A Strange Hymn by Laura Thalassa
Chapter 42
“Did you hear the news?” Temper asks the next morning. The two of us eat breakfast in the same large atrium I ate at my first morning here.
This morning, when I woke up alone in my bed, I headed over to Temper’s room and took her out to breakfast.
I was determined to show those here at Solstice that they hadn’t seen the last of me yesterday.
“What news?” I ask now, ripping off a piece of a strudel and shoving it into my mouth.
Dozens of other guests in the atrium keep glancing at me and my repaired wings, their voices low as they whisper into their friends’ ears.
I find I want to throttle every last one of them—even those that weren’t closed up in Mara’s throne room with me. How can anybody be okay with what’s happening to humans here?
Meanwhile, the waiters keep finding reasons to come by my table, some to whisper a quiet thanks, others to discreetly drop off an extra pastry here and another warm drink there.
“Bitch, you’re missing out on all the juiciest gossip,” Temper says, pulling me back into the conversation. It’s gossip she’s undoubtedly coerced from the humans here.
“Not if you tell me.” I kick my heels up on the table, the action earning me more whispers.
Temper leans forward. “The fairy who raped your human woman yesterday?”
The food in my mouth turns tasteless. I force myself to swallow. “What about him?”
“He disappeared sometime during the night. Apparently the only thing left of him was a finger, though some people say it wasn’t a finger at all—that it was his junk.”
I grimace. “Ugh, Temper, couldn’t you have waited for me to finish breakfast?”
Last thing I want to think about was a sexual predator’s severed man bits.
“That’s not all.”
I raise my eyebrows, picking up my cup of tea and taking a swallow.
“Apparently the queen’s harem have gone missing—supposedly they were taken right out of the queen’s bed, though no one saw it at all.”
I nearly choke on the tea.
One rapist and the queen’s entire harem all go missing on the same night?
There’s only one person with both the motive and power to do such a thing, and he wasn’t in my bed this morning when I woke up.
Temper steals a slice of bacon from my plate. “People are saying Des did it.”
Just as they blamed him for the soldiers’ disappearances. Only now … now I’m not sure where to begin and end defending him.
“Where is he anyway?” Temper asks.
I shake my head. “I don’t know.”
She sits back in her seat, a smug little grin on her face. “That cheeky bastard did it, didn’t he?” she says. “I think I like him.”
I feel Des’s magic lasso around me, tugging me and my seat backwards.
Speaking of cheeky bastards …
“Shit,” I curse under my breath, grabbing the edges of the table as my crossed ankles slide off of it. The chair I’m sitting in begins to slide away from the table in jerky fits and starts.
Temper pauses. “What is it?”
My blood quickens. “Des is back.”
