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“How old are you?”

“I am…,” Perl pauses to think. “I believe I am a little more than two hundred years old. But it can be hard to measure time in Faerie. As with many things the rules are different. But I was certainly born more than two hundred years ago.”

“The rules are different? How can the rules of time be different? Time is time, the same everywhere.”

Perl shakes his head. He is still staring at the door. He hasn’t looked away from it. “Time can pass differently in Faerie than it does in the mortal realm. It may have also been a hundred years here since I left, or it may not have. It is hard to tell exactly.”

“Will they be surprised to see you back?”

Perl raises an eyebrow so pale the gesture is more of a movement of his face. “Oh, yes.”

As Perl says that, the door starts to open and Kerik realises Perl was not simply waiting nervously for the courage to open the door, this is not a door that one simply opens. This is a door that one has to wait for.

Perl says, “We shall have to see what we are met with. You know what to do?”

“You still doubt me?” Kerik says.

“Walk behind me. Keep your eyes down and do not speak. Can you do that?”

“It doesn’t sound too difficult.”

Perl finally looks from the door to Kerik. “I know. Can you do it?”

Kerik makes a huffing noise as the doors keep on opening. Some warmer air wafts through. It smells quite sweet. Like some kind of expensive spice Kerik cannot name.

Beyond the door is a huge hall, glittering and bright, that same icy quality of being pure white and every colour all at once. There are sounds of chatter, light and musical as bells.

Perl gives Kerik a glance before he steps forward. He looks quite petrified.

Kerik follows a pace behind Perl as instructed, but whispers, "Just tell me when I need to get on my knees and serve you.”

“I have already instructed you not to speak,” Perl says under his breath.

“As you wish, Master,“ Kerik replies playfully as he follows Perl into the hall.

They are in a huge, grand receiving hall. A place with dimensions beyond anything Kerik could imagine, a white space, impossibly vast, like something from a dream. The ceiling feels as distant as the sky. The air is cool, but not so cold it chills Kerik’s bare flesh. The sweet scents are strong, now more familiar: cinnamon, lemon, lavender, rose, drifting and changing like swirling colours. The light is soft as moonlight, but bright as the midday sun. Everything caught by that light seems to glitter like jewels. Music plays, airy, soft bells moved by the wind. The impossible hall is edged with crowds of faeries, real faeries, staring, pointing and giggling like fools. Kerik tries to keep looking down at the floor, but he cannot help snatching glances.

In some ways, this great hall is no different from the Hall of Twelve in the Rose Palace. Excepting how strangely bright and cold it is and how it sparkles. And in the same way, the faeries in their finery with servants attending them, even in all their strangeness, look quite like the kind of courtiers Kerik has seen before on countless occasions during state business in Attar. But in the same way as the hall, as the floor, the faeries are different. Brighter, lighter, they seem to sparkle. Every one of them is eerily, unnervingly beautiful.

Some of them have white birds perched on their shoulders, like tame pets. Others have clouds of butterflies dancing around them. And many of them have wings, greatly sized wings, arcing over their heads in glittering pale colours.

Some have gowns that leave their breasts exposed or no clothing on their upper bodies at all. Some wear instead, complicated straps cupping breasts or enhancing chests. He sees one who wears a dress with skirts made of a fine mesh that is entirely transparent, revealing her legs and sex, and another with a gown that is nothing but golden chains. As Perl had explained many of the lewdly dressed courtiers have thralls, attendants in hip cloths and collars, kneeling beside them or prostrate on the floor. Their hip cloths are the shortest hip cloths Kerik thinks he has ever seen. Are these thralls humans like Kerik? How did they come to be in this strange place?

It is hard to tell where the bright, cool light in the room comes from. Kerik can see no candles or fires. There are no windows either, just white walls curving up to meet in a high domed ceiling. He thinks there is something dangling, high above them at the ceiling’s apex, a decoration of some kind, but he cannot tell what it is. And he cannot look directly above him as subtly as he can steal glances at the rest of the hall.

Perl’s boot heels click on the white floor. Kerik’s bare feet make no sound. It’s that, the absence of sound from his own feet that feels like the most distinct marker of his status. Not the collar, nor his lack of clothing on his upper body, not the command that he walk behind Perl with his eyes cast down. It is the way his feet are silent on this beautiful floor that seems designed to make a satisfactory sound as one strutted across it in elegant boots, footfalls announcing the presence of anyone crossing it. But Kerik is a thrall. His feet make no sound; his presence is of no importance.

If only these faeries knew the truth.

It seems like a long walk through the hall, behind Perl to a high dais at the far end. But whenever he feels a lick of trepidation, Kerik reminds himself that he is a prince of Azuria. He is the rightful heir to the Duchy of Fanost. He might be half-naked and collared, but these faeries cannot take away who he is at his core.

As Kerik walks he can hear muttering, soft words of Magaar. The comments seem quite approving. He is sure he hears the phrase, ‘a fine mortal’, but most of the faerie courtiers simply stare at Perl.

It’s not until they get near the dais that Kerik can see it without raising his eyes too obviously. When he does so, he sees a grand looking faerie sitting on a huge glittering throne at its centre. She seems to be brighter than everyone else in the hall.

The bright faerie is uncannily beautiful with hair of pure white piled high on her head and a gown of icy-blue silk, cut low over her breasts, revealing skin as milk-pale as Perl’s. Her eyes are the same blue colour. On her lap is coiled a thick silver snake, which she pets like it is a kitten. Its yellow-green eyes blink contentedly under soft strokes of the faerie’s bejewelled hand. Clearly she is the Queen here. Another faerie kneels on a plump, silken cushion at her feet. He has dark hair, worn long in a single braid that snakes across his shoulder. His jaw is sharp and his brows are dark, defining a handsome face. Is he the king? A Queen on a throne with a king on his knees? Truly Kerik has never seen such a strangely perverse thing.

Although the dais is not bare of enthroned males. On the Queen’s other side, sitting on a second, smaller throne is a faerie who Kerik takes to be some kind of prince. He looks of a similar age to Kerik, which means, in reality, he must be a similar age to Perl. His hair is gleaming gold. And not braided. A tumble of waves, falling down over his shoulders. He wears little on his upper body, some strips of ivory silk, held together with golden chains. His pale chest is dusted with wisps of yellow hair. The scraps of silk reveal the edge of one pink nipple and a heavy gold medallion studded with black diamonds. His narrowed eyes have irises as dark as those diamonds. He poses quite regally, although his legs are only clad in a small wrap of gold-fringed silk that barely covers his hips. He wears golden heeled-boots, tight from his ankle, over his knees and ending at the middle of his thigh. He has those booted-legs crossed with his sharp chin resting on one hand, elegant long fingers playing around at the corner of his mouth. There is a haughty expression on his sharp face, which seems to be mostly directed at Perl.