t have a huge maternal need at this point. I’ve only been out of the bars I looked through my whole life for a week. Or maybe less.”
I really didn’t have a sense of time.
He nodded. “Then I’m glad we talked. If my parents had their way, I’d be married by now, but see...when I was younger, a soothsayer told me my truth. I would marry my soulmate. That’s not you. Yours is...nearby.” He was? How nearby? I would have asked if he hadn’t quickly kept talking. “And so I give you this advice: you have but one chance at this life. Someone has already stolen years from you. If you want this life to not be another kind of captivity, you will have to break your chains.”
The music stopped. He nodded at me and led me to the side of the room where a strong hand yanked me from the Fae prince so fast my head spun. I was practically attached to Cypress a second later.
The prince grinned. “Or having someone else break them works just as well.” He nodded at me one last time before he did the same to Cypress. “Good to see you again, assassin.”
“Jack,” a muscle pulsed in his jaw when he said the name.
“Oh now, when you worked for me, you called me Robin. I think we are past formality. Good luck with all that is to come.”
“You know him?” I hissed as Cypress pulled me through the ballroom.
“Yes. And I’m tired of watching your parents parade you around like a shiny new china set,” Cypress grumbled.
We fast walked toward the door leading out of the ballroom, but a sharp voice stopped both of us in our tracks. “Where are you going? The party has just begun.” I recognized the authority in the tone, though I had only known my father for less than twelve hours. I spun around to face the king just in time to see his subjects laugh at his jokes. It was like everyone in this kingdom was conditioned to kiss his ass.
“The princess has had a long week of traveling. She needs rest,” Cypress replied. The assassin puffed out his chest in a display of stark dominance. My father returned the gesture by rolling his shoulders back. The palace was similar to Nightmare Penitentiary. The biggest, baddest, meanest, strongest prisoner would survive. The same went for the showdown between
