Chapter 8
Dream Prince
T hough Tabitha was watching him with wide eyes, Tom nodded to her without a hint of recognition in his hazel ones. “Brindle said you are a new human from the Summer Princess? I am Tam’lin. Will you come with me? I can show you to a room where you can prepare yourself for when the Queen has time to see you.”
Tabitha fumbled. “But . . . you? I?”
“Mer-row.” Her cat escaped her unstable grasp while she grappled with words, coming to sit next to the silver-tipped faerie cat.
The faerie cat was smug. “Don’t mind us. Go and talk to your prince.”
Tom was still standing there with a blank expression on his face, so Tabitha ducked her head and hissed her objections to the cats. “He wants to take me to see the Queen.”
She did not want to see the Queen!
The faerie cat rolled her eyes. “Well, convince him not to and take him back with you to the Mortal Realm instead,” she said, like nothing could be simpler. “This is why you came, is it not? You really should have worn a better dress.”
“Miss?” Tom tried again, nodding his head like a butler. “Our rooms are just this way, if you would follow me.”
Tabitha looked back at the cats one more time before walking toward him. She could do this. She came here to do this. She had just assumed that if she met Tom again, he would recognize her. “You work for the Fae Queen?”
He laughed, losing a little stiffness in his shoulders. “It’s the Fae Realm. We all work for the Fae Queen. But you don’t have to be afraid. She is a kind mistress and will treat you well.”
Tabitha frowned as she took another step. “But don’t you . . . Don’t you recognize me?”
“Perhaps,” he said almost at once. “You do look familiar.” He took another long look at her before continuing forward. “I did not expect to see you here, but I think. . .You’ve been in my dreams before?” He said it as if that should be as natural as passing someone on the street.
Well, that was something. “You remember that? And what was I doing there?”
He shrugged. “Sewing. Singing. Talking to cats.”
Truly? “Then you must have thought me very strange.”
“Yes.” He smiled with something like triumph. “That’s why I liked you. You were strange, and so was I.”
He . . . liked her? And he had said it so casually, like it shouldn’t be any question. Tabitha simply wasn’t used to such admissions. She wanted to believe all her cats liked her to some degree, but it was different coming directly from her dream prince. “You were a cat,” she said, trying to steady herself and help him fill out whatever memories he still had left. “I called you Tom.”
“Tom?” Again, unnatural confusion rippled across his face. “That sounds familiar. I just . . .”
“You don’t remember.” That seemed to be the unfortunate pattern. “What do you remember then? How did you come to be here?”
He shrugged again, still taking slow steps across the great hall to wherever he wanted to take her. “I’m a thrall. A fae prince brought me here. And my queen and her subjects only take humans who are strays.”
“Stray?” What in all the kingdoms was a stray?
“You know. Lost. Unwanted. Likely to hurt themselves if they are left uncared for.”
Tabitha was torn between insisting that a human could not be “stray,” that such a word could only be applied to wayward house pets, and wondering if such a word could have once been applied to her. When she was on the street, dreaming of a faerie realm. When she left home and no one bothered to look for her. But such a fate could never be applied to Tom.
“You’re not a stray. You’re the Crown Prince of Umbrae.”
Tom barely blinked. “Yes, that sounds right. But I was still stray. My uncle wanted to kill me for my crown. Humans do that sort of thing all the time, and he might have succeeded if I weren’t taken in by the fae. And now, the humans have another prince they wish to raise in my place.” He ended with another shrug, everything about the recitation eerily calm.
“But what about your family? Your friends?”
“Much of my family has passed in a plague, and my title made it difficult for me to have many close friends, let alone a true love. I’m stray.”
“But none of that is true. I mean, it is true, but there is more to it than that.” It seemed much like the story the faerie cat told the doorman. No lies, but only the carefully curated truths the speaker wished to share. There were so many missing pieces that Tabitha didn’t know what bit to attack first. “Your uncle did want to kill you. He became a shapeshifting ogre and cursed the whole kingdom with magic he got from the fae to start the plague, but he didn’t succeed. You and the miller’s son killed him while you were a cat. And then, after you disappeared, Archie was made the Marquis of Carabus and might become our next prince after he marries the princess—your sister Ainsley—but Archie is your friend. He cares for you, and he wants you to come home. Everyone does.”
Tom had stopped walking, standing at the foot of a staircase to look back at her curiously. “ Everyone ?” He shook his head. “I can’t imagine my return would matter to everyone even if I am a prince, but perhaps . . . Do you mean to say that you would care if I returned? Is that why you have come?”
“Yes,” Tabitha said quickly, before she could overthink the situation. “I came because I care for you as well.”
Tom grinned. “I knew it. In my dreams, sometimes I was a cat, and sometimes I was a man, but you were always my Tabitha.”
His?
Her heart rose but fell again when he shook his head. “But even if what you said was true, I can’t just leave with you. The Queen or someone else would just call me back. Unless it was proven publicly that whatever deal they made was invalid.”
“And you had a plan to do that,” Tabitha pressed. “You said you did.”
Tom frowned again. “Maybe I did.”
“You just need to remember what it was. . . Perhaps you could wish to remember.”
“It isn’t so easy.”
“Why not? Humans have power in the Fae Realm.” She had done several magical things already, all without meaning to. Surely a prince could do much better than her.
Tom gave her a wry smile. “Dreamers do. I’m not much of a dreamer. I’m more of a cynic.”
That was ridiculous. Tom was always brilliant, even as a cat. There should be nothing she could do that he couldn’t. “There is no reason why you can’t be both. Dreams are often strengthened and improved by proper criticism. Cynics can help the best dreams come true.”
Tom laughed. “Look at you. I tell you I’m a cynic, and you find a way to make it sound magical. That’s what I always loved about you, Tabs. You could always make something better than it was. Even me.”
Loved? And was she just imagining the connection, that he seemed to remember more and speak more freely when he spoke of their relationship?
The matrons often said that true love could break any faerie curse.
Tabitha felt her cheeks warm. That was too much. She had never had someone compliment her so freely before, so personally, but perhaps that was only because he was so altered? She needed to focus, and Tom was certain to improve if she could just keep reminding him who he was.
“I don’t need to make you sound better than you are. You are already a prince of Umbrae and a hero of Castletown.” He was a hero to Tabitha too, but she wasn’t quite ready to share that out loud. “And if I can help you . . . give you some of my magic or dreams or whatever you need to remember some of what you have lost . . . ”
Tom peered at her more earnestly. “And how would you do that?”
Tabitha hesitated, but it was truly the only idea she had. And they didn’t have much time. She looked back at the crowd of fae and faerie creatures. They were mostly clustered in the center of the great hall, facing the adjoining ballroom, but they could look over at any moment.
She took Tom’s unresisting hand and led him behind the stairs. “I have an idea. If this is the Fae Realm and the magic works like the old matron stories, then maybe we could . . . We tried before, when you were a cat, but now that you’re human . . . If you want to . . .”
Tom smirked, catching on quicker than he had before, already seeming a lot more like his former self. “Well, that is certainly worth thinking about.”
Tabitha took a step back. Somehow this had been easier when he was a cat. “If you don’t want to—”
Tom took a firmer grip on her hand. “No, there’s no backing out now. You had an idea—a marvelous and inspired idea—and now I am quite determined to see the result. Aren’t you?”
Tabitha didn’t know what to say. This was happening so much faster than she had ever dreamed. But Tom had her hand, and then he moved to cup her face.
And before she knew it, Tabitha was kissing the lost prince of Umbrae.