Page 139 of The Ballad of the Vampire Prince

I recognize a trickster when I see one.

“Don’t do it,” I tell him sharply.

I feel a strange obligation to protect whatever belongs to Rhianelle, including the silly strays she collected.

Fucker ignores me and shakes the lady’s hand.

The air pulses and crackles to the point of making it difficult to inhale a single breath.

“It is done.” The lady releases the knight’s hand.

It’s subtle but I feel the strange shift, like something clicking into place.

“This will be an early Nameday present for my sweet queen,” Red chirps with a bright smile. The lady smiles as well, but hers is more serpentine, honed, and deadly.

“Shall we complete the transaction somewhere quiet?” the peddler suggests without missing a beat. “I will have to pack my belonging.”

Red nods in silent agreement and the lady slips to the pulling bar in front of the wagon. The danger I feel emanating from the woman has not yet dissipated, but the form she chose for her guise is pitiful enough that I can’t help but say, “Do you need help with that?”

Now it is my turn to be judged by those swirling silver eyes.

“You cannot turn these wheels, young man,” she finally says, pulling her cart while humming a soft tune.

We trail behind the lady silently like the rats and the piper. This woman could very well be leading us to our doom. She stops once we reach a secluded area at the end of the residential street where there’s barely any people, barely any signs of life for that matter, except for a tall, wide branched elm tree.

I cross my arms and lean back against the tree. My eyes are trained on the strange lady as she moves her trinkets and bottles from the wagon into a sack when Red suddenly whispers to me, “Do you want me to carve sixty-nine at the bottom or anything?”

Balthazar’s pendant is quick to translate the nuances and euphemisms of this new age. A low snarl reverberates out of my throat.

“It’s her age.” Red rolls his eyes, unfazed by the threat. “But yes, sixty-nine is a good number.”

What the hell is this fucker talking about?

“Rhianelle was born at the beginning of the Age of Conquest,” I correct him.

“Umm yeah… temple years don’t count,” he says without looking at me.

I know that.

Unlike the savage fae who are born with their gifts, the elves have to collect their blessings from the temples of their seventy-seven deities. Time moves differently in the realms of the gods. What is a single second in the real world can either be a blink of an eye or sometimes a hundred years in their domain, depending on the god’s whims.

Even if the time Nel served at the God of Healing’s monastery is excluded, she is at least several hundred years old.

“She only spent a year in the temple of Anastarros,” I remind the knight.

He laughs lightly. “That’s not her Prime God.”

I cock an eyebrow.

“Her Prime is the Un.” He shrugs.

The forgotten gods?

There’s barely a page about them in the books. Nel is guarded and won’t talk to me about these things. As much as I hate it, I have to rely on this fucker for crumbs of information about my own wife. It’s my own damn fault she’s pushing me away. I will have to give her space.

Because I want every piece of her.

“By the way, keep this to yourself. This is not in public records.” Red trails his gaze on the old seller with casual grace, making certain she doesn’t overhear our conversation.