"Aeliora is a fae assigned to serve me after my arrival here." My fingers tightened slightly against Elias's sleeve before I forced myself to continue. "She calls me Your Majesty because I am the Fae Queen."
The silence that followed was not empty. It was heavy, stretched thin across the room like glass about to crack, and for a moment I thought it might break into fear or anger or disbelief. Instead, Maribel's eyes widened fully as she stared at me as though she was trying to decide whether I had just said something absurd or completely expected, and then she let out a short laugh that cut through the tension like a blade. "Why am I not surprised," she said, shaking her head as if the pieces were already falling into place in her mind, "I suspected something like this would happen the moment we started walking through fae territory like it was going to behave normally."
