Chapter 2 — First Night

The chamber prepared for her first night was not a bedroom.

It was a study — one wall of books in languages Elara could only half-read, one wall of stained glass that depicted what looked uncomfortably like the Highmoor Academy in flames, a hearth that gave off no smoke, and a single low couch upholstered in something that breathed when she sat on it. She did not ask. The fae did not appreciate being asked.

“You expected a bed,” Kael said from the doorway. He had changed his coat for something looser, the collar open at his throat. He had also, she noticed, bothered with the crown tonight — thin, silver, almost an afterthought above his brow.

“I expected to know what to expect,” she said.

“How disappointing for you.” He crossed the room without seeming to move and stood at the window, watching the impossible sky. “Tonight, I want only to read with you. That is the first night.”

She stared at him. “Read.”

“I have been three hundred years in this court and not one of my consorts has ever read anything more demanding than her own breathing.” He turned. His eyes found her. “You are a scholar of forbidden archives. I want to know what you whisper to yourself when no one is listening. Read to me, Elara.”

He handed her a slim volume. The cover was velvet, the title etched in old gold. She did not recognize the script.

“It is poetry,” he said. “By a poet long dead who wrote only for lovers. The translation will appear in your mouth as you speak. You will understand it. You may also dislike it. That is permitted.”

She opened the book. The first line shaped itself on her tongue in a language she did not own —

She did not sleep when he left her. She read the rest of the book three times.

By the time the Unseelie dawn rose — gold-rimmed, slightly wrong — Elara had memorized every line, and she was no longer certain she would survive the bargain in the shape she had brought to it.

She was no longer certain she wanted to.