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My coughing is getting much worse. This is it, I think more than once, as I ride through hamlets and villages, through the fields. They all look unfamiliar now that I’m riding alone. This is it, I’m finally dying.
The way back seems much longer, although it’s the opposite as I ride Wind. I see the palace of Kyrene in the distance early the next day and by midday I’m crossing the bridge over the moat.
Thank all the gods that my dress is a rusty brown anyway, since I keep coughing into my sleeves, adding more hue to the fabric. I need to wash my face, tidy up my hair, do something, anything to look presentable and not stand out, not look sick or I’ll be thrown out of the city before I achieve what I came here for.
I also don’t want to get other people sick. The guilt would kill me before I reach Wolf.
Reaching a quiet square with a fountain close to the palace, I dismount and wash my face and hands. I stare down at the ring Wolf gave me, the transparent gem with the wolf etched on it.
“I’ll find you,” I whisper. “Just wait and you’ll see.”
Tearing a broad strip off the hem of my dress. I loosely tie it around my head to cover my nose and mouth, before I lead Wind toward the palace. It doesn’t necessarily mark me as sick. I know that quite a few townspeople had been struck with consumption before I was, and covering your nose and mouth is supposed to help prevent contagion, a tradition brought to Kyrene from the kingdom of Eleusis further south which has seen its fair share of plagues.
I walk Wind over the drawbridge where I’m stopped by the guards who ask what my business in the palace is.
“I’m taking this horse to the stables,” I say. “He escaped during a hunt and my father found it.”
“Does it have the brand of the royal stables?”
“No, this isn’t a royal horse. Does it look like one?” I scoff. “It belongs to one of Prince Willam’s friends, a count, who is staying at the palace.”
The guard looks doubtful but lets me inside anyway. My heart thumping hard, I lead Wind around the main entrance to the back of the palace. Coughing fits cause me to stop once in a while and I muffle them against Wind’s mane.
I can do this. I’m not letting them kill Wolf just because he’s Fae. He has been kind to me. Who says it’s okay to kill people because of their race? I know I was raised to believe the Fae evil and treacherous, and perhaps many of them are, but Wolf... Wolf is all right. And I owe him.
After all, he let himself be captured to allow me to escape. If I had been caught and found to be sick, Prince Elyar would probably have ordered his men to kill me on the spot.
Shuddering, I open my stride, hurrying as best I can toward the stables. I was here often as a child, playing with the cats and dogs that like to linger around the horses, and with my cousins, including Elayne, otherwise known as Ash or The Changeling, supposedly born of a union with a Fae. I wonder what happened to her.
I wonder if her mother really fell in love with a Fae, like I have with Wolf.
Gods above, Mina, I chastise myself as the stables come into view. You’re not in love with Wolf. You owe him. That’s all.
Right.
The stables were built long ago, by kings long dead, with graceful arches and high windows that let in golden light.
A stable hand comes to meet me as I enter the shadowy space where horses neigh and whinny. “What do you want?”
Crude, and rude, not addressing me as a princess but as a servant or worse. With the way I look, it shouldn’t shock me and yet it does.
“Keep this horse for me,” I snap and see his eyes widen. “His name is Wind. I will be back for him.”
It’s his turn to be shocked. Caught by surprise, he nods and takes the reins from my hands. “Should I feed and water him?”
“Yes, but be quick about it. I’ll be back soon.”
I leave before he has a chance to reconsider his obedience. It strikes me that I’m pretending right now, but I used to be that person, that arrogant princess, ordering people around and expecting absolute compliance.
Where would they keep Wolf? Whom can I ask?
I’m turning this over in my mind, when someone exclaims, their voice rising. “Minnie? Is that you?”
***
“Princess Lily.” I stop and force myself not to turn around and run. She has recognized me. No way to avoid her now or she might raise an alarm. “How are you?”
“Minnie...” She wrings her hands together. Her gown is a light yellow embroidered with white flowers, and she’s wearing a silver tiara on her head, her long brown hair in braids pinned up in a coronet. “You look terrible. Your dress... your hair! Weren’t you sick? I thought you had died.”
I wince. “I am well now. I have been... traveling.”
“Traveling! So that’s where you were. You got well and never told us.”
I try to ignore the sting her words bring. She had written me off for dead, like everyone else, and hadn’t even bothered to check and make sure it was the truth. Doesn’t she feel any remorse for convincing me to go out in the woods where I became sick? What would she say if she knew I’m still dying because of it?
“You look good,” I tell her, still chewing on my thoughts.
“Thank you.” She puts her hands on her reddening cheeks. “I... thank you.”
I wonder at the bashfulness. Lily was always kind and sweet and didn’t care that much about her looks, not like our other cousins, Princesses Blanche and Rayne, for instance, who care only about gowns and jewelry and finding a conveniently rich and famous man to wed.
“Come.” She reaches for my hand and I clasp my hands together hurriedly to stop her. Her smile falls. “Let me get you a bath drawn, give you some fresh clothes until you’ve had time to unpack your coffers.”
“My coffers... right. Thank you, that would be great.” The thought of finally getting clean is too great a temptation to resist.
Her smile returns as I follow her into the palace. “Why the face covering? Is that the fashion where you traveled to? Where did you go? Do tell. Life at the palace is so boring.”
“Oh, not many places. We mainly stayed in, um, Eleusis?”
“Hence the face coverings!” She claps her hands together. “And where else?”
I rack my brain for places near Eleusis. “We toured the countryside there, stayed in hunting cabins to be close to nature.”
“Is that how you were healed?”
“Yes... yes. Exactly like that.”
“A miracle!” Her excitement is mounting, and the last thing I want is to draw attention. “Tell me more. I should tell our cousins that you are back, to listen to your stories.”
“I am really tired,” I say and it’s not a lie. “Maybe later.”
“Of course.” She opens her door and we enter her room. The four-poster bed has gauzy silk drapes hanging around it, the set of sofas and armchairs complement the soft purple curtains on the arched window, the carpets are soft and woven with scenes of dancing and revels, and the carved tables are laden with silver carafes and vases and porcelain figurines.
It occurs to me that my room used to be just like this, once upon a time—all of a year ago.
Two maids hurry inside when Lily rings a silver bell, curtsying and casting me suspicious looks, but they leave and return soon after with a copper tub and buckets of hot water to fill it.
I’m starting to relax—a dangerous feeling, when I’m in grave danger of being discovered by someone who knows I’m still sick and fail in my mission of finding and rescuing Wolf. But the exhaustion is weighing on me, and the need to get some of the grime off me is overwhelming. Stifling a cough, I start to undress, waving a hand at the maids who come to help me to let them know I can do it on my own.
As I pull on my sleeve, the dress comes apart, falling around me, too old and worn to last a moment longer.
Find Wolf.
Get him out of here.
That’s my plan. It hasn’t changed. I’m a little distracted, though, as I climb into the tub and sink into the warm water. I almost cry with relief. Dunking under the surface, I scrub at my hair with my fingers. Clouds of dirt spread around me.
“It’s as if you haven’t taken a bath in a year,” Lily marvels.
“Something like that,” I whisper and reach for the hard bar of soap and the washcloth perched on a table beside the tub. I create some lather and scrub at my skin. The grime and dried blood come off in flakes, spreading more dirt around me. My skin underneath it all is pasty white.
“You seem like you haven’t seen the sun in years,” Lily says now and something is building in my chest. It feels a lot like sorrow and fury rolled into a hard ball that’s expanding, filling up my insides.
“Tell me how things have been around here,” I mutter, scrubbing furiously. “Oh, and I was wondering... have you seen a man, a prisoner brought to the palace yesterday or today?”
“A man? No.”
I put down the washcloth and take a shuddering breath. “Are you sure? He’s tall, pale-haired.”
“Why do you ask? Have you seen him?”
“No, I haven’t.” I bite my lip. My hands in the water are shaking. I’m starting to panic. What if I was wrong? What if Prince Elyar didn’t bring Wolf here? Worse still, what if he killed him in the woods? “I heard they brought someone, is all.”
“You must mean the Fae.” She sighs, waves a hand negligently at the maids who have brought carefully folded bath sheets, sending them away. “I heard they captured him near a gate to Faerie.”
Oh Gods. “A Fae,” I repeat. “Not a man.”
“A male Fae. They aren’t men, those creatures. They are savage animals with no reason and no fear of the gods in them. I mean, look what they did to you!”
Her anger on my behalf is too little too late, but... “Not all Fae are that bad, Lily.”
“How would you know? You’ve never met any.”
“Neither have you,” I point out, then bite my tongue because this isn’t going the way I wanted to steer this conversation. “Lily—”
“Prince Elyar is so valiant!” she gushes and there come the hand-clasping and the ruddy cheeks again.
“Valiant?”
I hadn’t meant to inject such fury into the word. She shoots me a surprised look. “Yes. He has gone off to try and destroy the gates to Faerie, capture any Fae crossing over. You should be grateful to him, Minnie. If he succeeds, people won’t fall sick anymore like you did.”
And people like Wolf won’t be here, with us, I think but I clamp my teeth down on the words. “So he is the one who brought in this Fae?”
“Yes. The Fae put up a furious fight but the Prince bested him single-handedly and tied him up for his men to haul him here to the palace.”
I highly doubt that was how it happened. I still see in my memory the soldiers advancing on us, swords drawn, and Prince Elyar standing there, preening, not even armed.
“Here, you should get out before the water gets too cold.” She unfolds a bath sheet for me. “Let’s see which of my dresses fits you. You have grown too thin, cousin.”
I stand up, dripping, and let her wrap the sheet around me, the cogs in my mind turning. “And where does the Prince keep his prisoner?”
“Oh, you want to see him?” Lily frowns. “The Fae creature? Isn’t it too dangerous?”
“Where’s your sense of adventure? When will I have such a chance again?” I huddle in the sheet, my hair dripping down my back. “No-one has to know. Just a peek.”
“Hard to do.” She shakes her head. “They have him in a hanging cage.”
“Where?” I didn’t see him in the main square. Damn.
“The king wants to question the creature, so they decided to hang the cage on the side of the tower on the east side, you know, the watchtower—”
“I know which tower that is,” I snap.
“Oh.” She gives me an uncertain look. “Okay. They hung him high up so that nobody can reach him and kill him before the king can find time for him.”
“Of course. Is it... very high up?”
She sighs. “You won’t change your mind about this, will you?”
“Please, Lily...” I smother a cough against the sheet. “I’m dying to see this Fae.”
Quite literally.
“Let’s find you a dress first,” she says with another sigh. “Then we’ll see. Maybe we can go tomorrow. It’s getting dark soon.” She walks over to her ornate closet and throws it open. “Let’s see...” She chooses a green dress that reminds me of Wolf’s eyes and holds it against me. “This one should fit. Try it on.”
“Lily...”
“We’ll have dinner here. We have so much to talk about. I want to know all the details from your travels before anyone else. Oh, so exciting! Then I can impress Prince Elyar with my knowledge of distant places.”
Thank the Gods I’ve read so many books. At least my lies will sound like the truth... Dinner, stories, and then I’ll find my Wolf.