Was she? Because she never expected me to feel anything for her? After eight years of spending my every waking hour with them?
Then I could have lost her in a single moment.
Rage suddenly spiked to a fever pitch. “She almost got eaten because of you! You told us going through the mountain was a safer option! You almost got us all killed.”
He started to laugh, like my anger was the funniest thing he’d seen in a long while. Oh, how I wished I could slap him, or break that stupid lute over his head!
“What’s so funny?” I gritted.
“People really do hear what they want to hear.” He shook his head, still chuckling. “I never said it was safer. I said it was a shortcut that takes you around the gates you couldn’t have entered through at all.”
“You could have warned us of the danger.”
“I did, said you wouldn’t like how we got here. I just didn’t know it was that danger, specifically.”
“How could you not? Have you not been through there before?”
He waved offhandedly. “Sure, by myself, when I moved fast enough the creepy crawlies I heard didn’t have time to come after me. It’s why I kept saying keep moving. I suspected traveling in larger numbers with skittish horses would slow us down, and multiply the danger of getting caught in an ambush. Which was what ended up happening.”
“You think you can exonerate yourself from anything, don’t you? But you can’t. You could have made sure we were prepared! Better still, you could have searched for an alternative route!”
He shrugged. “Any other path would have taken days, and I don’t have time for that.”
“Why? What’s got you so busy, Alan? If that is even your name."
“Neither is Briar Rose yours, Fairuza.”
“How do you…?” My exclamation snapped off in a breathless squeak.
“Know who you are?” he completed for me with a wiggle of his auburn eyebrows. “Because after a chance reunion with long-lost relatives, I’ve taken interest in my extended family’s lives, and in your case, afterlives. Or is it in-between-lives?”
Outrage rose within me, at this fairy’s claim that he could be related to me. “There’s no way any of my ancestors married your kind!”
“True.” He pointed back and forth between us, grinning wickedly at me. “But we’re about to become in-laws, seeing as your brother is marrying my cousin.”
Relief that I didn’t have any secret fairy ancestry evaporated under the blast of realization.
If this Alan-a-Dale was truly from Bonnie’s maternal family, this could make him the “crazy cousin” she’d been looking for. The one Leander and Clancy had said was the perfect candidate.
Could he be that Keenan?
Before I could ask, he turned away, tossing over his shoulder, “Oh, and I was questioning your intentions concerning Robin and your girls, because I recently witnessed a disgusting dynamic that I helped dissolve. I am now always wary of obviously imbalanced relationships.”
Defensiveness subsiding, I trailed after him. “What happened?”
He stopped, eyebrows raised at my concern. “A girl was enslaved by her stepfamily. They tortured her for years in ways you couldn’t imagine.”
“Is she fine now?”
“She’s safe.” A genuine smile overtook his unnerving smirk, changing his whole face, making it even more familiar, and…
Bonnie’s father! Mr. Fairborn! That was who he reminded me of.
He was Bonnie’s paternal cousin? But her father was human.
So how was this man half-fairy? How was he royal? He had to be, if Leander and Clancy considered him among the noblest of men.
Before I could fire any questions, he again spoke first. “But it will be a while before she’s ‘fine.’ At least her stepfamily got what they deserved.” He gave me a deep, mock bow. “And now that I got you where you need to be, I must get back to my own princess. Another evil stepmother to take care of, and all.”
So, there was already a girl, a princess no less, preoccupying him.
Of course there was.
All my hopes concerning him evaporating, I watched Alan, or Keenan, as I suspected him to be, stroll down the hall. Once he disappeared, I dragged my insubstantial body into the room.
Another pang of nostalgia hit me as I took stock of my surroundings. The room was of a similar size and configuration as the quarters we were first allocated in Sunstone Palace, during the first phase of the Bride Search.
It was vast, with soaring ceilings and queen-sized beds distributed at varying distances from each other, with one wall wrapped in stained-glass terrace doors. Even