believe you are allowing our daughter to go with you.”
The king shook his head, his sigh reverberating in the silence. “Would you like to talk some sense into her, love?”
My mother’s golden, expressive eyes, a gaze full of fear for me, fell onto my person. She shook her head in dismay, more flower petals falling from her seafoam green hair in her distress, then swiftly swept her strained concern back to my father.
“She got her stubbornness from you. If anything happens to her, I will blame you for eternity!”
“I understand,” Father said stoically.
Minnie huffed and cast one more glance in my direction. She mumbled under her breath the entire way up the rest of the stairs, hundreds of flower petals sprinkling the air and floating back and forth on their way to the ground. Her short, curvy body trudged away from our view.
I cleared my throat and shouted, “I love you, Mother!”
“I love you, too!” Her voice rang clearly. “And don’t you dare get killed. I want your elven butt home right after you make those damned criminals bleed.”
“Yes, Mother.” I tilted casually toward my father and lowered my voice. “She does know we’re going to kill them, right?”
“Of course she does. She’s simply being polite about it.” King Traevon pivoted on his heel and strode out the front door when a servant opened it for him. I quickly ran after him. Father waited until we were clear of listening ears before he stated, “Ask your question. I know you’ve been waiting.”
My chest rose and fell in exasperation. “You don’t always know everything.”
“I know almost everything. Ask.”
“Fine. Why didn’t you tell Mother about Grandmother’s spirit?”
“Because she doesn’t need to know. As I said before, what happened to your grandmother is extremely rare. Anyone who knows could be at risk. Many people would obsess and take horrifying actions to try to find a way for their loved ones to come back from the dead. Including hurting you or me for information.”
“How did it happen?” Not that I believed it was actually my grandmother. Not yet, anyway.
Father shook his head. “That’s the dreadful part. No one really knows. Your guess is as good as mine, or even your grandmother’s, for that matter.”
My soft soled shoes tapped lightly on the cobblestones beneath my feet as we walked through the castle gates that had opened for us.
“What is your guess?”
“Only a pureblood Fae can completely bring someone back to life, as they did with the five originals who kept killing each other. So I believe Isabella has been Fae blessed, sent for a higher purpose, even if she is without her earthly body.” Father’s eyes caught on mine, gleaming under the wrought iron streetlamp. “You must stay quiet on this, Trixie. Knowing is dangerous.”
My heart-shaped lips pinched in annoyance. “I won’t speak a word of it. I don’t want anyone in danger. You should know me better—”
“I do know you better than that,” King Traevon cut me off. “But there are times when a ruler must say what he already understands someone knows. Some things must be said aloud.”
“Hmph.” I crossed my arms over my chest and turned my attention to the small street we were heading down. I decided to change the subject. “I don’t hear any drums.”
Father shrugged one shoulder. “Mother’s never wrong. We shall keep walking until we hear the bloody noise.”
“We should have ridden our Fae-gifts,” I muttered. “We could be walking for hours.”
“Are you complaining?” Father side-eyed me, and his lips twitched ever so slightly. “You’ve never been outside the castle walls. I thought you would like to see your kingdom.”
I snapped my mouth shut and swiftly started examining the buildings that flanked us inside Gatlin Grove, the Elf Kingdom’s capital city—as if I’d never seen them before. “I suppose you’re right, though this is a very grotesque occasion to use as my first outing for sightseeing.”
Father’s red topknot tipped back as he allowed a resounding belly laugh to fill the quiet, night air. “Oh, Trixie, I’ve known you’ve been sneaking out of the gates since you were ten. You can cut the poorly executed charade.”
“You knew?” My jaw dropped open.
“Of course, I knew. In the beginning, I even followed you. And I must say, your skill at stealing sweets from local vendors became much smoother once you became a few years older.”
I closed my jaw with an audible snap of my teeth. “If I’d been given any coin growing up, I wouldn’t have had to steal from them.