Page 13 of Wings of Snow

Michas cocked his head, his expression still closed off. “It is peculiar, don’t you think, that the crops dying has led to talks of invasion?”

My nostrils flared. “An invasion your father supports.”

“True.” Michas nodded. “But invasion was not something we’d ever supported until the state of our land came into jeopardy.”

I canted my head. The Crimsonales had always craved power. That was nothing new, but they were still proud Solis fae as Michas was implying. They always had been, and like most Solis, they hated the thought of depending on others.

I stepped closer to him and narrowed my eyes. “What are you alluding to, Michas?”

The young lord glanced over his shoulder, toward the commander and guards, but they were still in the sky.

I crossed my arms. “I cast a silencing Shield. They can’t hear us.”

“You did?” Michas glanced upward, and I smirked.

“You can’t see it.”

Glowering, he replied, “I’m just saying that it’s strange for our crops to die so suddenly, something that’s never happened in the history of our land. It does make one wonderwhois truly behind it. At least, that’s what my father and I are starting to question.”

“You’re saying it’s not the gods killing ourorem?”

He shrugged. “It could be, I suppose, but when have the gods ever failed us in that aspect?”

“Never.”

“Exactly.” He turned on his heel and began to stroll away, then called over his shoulder, “Like I said, it does make you wonder.”

I watched him until he disappeared, for the first time really reconsidering everything I’d ever felt and thought about the Crimsonales while also recalling what Ilara had told me he said on their last date.

Afterward, she’d told me Michas had been on the verge of revealing something to her, that Lord Crimsonale—the archon of Osaravee Territory and Michas’s father—had concerns about something, but then Georgyanna had interrupted them.

I placed my hands on my hips as Michas’s form grew distant. Snow began to fall, collecting on the ground in white puffs.

My brow furrowed, and I wondered if the theory Ilara and I had come up with—that Lord Crimsonale and Lady Wormiful were behind the dyingorem—was untrue. Why else would Michas share all of what he had if his father was trying to hide his involvement.

My frown deepened. Perhaps Ilara and I were wrong. Maybe it wasn’t the Crimsonales at all, and instead was someone else entirely.

But then the question became,who?

* * *

The mid-morning skyshone brightly through my window as I paced my bedroom chambers, my mind buzzing with barely contained magic. I’d been pacing most of the morning, even more so after that strange conversation with Michas, and I’d barely been able to sit still at the morning council meeting.

It didn’t help that I was on a deadline. It only added to my agitation.One month. I had one month to present my mate to the king, or I would have to watch my mother suffer from unspeakable torture.

Because I had no doubt my father would sink that low if I failed to find Ilara.

But why did he want Ilara so badly?

I tore a hand through my hair as everything swirled through my mind like black smoke. My father’s obsession with Ilara’s disappearance wasn’t like him. Last night, following Ilara’s escape, it’d been all he’d talked about. My father had even spent the entire council meeting this morning discussing how she could be found. And during that meeting, Lord Crimsonale had given me peculiar glances more than once, making me wonder if Michas had told him about our conversation at dawn.

I concentrated on my father’s obsessive interest in Ilara again. Hundreds of fae had managed to avoid King Novakin’s wrath before. It was inevitable with a continent as large as ours that it would happen, but whenever that had previously occurred, the king had sent court guards to find the fleeing fae, or if their crimes were great enough, he would send me and have me kill them on sight.

In the interim, while we were searching for the fairy, my father would typically forget about the matter until the guards returned with the criminal.

With Ilara, though, it was different, and I didn’t think it was just because she was a powerful fairy. He’d had powerful fae thwart him before, and he’d never shown an extreme reaction.

Yet, with Ilara, the king was beyond livid that she’d fled, so much so that he hadn’t been able to control his rage when Lord Crimsonale had mentioned at the meeting that perhaps it was best that she’d departed since she and I were mates. He’d actually empathized at having to watch a mated male and female be wed to others.