Page 101 of Bound to Three Fae Beasts

My stomach knotted. How would Silas and Freta react to finding out that part of me? I tried not to catastrophize. They were my friends. They’d understand, right?

“Does this mean that we’re under your protection, too?” Silas muttered as the six of us walked together. They were just behind Jasper, Seb and I, while Gareth took up the rear.

“Nah, we just need new lackeys since Flora got Red and Savannah in the divorce,” Gareth quipped.

Seb glared at him.

Gareth laughed. “Besides, you two are so weak that anyone that targets you must also be weak and just trying to make themselves feel tough.” He said it in a casual, mocking way, but I understood what he was getting at. It was his way of dissuading anyone listening from attacking my friends.

At least, I hoped that’s what he was doing.

We reached the great hall. The teachers were already present. Several of them looked surprised, then confused when they saw us. Quincy’s expression darkened for some reason. Lotmas snickered and whispered something to Thatcher, who rolled his eyes.

Freta and Silas moved ahead of us to pull out chairs for the three boys. They sat, not paying attention to the whispers that filled the hall around us. I ended sitting next to Gareth, with Freta and Silas on my other side. Gareth tucked into his breakfast, then casually put something next to my plate. It was my amber brooch. The parts that Seb had broken all those months ago had been repaired, and the brooch itself was cleaner than it had ever been.

I pinned it to the collar of my undershirt, uncertain how to take the gesture. He didn’t look at me for the rest of breakfast.

***

The next few days were strange. Everything felt liquid, changing shape constantly. The news of the golden boys taking me under their protection soon spread throughout the Academy, and people stopped targeting me physically. The attention I got skyrocketed, though. I couldn’t go anywhere without people staring at me or following me.

A handful of students started being creepily nice to me, offering to brush my hair or launder my underwear. I asked Freta about it, and she said it was likely they were trying to steal pieces of me to sell once the larger fae world came to know about me.

“Why would people want pieces of me?” I asked, aghast.

Freta gave me a sympathetic look. “For curses, of course.”

I became very careful after that. It wasn’t just the attention that increased, though. I soon heard rumors about me. They spread wildly, and most of them were utterly ridiculous. I was a secret Manilow princess who had been paired with Seb against his will. I was a servant from Vespa who was sent to help cure Jasper of his wrong beast (though how I was meant to do this was unclear).

Not that anyone said these things around me directly. I heard them secondhand, from Freta and Silas. Hanging out with them in the Alegro room quickly became a rarity, as I was kept close to the golden boys at all times. They never took me to any of their rooms, either, and so we were always in the public eye.

It didn’t escape my notice that Flora, Red, and Savannah stopped spending any time with them. Flora always ignored us, but it was clear that she was furious. Jasper quietly told me once that Seb’s family had arranged a marriage between him and Flora, but Seb refused to let us talk about it at all. He only said he had no intention of marrying Flora, though he couldn’t answer what he planned to do instead.

Gareth also kept close to me at all times. Whenever he looked at me, I felt him making choices. I didn’t know how to talk to him or what anything he did meant. On the one hand, it felt like he was keeping me safe. On the other, it also felt like he was biding his time. Did he still want to kill me? I couldn’t tell, and not knowing made my nerves stretch until I felt strung out almost all the time.

One day, he fell in step next to me as I headed toward Phineas’s etiquette class. Since the golden boys declared their protection of me, Phineas had been targeting me more deeply, in that he demanded much more attention and knowledge on court politics and etiquette than he had before. Every time I made a mistake, he’d slap his forehead dramatically and declare “This is how (insert famous figure) ended up executed!”

The scary part was, when I looked up those famous figures, he was right.

Today, though, I was more worried about Gareth than I was about my marks. Seb and Jasper were nowhere to be seen. The hallway was crowded, though. Surely that meant he wasn’t going to kill me? I did notice more black glares sent my way than normal, though.

“You should know that Flora had Savannah publish your school records among the students from the upper years,” Gareth told me.

I frowned at him. Everyone knew I was half-fae by then. So what difference did it—

Oh. I let out a hiss. “So they know about my father.”

“A human who apparently killed both your mother and a high fae and was sentenced to a lifetime’s labor in Coldwater Prison for it.” Gareth’s expression remained bored, his tone flat. “Just so you’re aware. I doubt any first-years will try anything, but you already saw how the likes of Rusco react to us.”

Meaning that I now had to worry about the upper-level students coming after me. I rubbed my eyes. “Coldwater Prison. They’re having riots, right?”

Gareth frowned. “Not that I’ve heard.”

Right—I’d gotten that information while I eavesdropped on Headmaster Quincy and Clarissa of Court Manilow. I bit my lips together, hoping Gareth wouldn’t ask about that. I didn’t want to give him any reason to think I was more dangerous than I was. Being invisible and sitting in on secret meetings seemed like the sort of thing he would find dangerous.

“Just be careful,” Gareth said softly. “And be aware that the three of us will be tailing you as much as possible until we have a better idea of how our fellow high fae are taking it.”

I nodded, unsettled.