Page 10 of The Heir the Fae Forgot
If anyone was going to give me answers, it was going to be him. Or, at least that was what I hoped.
I knew I certainly wouldn’t be getting them from Shiel.
Any brief relief I felt when I opened the door after dressing and discovering Shiel had finally gone was almost immediately dashed a moment later when, no sooner had I stepped out and closed the door behind me, a second familiar shadow fell over me.
Zev waited for me, leaning against the stair rail just past my own door.
Try as I might to be finished with the Western Court and its men, it seemed the Western Court and its men weren’t finished with me.
CHAPTERFIVE
“You too?”I asked, arms folding across my chest.
I felt naked still, in the dress Icarus had provided me. It was made of a fabric similar to that inky shine of his wings, so thin it barely concealed a single curve of my body—now filling out thanks to the fae food I’d been scarfing down like I’d never eaten before.
Which in a way, I hadn’t.
I wanted to be cross with Zev too, but I couldn’t, not when his mouth dropped open at the sight of me, his eyes close to popping out of his skull in the moment before he forced himself to look away.
His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat as he struggled to fixate his gaze somewhere—anywhere—else.
“You’re awake.”
“No thanks to you,” I snapped. “Or Finch, for that matter.”
“I don’t think a banshee could have woken you, Princess,” Zev said, only using the familiar pet name after he’d checked once over his shoulder to make sure no one was listening in.
“Yeah, well, now I have damage control to do. So, as much as I appreciate the ogling, I have a lord to find.”
“Shiel?”
I shot him a look that had his footsteps stumbling down after me. “You should stay away from the Lord of the Wildness, Aurra. He’s bad news. I know you don’t trust Shiel, but youreallyshouldn’t trust Icarus. Ask any fae of any court and they’ll tell you the same thing.”
Ask any human and they’ll say the same thing about any fae.
“I don’t need your help!” I called over my shoulder, even though I knew no matter how much I protested, there was nothing I could actually do to stop Zev or any of them from following at my heels.
“You can pretend I’m not here at all,” Zev said, almost knocking into me as I came to the bottom of the first flight of stairs.
“Yes, well,” I said, as I struggled to disentangle my trailing skirts from Zev’s feet now trampling all over them, “that might be easier if you weren’t the size of an orc and about as graceful as one.”
For a moment, I wondered if I’d finally gone too far.
Something like genuine hurt flickered across Zev’s face for a moment when I glanced back at him. Before I could even open my mouth to apologize, however, he succeeded in making me fully cross with him, too.
“You won’t find Icarus this way.”
I halted my steps then, and once more, it was all the giant fae could do to keep from slamming into me. I refused to look at him this time, refused to see those wide, innocent—or as innocent as a fae’s could be—eyes of his. I didn’t think I could stay angry with him if I did.
And I wanted to be angry.
Oh, how I relished the feeling.
I was tired of being ordered about. From the moment of my birth to my rescue to being dragged out here, to the Wildness I’d been avoiding so very hard, all I’d done was be told what I could and couldn’t do.
And I was tired of it.
“And why is that?” I snapped back, even as my own resolve to find the dark fae lord wavered a bit. I’d gone down several flights of stairs, the winding pathways weaving in and around trees like a maze of its own. I had no idea where I was. No idea where Icarus may be.
