Chapter 5

FIVE

Cassia

I walk into my home and instantly relax, if only by a little. It's not like the fae prince or rumors of my criminal actions can't get through this door, but at least it feels like a break from the chaos that's my life right now. I let my back press against the wooden door and release a slow breath, breathing in the scent of my father's woodworkings. Buying myself a minute to try to put on a brave face before I see anyone.

My gaze runs over the tiny living room. Three chairs sit near a fireplace: mine, my grandmother's, and my father's. His chair is surrounded by his tools and his carvings. My grandmother's chair has her knitting in a basket beside it, while mine sits bare.

Unsurprisingly, both of their chairs are empty. The pain my father endures nearly every waking hour often leads him to sleep as much as possible throughout the day. It's no surprise he's in bed now. Grandmother, however, tends to go to the kitchen to cook around this time, not that there's anything to cook today. Which means she's probably in there writing. It's something she tends to hide from us, because she can't see her words any longer, and she's embarrassed by what her scribblings might look like.

But we know. We all know just about everything about each other. The only things you can hide in a home this small are your thoughts and feelings. And, even then, those have a way of coming to light too.

I listen as my heart slowly calms. Our home isn't fancy in the least bit. In fact, it's rundown. The roof leaks when we occasionally get rain. Warm and cool air seeps from the walls and around the windows, keeping the temperature always just a step above miserable. But it's home, gray and dark as it is. It's where I grew up and where my father and grandmother showed me what it meant to be loved completely and fully.

They had so little to give in the way of material things, but made up for it in every other way. I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss the material stuff, but what hurt more was watching them have nothing. Watching them desperately want to be able to work, but being limited because of life's cruel twists.

My family deserves better. I've just never had the chance to give them better before.

Until now.

Fuck. I close my eyes, thinking of the prince. Thinking of the mysterious spell that's supposed to make his plan possible. Thinking of the lies I'd have to tell, forever, if I do this.

So much could go wrong. I could be resigning myself to a cruel fae's will. Once this lie is spun, I'll be the one at his mercy. If he grows tired of me, all he needs to do is speak the truth. He'll suffer backlash that will be forgotten, and I'll lose my head.

My eyes flash open. My soul says that this is wrong, but my heart says otherwise…

I glance at my father's chair in the corner. It's set low on the ground, so he can crawl into it. My heart aches. If I were alone, I would simply leave these lands. I'd travel to another court and start over, but my family doesn't have that luxury.

The three of us just can't start over somewhere else. At least here we have a roof over our heads. If we packed up from here and left on foot, how long could a young woman, a blind woman, and a man without the use of his legs go? The answer is: not far.

It's the only reason I'm considering the prince's proposal. People would call me a fool if they knew I was even thinking about refusing a chance at wealth, comfort, and power as queen. But the pit in my stomach says that being a queen like this, wrapped in lies, will make me more of a slave to the prince.

Servant I can do. Slave? I don't know.

"Cassia," my grandmother calls my name.

My moment to think has passed.

I take a few steps deeper into our tiny home so I can peer into the doorway of the kitchen. Grandma is clearing papers and dishes off the littered countertops. Her long gray hair, weaved with dark strands, conceals her face in shadows. But the sound of her humming tells me how she feels without her words. Her humming is light and hopeful. Even though she hasn't eaten since yesterday.

My eyes sting, and I angrily blink them until I get my emotions under control .

"How was work today?" she asks, glancing up, her milky white eyes seeking mine, like she can still see.

I clear my throat, being cautious of my tone. "It was work." It's all I can offer, not wanting to lie, but not wanting to tell her the truth, either.

To stop the humming. To kill her hope.

"The Royal Mating Ceremony is tonight, isn't it? I bet you were busy getting everything ready for all the wealthy and powerful guests." She sounds excited, like the ceremony means anything to us.

Queen, no queen, it's all the same. We're the vermin that keep their floors clean and place food on their plates, nothing more.

Even though, I guess, I could be more. Tonight. If I want.

"Cassia," she prompts, frowning. Reminding me I haven't responded to her about the Mating Ceremony.

I force a laugh. "I called it mating season when I ran into Prince Sulien today. Not my best moment."

She grins. "You spoke to Prince Sulien? You actually said that?" She sounds torn between horrified and amused.

"Yeah, he didn't care though, I'm just the maid." I hope she doesn't pick up on the edge of bitterness in my voice.

Her expression gentles. "You're not just a maid. You used to run circles around that boy when I was tutoring him. He took forever to catch on to things that you got instantly." She shakes her head. "How is it that he's royalty, and you clean his room? This world isn't fair. It's just as dumb as the fae."

I've wondered the same thing every day that I've worked there.

"He's a little cleverer, actually. They must have sent him away to school because there weren't any tutors around as good as you." I leave out the fact that he's blazing hot and makes me warm between my thighs, because, you know, that's not the kind of talk a grandmother wants to hear.

"I bet he's just as cute. He was a handsome little boy. I hear he's even better looking as a man." She smirks at me, waiting.

My cheeks heat. "He was just like the rest of the fae."

"Now, that's a lie! Humans and fae alike swoon all over the Summer Prince, if the rumors are true, which I suspect they are given just how many rumors I've heard."

"I wasn't swooning," I say, a little defensively.

Okay, maybe I was a little. When he was dressing down in the bathroom. When his tight underwear hugged his enormous cock, making it look like he was smuggling a giant sausage, and I really wanted to get on my knees and suck him off right there on the floor.

"What does he look like?" she asks, snapping me from my dirty thoughts.

I take a shaky breath, trying to forget his mammoth sausage, then lean against the doorframe of the kitchen, choosing my words carefully, so as not to give away the fact that she's right about him being ridiculously swoon-worthy. "He has silky black hair."

" Silky ? So it's nice?" She's trying to sound uninterested, and failing miserably.

Damn it. Fell right into that trap. "It's fine."

And, by fine, I mean fiiine . Long and beautiful, falling just past his shoulders. Masculine in a way that's surprising, given how feminine many of the male fae appear.

"And the rest of him?"

The rest of him. Fuck. I didn't want to think about the rest of him when all he was offering was to make me his queen. He wasn't offering to fuck me every night. He was offering an arrangement where I wouldn't even be able to have some tiny hot dogs to keep me happy while thinking about the mammoth sausage I couldn't get in my mouth or in my pussy.

Not that I'd be open to the arrangement if it included sleeping together. Right?

Right. Hell no.

"Cassia," she says my name on a huff of annoyance.

Oh, yeah, she was asking what he looks like. "His eyes are, I don't know, brown or something." Not brown. Auburn. An almost impossible hazel-like color that captures the heat of summer like nothing I've ever seen before.

"Oh. And the rest of him?"

Is it getting hot in here? Hell. "He's in shape, or whatever." In shape is an understatement. A potato has a shape. This man has muscles for miles, and until my firing and his little offer, I'm pretty sure he'd have fueled my fantasies when I touched myself for a good long while.

"Well," she has that innocent voice again, "if you ever get a chance to take a roll in the hay with him, rumor has it he is very, uh, well-equipped and knows how to use it."

"Grandma!" My cheeks are flaming.

"What? By my age, you learn a few things, one of which is to use that young body as long as you can, and to never skip out on a chance to ride a man with a big co–"

"No, just no! Please end this!" I'm talking to the heavens now.

She laughs. "Prude!"

"Better a prude than whatever this is!"

She tosses back her head and laughs. "This is a small home, Cassia. No one in this home thinks you're some innocent virgin."

I want to die. To shrivel up and melt into the ground. In all my time, I'd only brought two men back to this house, and I'd tried everything in my power to be quiet… even though I'd realized my natural state during sex is very, very loud. I wanted to be respectful.

Apparently, I sucked at that too.

"Besides, the prince isn't exactly a stranger to you. I swear I've never seen two children take to each other the way you two did. Everyone talked about it, how the fae prince only liked to play with the little human girl." She sighs. "Maybe in another life, you two could have been…"

My gut twists, all humor fading away. "There's no other life, Grandma. Just this one." I rest my hands on my apron pockets and feel the food that Alexi had slid back into my pocket.

Shit! I thought she'd taken it for some reason!

"Oh, I almost forgot." I pull the food out of my pockets. "I have food!"

The look of relief that flashes across her wrinkled face makes my heart swell, and then she's smiling mischievously. "And how exactly did you get this?"

I guess Grandmother's as smart as I thought. Likely, she's put two-and-two together about how expensive the potions are verses how much I make. She also must have realized that I wouldn't have been paid for a few more days, which would mean there would be no food for us tonight, and now she's wondering where exactly I came up with this. My only question is what she'll think about what I've done.

"From the palace…" I trail off, not sure wh at else to say.

She tilts her head, her expression curious. "I know the palace didn't give you food. The staff can eat there, but nothing gets to leave the palace grounds. It's to discourage thievery." Her hands move to rest on her hips like she used to do when I was a kid, and she was trying to get me to confess to something.

I should have known she'd ask. She's not the kind of person who can ever take things as they are. She wants an explanation for everything. One that makes sense.

The truth tastes bitter on my tongue. There's also no good way to erase the morally questionable choice to steal. What's more, my grandmother has always held all of us to a high moral bar… yet, she's also smart. She has to logically understand that we need food, and she should be happy with it, however I went about getting it.

Fuck. I'm just going to give this the nicest spin I can.

"I know I deserve more pay for all the work I do, so consider these my bonus payments. Bonus payments I just have to take when no one's watching." I grin, and although Grandma can't see it, I know she feels it.

The air stretches between us for a minute. I can see her thoughts spinning, and I'm half dreading what they've concluded when she opens her mouth. "Well, give it here. I'll whip something up with it."

Relieved, I place the food on the counter in front of her. She gives everything a quick feel and sniff, yet another way she's learned to work around the loss of her eyesight. Then, she takes the soup pot out and starts prepping the food.

Looking at the spread I stole, I wish I'd had a little forethought to try to get a little variety of food. Food is food, but with just a little more effort, it could've been a nice soup. The meat will be amazing for all of us though. It's been a long time since I could afford to buy meat.

Grandma already has the wood burning over the stove and the pot placed on top, while I've just been sorting my thoughts. She goes and starts cutting up the meat into little slips, humming her happy tune again, a smile on her face.

Being useful always makes her happy. So does the thought of a full belly.

"Do you need any help?" I ask, rolling up my sleeves to take my place next to her.

"Now you know I can't stand that question. If I needed help, I'd ask for it," she mumbles and cuts her cloudy eyes at me. She can't see with them, but she can still be expressive with them. "And you know you can't cook. Why are you even acting like you can do anything but get in my way? Go on somewhere else." She shoos me away.

I laugh and hear the sound of my father no doubt crawling into his chair in the living. "I'll go see if he's up."

I take a few steps into the living room, where sure enough I find my dad. He's carving sun figurines to sell at the market, because he hates being idle and not being able to help the family. He can't use his whole body to work, but he's always been handy. He typically makes enough to buy food for one meal a week, which is amazing.

"How are you doing today, Old Man?" I bend down and give him a kiss on his cheek. His color's so much better than it has been for the past few years. I swear, from the time I was old enough to be aware of his pain, he'd been an unnatural grey-green color. When he started taking the potions this year, one of the first things that returned was his color… then, sl owly, his strength. He almost looks like a healthy person now, even sitting up straighter.

"Mother, should I show her?" He turns to me, an airy smile on his face. "I have a surprise for you."

Grandma beams from the kitchen and walks to stand near him, while I watch, confused. He scoots to the edge of his chair then braces himself and rises to his feet. My grandmother hovers a foot in front of him, and I watch in confusion as my father takes a step. My chest feels tight. He's managed a few steps before, and that tired him out for quite a while. Two steps because of the painfully expensive potion I've been buying him.

What's he doing now?

"Should I–?" Stand behind him to catch him? Help?

Grandmother shakes her head. "Just watch."

He manages another step, and now I'm sweaty. Two steps. He should be falling. Falling, and getting upset. Falling and going to his room and crying so quietly that he thinks we don't hear him, but we do.

Somehow, he remains standing, managing three more steps and reaching the front door, before his legs crumble. Grandma somehow manages to catch him before his knees hit the ground, leading me to believe that they've been practicing this.

I press my hands to my mouth as he turns his head and looks at me, grinning. He's happy with himself. Happy with his amazing accomplishment for the first time instead of feeling depressed that his progress has been so slow.

"That's amazing!" I run over to him and pull him into a hug. He groans, and I help him back to his chair.

Pulling back, I run my hands over his dark hair weaved with just a few strands of gray at his temples and beard. My heart swells. He's a young man. A handsome man, by all accounts. Even without the use of his legs, I've seen the way the neighbor ladies look at him. He deserves so much more than the life he has.

And now, I've lost my job. I won't be able to afford his potions any longer. His progress will be lost, and the light I see in his dark eyes will fade away, along with his healthy color.

I hate that tears catch in my throat as I say, "That was incredible, dad."

His face widens into the most incredible smile. A smile he so rarely has. "I'm feeling a lot stronger lately. That's the second time I've done that today."

"You'll be running by next year," I say, blinking away tears.

He nods eagerly. "The potion is working, Cassia! It really is!"

I hate that he's right, because it only makes what I'm facing all the harder.

He reaches out and squeezes my hand. "But I used it all, and I need you to get me more."

"Of course." I want to scream into my pillow. Except, I'm pretty sure my scream would end in sobs. How is this happening? With every step into this house, my options seem to be fading away.

"What if I heal all the way? What if I get so well I can work again?"

"That would be wonderful," I tell him, and for some reason, I can picture it. Him going off to work, healthy and happy, this house flourishing like it never has.

But that only happens if I can afford to get him his potions, and the only way I can do that is if I make money, either as queen or at the whorehouse. The whorehouse would be a gamble too. I might not even make enough to afford more than to keep food on our table.

His dreams would go up in smoke.

"You know," he begins excitedly, "if I start working, you can quit that job at the palace. You can marry a nice boy and have a family of your own." His eyes twinkle as he speaks.

My stomach lurches at the thought, and my whole life shifts. I've never really thought about any other future except me working to care for my grandmother and father. Sure, if I found some nice boy who would be okay with signing on for this life, I might marry him, maybe even have kids, but those thoughts have never really crossed my mind. I've been too wrapped up in being a caretaker that I couldn't fathom any other life.

"Can you imagine little ones running around here, Mother?"

My grandmother smiles. "I can, and I bet they'd have Cassia's sweet disposition. Remember what she was like as a baby?"

Father squeezes my hand and lets go. "You were the sweetest creature. Could scream like a banshee when you had to, but the rest of the time, you were impossibly good. Just like you are now."

This conversation is like a strange dream. Marriage? Kids? It never occurred to me that my father and grandmother had dreams for me, that when I was born, these people, who were so different back then, imagined a beautiful, perfect life for me. I wonder what they wanted for me. I wonder what they wanted for themselves.

What does happiness look like? Before, it looked like heading to the palace with my grandmother to tutor the prince. Happiness was when my dad, the best man alive, would greet me from his chair in the evening and wrap me up in a hug after I got back from tutoring with Grandmother, before his pain made everything a thousand times worse. But a life where my father worked and I got married and had kids… it just didn't seem possible.

"I have to finish dinner," Grandmother says, still smiling as she heads back to the kitchen.

"Dinner?" Father grins at me, but he looks exhausted.

"Meat," I tell him.

He gives a long sigh. "You were worth everything."

I laugh. It's something he always says to me. I'm not sure what everything is, but the way he says it makes me believe that he thinks I'm something amazing.

His eyes drift close. "I'm going to rest until dinner."

"Okay." I ruffle his hair and then press a kiss to his cheek. "I'm going to go lay down for a bit."

He makes a little sound of acknowledgement, and I turn away from him, weighed down by thoughts and decisions I never imagined I'd have to make. I head to my bedroom, open the door, and freeze. My eyes are drawn to a glimmering gold dress on my bed.

Moving quickly, I shut the door behind me, then spin back around to the dress. I have one stupid moment when I worry that my father saw the dress, before I remember that if he saw it, he would have said something. But how did the prince get it here?

"His powers." Of course. The damn prince teleported into my bedroom.

I glance around the space, wondering what he thought when he was in this room. There's a bed in the center of the room, a cracked, full-length mirror I stole from a trash pile in the corner, one nightstand, and a dresser with everything I own in it. Did he think this room was sad? Pathetic?

He's probably never seen a room like mine in his life, so, yeah, that's probably exactly what he thought.

I don't like the idea, but I take a step into the room. Close enough to touch the shimmering dress. A dress that is more beautiful than every item in this house combined. Hell, I'm pretty sure I've never seen a fae woman in anything prettier, even the royalty.

Then I notice something else. Sitting beside the gold dress is a pair of gold heels that buckle around the ankle. They're absolutely beautiful, but not so high that I think I won't be able to walk in them, although I've never worn heels. There's also a little blue jewelry box.

Reaching for the mysterious box, I open it and gasp. A golden necklace with amber stones, the official stone of the Summer Fae, glimmers within the box, along with a matching bracelet. The stones are large and finely polished to reflect every drop of light. Anyone who sees this jewelry will believe the wearer is among the Summer fae royalty.

If I wear this, it's Prince Sulien's not-so-subtle way of claiming me as his own. It's a bold move, but then his whole plan is bold. Reckless. Dangerous.

"And I'm going to do it."

I sink onto the edge of my mattress as my knees give out. I'm going to do this. There was never any actual choice. When the decision is between letting my grandmother and father have everything they've ever wanted and more or continuing to barely survive as their hope dies, there's no decision to make.

Tonight, I'm going to don this dress. I'm going to pretend that there's enough fae deep inside of me that the magic will choose me as Prince Sulien's mate. And then, I'm going to play the part of the handsome fae's wife. He won't touch me in private. I won't touch him. There will never be children in my future, and I'll never know true love.

And each day, I'll hope. Hope that the prince doesn't betray our secret. Hope that he doesn't get bored with me or find another woman he'd rather match with, maybe even his true mate. And this quiet home I've grown to love will fade away.

Lying back on the bed, I swear my face feels wet. But I don't cry. Crying is stupid. I was never going to marry some man I loved and have a bunch of children. That was never my life, regardless of what my father and grandmother thought. So, I'm not really losing anything.

"I'll be queen." I thought the words would come out happy, but instead, they're broken and sad.