He only stands to address the waiting crowd. They hush in reverence. “Thank you all for joining me as I send off my only child with the hope that we can repair Velmara and Thayaria’s tenuous relationship. Thank you for sending Prince Hawthorne off to the Witch Queen,” he yells loudly, the crowd booing at the mention of the Witch Queen. He holds up a hand and they quiet again. “I know you fear for the Crown Prince at the hands of the Witch Queen, but she has assured me that he will have every protection and comfort his station commands.” Highly unlikely. “Though I myself have feared the Witch Queen and cowed from her magic, I believe it’s time for us to offer her the olive branch of friendship. It is for her to accept, and, hopefully, through her friendship with Velmara, turn away from her wicked witchcraft. Prince Hawthorne and his entourage will be the first people, human or fae, to step foot on Thayarian soil in three hundred years. If anyone can restore Thayaria to what it once was and set the Witch Queen on the right path again, it is Velmara’s Shining Prince!” he yells as cheers erupt.

The people are eating up his speech as palace scribes copy down every word to send out a copy to the kingdom. I’m seething by the time he finishes uttering his false pieties and grandstanding. His words from our conversation echo in my mind. Thayaria is not as impenetrable as you may think, he had said. What did he mean by that? I’m lost in thought when he calls the three of us forward to be aerstepped.

He pats me on the shoulder, and I want to grimace. Leaning closer to me, he uses his air magic to bring his whisper to my ears only. “Do not forget my threats, Hawthorne. And threats they were. You will get close to Witch Queen, or I’ll make the lives of the two people behind you miserable in every way I know how.”

With a flourish of his hand, tightness squeezes my body for several seconds, tingles dancing across my shoulders and down my back. My eyes briefly close, and when I open them, I’m standing on a wooden pier with a thick, eerie wall of mist rising above me.