Page 22 of Royal Ransom (Princess Procedural #4)

Taliyah

Apricity was much smaller than I expected.

And pink. Violently, alarmingly pink. She’d rubbed some kind of potion into her hair to turn it a nice, subdued salmon shade. It was the only subtle thing about her. Everything else showed no such restraint. I’d seen less lurid shades of magenta at raves when I’d been working a beat. There were more suspicious deaths in nightclub backrooms than most people wanted to believe. Priss looked like she belonged under neon lights, not contrasting sharply with the silvers and blues that dominated winter’s preferred interior decorating scheme.

That was the point of the pink: to stand out. In the dreary depths of winter, blacks and purples weren’t countercultural. It was the eternal teenage contradiction: how to feel unique without drawing unwanted attention to yourself. I’d been a fan of blue mascara and black nail polish during this phase, but if you’d commented on it, I would have dissolved into a socially awkward mess.

Priss was staring at me from the head of the table. She’d been picking at a roll, shredding it into brown tatters on her plate as she watched me eat. Like me, she couldn’t seem to stop looking for similarities. I could tell our coloring was similar, thanks to the silver peeking out at her roots. Her face was longer than mine, with a weaker chin. Her nose was the same. The eyes, too. ‘ Winter sky blue’ , my human dad had called them. He had no idea how right he was.

I was enjoying the roasted pheasant, despite her gawking. If this was going to be my last meal, I’d savor it. Either she’d give me a lock of her hair and agree to the plan, or she wouldn’t. It didn’t change how the night would end. I had to assassinate my aunt or die trying. I couldn’t blame Priss though if she didn’t want to donate her face to the cause.

When Priss finally spoke aloud, her voice was almost as soft and timid as my boys’.

“Why did you come here?” she asked.

“To ask for your help,” I answered. “And because your dad plotted to have us meet.”

I’d been braced for an obnoxious teenager or a vicious pixie clone of Wren. Somehow, Priss was a mixture of both. She was staring past me at Basil, shooting him a forbidding look.

“I thought I told you not to come back here. Not only did you disregard my request, but you brought her with you. It doesn’t change things, even if the madness you’re planning works out in your favor. It doesn’t make you my dad. You gave me up. You don’t get to call yourself my authority.”

I half-expected Basil to argue. If it had been Sean or Charlie speaking to me in that tone, I would have been defensive or fighting back tears. But he just nodded, taking the rebuff in stride.

“You’ve made your feelings clear, Priss. I’m not trying to worm my way back into your life. I wouldn’t be here if there weren’t lives on the line. Janara is plotting an attack on a Hollow, despite the consequences. It’s madness, and it will get your people killed. This is much larger than our family squabbles.”

Priss’s face paled. She looked like a mature eighteen or a young twenty. In reality, she was three times that. I once again thanked my lucky stars (and Basil Levant) for the illusion of adulthood he’d bestowed on me. Though Priss was technically older than I was, she already seemed like a guardian angel.

“Is that true?”

I nodded. “Janara has taken someone I care about hostage, and she’s going to kill him if I don’t turn myself over to her. She won’t stop until our bloodline is wiped out, even if I don’t want to take the throne. After she’s done with me, she’ll eventually learn the truth about you. I don’t want to give her the opportunity to hurt you, Priss.”

“So?” she asked.

I took a deep breath. “So, I just need a lock of your hair.”

Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Why?”

“If I asked you to trust me, would you?”

“No,” she said flatly.

I laughed. “Well, at least you’re honest. That puts you leagues above the other Winter Sidhe in the character department. Give me a few years, and I think we’ll grow on each other.”

“Like moss,” she said with a sniff, employing the appropriate scorn I’d come to expect from girls her age.

“Or toadstools,” I added cheerfully. “Or something equally slimy.”

Priss smiled. It was only a nanosecond, but I caught it. A gentle warmth locked into place inside me. It was as if I’d been unaware of what was missing until it fell into place. It happened like that sometimes. I’d felt something similar when Sean and Charlie came into my life. I’d felt it again when Maverick swooped in and married me, preserving me as I was forever.

“Exactly.”

“So?” I asked. “Will you do it? I know it’s a big favor to ask.”

In answer, Priss seized a steak knife, hacking a lock of hair from her bangs, leaving a messy notch where the wedge of fine pink strands had been. She blew the remnants off the table before offering me the handful of salmon-colored fluff.

“Do it right, Morgan,” she said, trying to sound haughty and failing miserably. “If you’re dragging me into this, you better not get me killed. That would be just too embarrassing for words.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle. Too embarrassing for words, indeed.

The party was in full swing when we entered the courtyard of Priss’s castle. The fountain’s streams of sparkling water reached new heights, splashing us with twinkling liquid whenever we got near it.

That everyone was drunk as hell was probably why they were still going. The evergreen wine flowed freely, allowing the flawless Fae creatures to dance as if there were no tomorrow. It was infectious to be around. This remote winter castle felt more like home than almost anywhere I’d been. These were my people. This was my land. I was their ruler. I was Winter personified, a storm given shape. I wasn’t meant to be tethered to the mortal realm. If not for Sean and Charlie, I could have been happy here. But I knew in my heart that I would never be able to bring them here. It was too harsh, too cold for human children. If I embraced this part of myself, I would have to give them up.

Which was never happening.

Instead, I asked Basil over the thrum of the enchanting music, “Where should we start? Does anyone look familiar?”

“Sadly, the answer to the second question is ‘yes,’” Basil said while pulling me abruptly behind what looked like a cherry blossom tree. For some reason, it inexplicably smelled like a saltwater lake.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, peeking behind the tree’s trunk.

Basil looked intensely over his shoulder on the opposite side of the trunk. “As I implied, several familiar faces in the crowd.”

“So what’s the problem?”

He winced as he brought his head back around to me. “Familiar is not always a good thing. Aside from Netty, no one who remembers me will do so fondly. You will recall that I did cause a fair bit of unrest before my departure.”

“I can see that,” I said, even as I wished I could see who had him so worried. “So we’ll find a stranger—better yet, several strangers—and start working our way around the room. When one of us has Janara in range, we’ll signal each other.”

“A workable plan,” he said as his eyes flitted back into the crowd with trepidation.

“It’s okay,” I insisted, taking his hand in mine. “Just stay behind me and let me do the talking. Netty said it best: everyone is too self-involved to notice anyone besides themselves, right?”

He nodded, even as uncertainty dogged his every step while he followed me out from behind the tree.

I didn’t waste a second. I tapped the first woman I saw on the shoulder. When she turned her perfect, platinum-blonde self around, she smiled brightly at me.

“Oh, hello!” she said gleefully, her breath soaked in evergreen wine. She fingered a lock of the elaborately styled pink hair on my head. Netty had taken sadistic delight in weaving it into a nest of knots on top of my head. My scalp was screaming for mercy. “Aren’t you a lovely sight?”

“Um... hi,” I said, struggling to meet her exuberant energy with my own. “I was wondering if you could help me out for a moment—”

“I love helping!” she squealed, throwing her arms up in the air. “And moments! I love them all! I love everything!” Then, without warning, she wrapped her arms around me and planted a kiss on my lips. “And I love you too!”

“Uh, that’s nice,” I said, wondering if she’d have been this bold if she were sober. I hoped not, for Priss’s sake. She’d probably vanish in a puff of social anxiety if kissed so forwardly.

I’d experienced a few sloppy kisses in my day: high school boyfriends, drunken nights with Jonathan, and a disorderly encounter involving a sixty-year-old man.

“Say, do you happen to love the queen? Enough to know where she is?”

Her wide gray eyes remained the same; they stayed open and vulnerable like a doe in the woods.

“Oh, no, I don’t know anyone like that,” she said, shaking her head. “But you know, I love your dress! Could you tell me who made it?”

“Maybe later, thanks,” I said, already eyeing our next prospect while walking away. Thankfully for us, the woman was lavishing her drunken affection on her next victim. I shot a glare at Basil when she’d wandered far enough away. “What’s that smirk for?”

“Oh, nothing. I’m just uncertain if I should be jealous or flattered that my daughter’s loveliness was enough to make that lovely lady ignore me completely.”

I squinted at him. “There’s something disturbingly Freudian about that,” I said under my breath.

He let out a bleak chuckle. “I suppose there is. Forgive me. I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.”

I ended up dancing—a lot. Yet another reason I didn’t want the stupid throne. By the time the third waltz rolled around, I was ready to smack every pompous lord of Winter who’d tried to grope what they believed to be a lowly Winter lady in her evening best. Priss was my sister, and it was my prerogative to fend off creeps, even if that meant posing as her to do it.

The puffy pant legs on an older lord reminded me of Basil’s fashion sense. They hung loosely at his hips while his muscles dimpled in all the right places. His face was plastered with a dopey drunken grin that matched the loves-everybody blonde. He didn’t grope me, thank God.

“Excuse me, sir?” I said, pulling a nervous Basil behind me when I could fish him from the crowd.

The older lord didn’t stop or even acknowledge my presence, so I kept talking. “I’m looking for Queen Janara. I wanted to thank her for this evening’s dinner. Have you seen her recently?”

Those words were enough to make the man’s glassy eyes shift to me.

Man, these people are hammered , I thought, starting to realize the full extent of the party lifestyle that characterized the Fae realm. And I’d thought breaking up frat parties had been bad.

Thinking quickly and boldly, I grabbed the man by the shoulders and shook him slightly, hoping to jar some alertness back into his alcohol-addled mind. “Did you hear me, sir?”

“ Sir was my father,” the man said indignantly. “I’ll have you know that I’m only two hundred—”

“Have you seen Queen Janara?” I repeated the question, dropping the “sir” and adding a sneer to my voice. I was done with being nice.

When he nodded like a bobblehead, my heart fluttered with a rush of hope. He pointed a thin finger up the road, which was coated in glittering rime. I caught a glimpse of fluttering blue wings before a group of Sidhe disappeared over a hill and out of sight.

The stranger became more engrossed in his wine chalice and went back to chugging it. I didn’t try to stop him; I recognized the exact hue of the wings—I’d seen them once before when Janara and her flunkies escaped the mushroom circle near Poppy’s home. The wings reminded me of a rare butterfly, making her seem more harmless than she actually was.

“What’s over the hill?” I whispered, leaning close to Basil to ensure no eavesdroppers could hear. I tried to force a smile, as though we were sharing a delightful secret.

Basil’s smile appeared equally forced as he leaned in. He disguised a whisper in my ear by brushing a lock of hair behind it. How strange it must be for him, talking to me while looking into Priss’s face.

“The lake,” he said. “I have no doubt troops have lined up to perform for the royals tonight. You’re lucky to have performers this far out, but since the Queen is here, they’re sure to put on an even more lively show than usual. It’s not surprising she’s taking a look. Shall we?”

Basil offered me his arm again, and I took it reluctantly. I didn’t want to pose as my sister, hanging on the arm of a banished autumn professor who didn’t have my best interests at heart. I wanted Maverick at my back, a blood bolt shimmering like a crimson heat haze between his fingers. I wanted the reassurance of having him here. Even if we went down, I knew we’d go down swinging. I’d at least bloody my aunt’s nose. No matter how much of a pain in the ass Mav could be, he was a good man in a fight.

Basil... I still couldn’t get a good read on him. I considered myself a fairly good judge of character, but I couldn’t tell where he’d draw the line. His daughter’s future was at stake, which made things fraught. He might turn me over just to preserve her life. Unlikely, but stranger things had happened to me in the last few years.

“Lead on then, sir. ”