Rye laughed. “You have no idea how much I praise the day we weren’t born symbiotic. I can’t imagine having to be in his head all the time.”
“You wish you had my brain, brother,” Max shot back. He looked at the horse, narrowing his eyes. “Aren’t you supposed to be undercover? Doesn’t that mean not doing the whole talking thing? It tends to give you away, dummy.”
The phooka gave a regal whinny. “I wouldn’t walk around talking about someone else’s intelligence, Harper. And the other horses hate you.”
Max rolled his cool blue eyes. “I doubt that. Those horses love me. And you better love me, too. I could call the guards down on your nasty ass.”
The phooka tossed his head. “I do not fear this, sidhe. I know far too much. Besides, you can grumble all you like, but you would not turn on an ally.”
Max leaned in. “No, I wouldn’t, but I could move your stall away from that pretty little mare you have those nasty eyes on.”
The phooka turned on him. “Don’t you dare. Do you know how long it’s taken me to convince her to let me close? I’m so close, Max. Have you seen her ass? It’s the hottest filly ass in the whole province.”
“Remember that.” Max turned back to Lach. “You want to explain why we should trust you?”
Lach shrugged. “I don’t care if you trust me or not.”
Max huffed a little, his face betraying a bitterness. “Well, that’s pretty much what I would expect from an Unseelie prince.”
The sidhe walked off, after nodding to his brother and wife.
Rye gripped his wife’s hand. “But you’re going to help, right? I thought Roan said the Unseelie are going to back the true kings.”
“My father is sending a force in. I am merely here to get my bondmate and get out. She is too important to risk.” He looked pointedly at Rachel Harper. “I would certainly assume that you’re not going to risk your bondmate.”
Rye’s face got red, his jaw tense, but the words that came out of his mouth were controlled. “My bondmate, my brother, my children, my town have all been at risk for thirteen years. I’ve been forced to raise my children under the tyrant’s reign, wondering every bloody day if Torin isn’t going to come for one of them. My oldest daughter, Paige, has great skill with magic, and I can’t risk anyone outside of this community knowing it because Torin would take her and, if he couldn’t warp her, he would hang her from the palace walls. So don’t pretend that you know what it has been like for me. I’m sorry, Rachel, I thought I could do this. I’ll be back.”
Rye stalked off after his brother.
“Please forgive him. The last several years have been hard,” Rachel said, smoothing back her strawberry-blonde hair. “At first, when King Seamus fell, we all held out hope that the Unseelie would come and save us. Many of us believed this would be the act that reunited our kingdoms.”
Lach would have assumed the very idea would horrify the Seelie. “I don’t think even King Seamus wanted that.”
Rachel shrugged. “Seamus was a good king, but he was a royal. I have yet to meet a true royal who understood the plight of even the middle class. The best we can hope for is a king who has just laws and the means in place to oust sheriffs and mayors who take advantage. Torin simply takes without caring how it affects us. And he’s systematically killing every creature who isn’t sidhe.”
“Then you’re safe,” Lach pointed out. He meant it to be somewhat comforting, but the minute the words came out of his mouth, a vision of Duffy being slaughtered because he wasn’t sidhe assaulted his brain. He opened his mouth to call the words back, but Rachel Harper rounded on him, her pretty face red with anger.
“Safe? So I should allow the tyrant king to slaughter my neighbors, my sweet kin, because he’s not coming for me? Let me tell you something, Your Highness, if you believe that he will be satisfied with killing only those who don’t look like he does, you’re a naïve idiot. When the brownies and goblins and trolls and pixies are gone, he will come for the rest of us. I will not sit idly by and pray to Danu that he not darken my door. I will not allow him to kill and rape and do as he pleases because he was strong enough to wrest the crown from his brother’s head. I will fight. I will fight for my children. So you take your perfect little bondmate and run back to the Unseelie plane. We do not need you here.”
She began to walk away, and Lach realized just how terribly he was handling his allies. “Mrs. Harper.”
She didn’t turn. “Yes, Your Highness.”
“I apologize if I offended. I am not the diplomatic half.” He wasn’t sure what else to say. “I don’t even know much about the situation here. It didn’t seem to be an Unseelie problem.”
She finally turned to him, tears in her eyes. “We’re living, breathing beings, Your Highness. Call us what you will—Seelie, Unseelie, vampire. It matters not. We want the same things you do. We want our mates and our children to be happy. We want our dreams to come true. We’re dying. How is that not everyone’s problem?”
She sighed and walked away.
Lach watched her, wishing he knew what to say, what to do. It had been simple. Come to the Seelie plane. Get his mate. Get out. Let the war happen or not.
Two hours here and he knew he would have to make decisions he wasn’t ready to make.
He felt his fists clench. His father had done him a grave disservice. Since that horrible day when Bron had died and Shim’s power had surged, burning away half of Lach’s face, his father had treated them both like they were fragile beings, not to be tormented with little things like learning how to run the kingdom they would one day inherit. His father had lost Gillian, seen one of his heirs marred for life, and the other go into a fugue state. It was reasonable that he would be protective, but Lach now lacked the tools he needed. He knew nothing because his father didn’t want to tax his frail system.
Dante stepped out, stretching his long limbs. He nodded Lach’s way. “Almost time to head out.”
But they still had hours left. And Dellacourt had left behind a whole rich life to follow his cousins. Perhaps it was time to toss aside his preconceptions and start asking questions.
Perhaps it was time to become a king no matter what his father thought.
“Could you tell me about the situation here?”
Dellacourt’s green eyes widened slightly. “Are you sure? You didn’t seem at all interested before.”
“I am now.”
Dellacourt smiled. “Then take a seat, Your Highness. Consider this your first briefing.”
Lach sat, and the vampire began to speak.
* * * *
The late-afternoon light was warm on her skin as she stood in the middle of town square, music and laughter all around her. The Festival of Threshing. The agricultural provinces all had their own ways to celebrate the hard work of the season. Here there would be a small party for the threshing and a huge feast after harvest was done. But Bron wouldn’t be around for the feasting this year. She would be on the road, these people she’d come to care about left behind.
Bron watched the children dance around the maypole, the colors blending, making a rainbow as the children bounced and sang. And her heart hurt because she knew how much Ove had wanted to attend. But the little brownie was in hiding. Bron had been forced to leave her in a cold cave with her mother. Gillian had taken food and blankets, but it was only a matter of time before the guards thought to search for them. Torin’s principles of purity had finally reached the outer provinces, and there was nowhere left to run.
Then stop running. You’re of age. The time has come to fight. Gather an army. Be the princess you were born to be.