The handmaid peered at her. “Is this your first foray to the sunlit world, child?”
The sunlit world. The name sent chills across Adelyn’s skin. She clutched her veils around her, but the spider silk felt as light and revealing as...well, spider silk. “My first exile, yes.”
EveStar smiled vaguely. “Such an adventure.” The handmaid’s ethereal golden beauty was rightly called timeless. She was one of the few to endure the Iron Age and the brutal court battles that spawned the steel-born phae. The Queen kept her as a reminder of a lost era. And maybe as a warning. None of the iron-born left the phaedrealii. Ever.
Adelyn’s burst of envy at EveStar’s pristine silk slippers was eclipsed only by her desire to stay in the court too. “I am hunting a Hunter who will likely slaughter me.”
The handmaid clicked her tongue. “Why, I’ve heard a dozen phae have chased after the runaways, never to return. And now a musetta sweet as yourself is cavorting with a dark Hunter? How times have changed.” The soft gold of her eyes glinted with something much harder, something angry.
Unease twisted in Adelyn’s belly. Rumors of insanity haunted the iron-born. Some whispered the handmaid pierced herself with iron to burn off the cold guilt that so many had perished when she had not. “Nothing really changes here,” Adelyn soothed. “Which is just as it should be.”
“Maybe you should change, considering,” EveStar shot back.
Adelyn stiffened in shock. “You know better than most, the phae were devastated in the last upheaval. These fugitives can’t risk revealing us again.”
The handmaid’s vague smile returned. “Change yourself? Is that what I said? Ah, words are slippery as serpents. I meant, be sure to change your glamour, child, lest yet another human sees you and falls in love.”
Adelyn winced at the reminder. Damn her eyes for inspiring that odious ode. And damn her pointless preoccupation with pretty slippers that kept her from asking the handmaid about the sunlit world. After all, EveStar had walked among humans back when the phae had been known and feared and revered. Now she never left the phaedrealii; how was Adelyn, small and steel-born, supposed to survive?