Page 3

Meeting

VEYRION

I brace for the high-pitched shriek humans are so fond of emitting when they first see one of us and realize we’re even more terrifying than the stories claimed.

But… she doesn’t scream. She only stares at me with those large, inefficient human eyes that hold no glow, even in the dark.

An unsettled feeling comes over me as I watch her watch me.

My first bride is… not what I was expecting.

I was a young stone of only three turns around the suns the last time my father took an Eryx Oblation to bride. But I remembered her wailing upon the altar, waving her thin arms at the audience and demanding that one of us stop the proceedings.

“I am a princess! You cannot do this to me!” she screeched—right before my father ended her ability to plead. Or breathe.

Her tresses held a yellow hue, and the commemorative tapestries that stretched back centuries almost always depicted frail females with pale skin and long golden hair.

My father warned me that these princesses were easy to break after a lifetime of being pampered and cared for in the same ways we did the bramblehogs we fattened up for the New Solar Feast.

However, other than gender and species designation, this Oblation bears little resemblance to those depicted on the tapestries.

Her skin is a warm, rich brown, and her hair is plaited into several long braids, much like the ones some of my warriors’ mates prepare for them before raids. Except her locks appear to be textured and braided partially into her scalp.

Also, her body is not frail, but… I struggle to find words for it. All I can think of is soft.

She’s soft everywhere—wide hips, woolly hair, a large chest barely contained by the too-tight bodice of her dress.

Soft in ways I have no frame of reference for…

and yet, the thought of interacting with…

touching this princess’s many soft features sparks a novel stirring deep in my gut.

Not unlike the bloodlust I’ve felt when trespassers dared to cross our lands.

But not quite the same.

This one coils lower. Stranger. Hotter.

I am not sure I like it.

“What is this?” I squint at her. “Has the Aralyssean line been overthrown? You do not look like the pale twiglings with golden hair they always send.”

The princess, whose name I’ve been briefed is Seraphyne, gives me a look that somehow manages to be both exhausted and baleful.

“I don’t look like her because the pale-pink, twigling, yellow-haired princess you were supposed to get was replaced by her plump, brown handmaid, who you need to—ooff.”

The rest of her words get jumbled when I abruptly grab her around the jaw, squeezing into the hollow of her cheeks to get a better look at her unusual front teeth.

What in the skies?

“Explain this odd space between your central incisors!”

My question is met with a bunch of garbled nonsense until I realize I must release her jaw in order for her to answer clearly.

She throws me an angry squint of her own and rubs her cheeks in a rather dramatic way before telling me, “It’s called a gap.”

“A gap ,” I repeat carefully. “Is it a genetic mutation due to the inbreeding you royals are so fond of?”

Her version of a squint becomes even narrower, nearly disappearing the strange, inefficient wet orbs that humans call eyes. “Are your gray skin, glowing red laser gaze, and—you know—super-scary fangs a mutation?”

A long silence follows her question, in which I attempt to reconcile the many outraged feelings boiling inside of my chest.

The utter audacity of this human! “Do you not realize who I am?”

She un-narrows her eyes, but only to roll them in an odd manner before answering. “Well, you’ve definitely got that entitled royal vibe, so I’m assuming you’re the Stone Fae King.”

She assumes correctly. Though I am certain she does not know that I am a different king than the one my people assumed she would be given to.

With a pang, I think of the older brother whose life path I now find myself walking.

But emotion is not a weakness a Stone Fae King ever shows.

I crook my head instead, studying the odd Oblation Aralysse has sent as I ask, “Why, then, are you not terrified, like the many who came before you?”

“First of all, I am terrified.” She points both of her untaloned index fingers in the air to make her next point. “You are genuinely the scariest creature I have ever seen or met. Please have not even a speck of doubt in your mind about that.”

I untilt my head, not sure how to parse her words. They are somehow both congratulatory and insulting at the same time.

“I’m so terrified, you’re seeing the real me that I only ever let show under extreme duress,” she continues. “Which is what I’m under right now. Because the thing is, I’m not a princess. I’m sorry to tell you this, but we’ve both been tricked, and you’ve been delivered the wrong girl.”

“I see.” I nod with full understanding. “The explanation for your odd response makes sense now.”

She lets out an audible sigh of relief. “Oh, great, because I tried to tell your goat guards, but they?—”

“You have chosen a new tactic. Instead of begging for your life, you have decided to lie.” I nod again. “You are pretending not to be the Eryx Oblation.”