Chapter 9

"Was there anything else?" Feyre asked quietly.

"No, nothing else," I said. I couldn't tell her that I read a short story about them having wall-sex in a cabin and probably creating that muppet, could I? I glanced at Rian who was observing me.

"Not a word about me?" he asked. "Ouch, that hurts. I must try harder next time to get to the pages. But tell me, lovely Alexandra, who wrote such wonderful books?"

"I don't know." I knew my answer was way too fast but I hoped it wouldn't give me away. "The books were written anonymously."

"Were they?" Rian wondered. Out of the blue, he appeared next to me and slung his arm across the back of my chair. "You know, you can tell me everything," he whispered, touching the sleeve of my bathrobe and going down to my hand. "Everything that is on your mind. Your deepest secrets and fantasies, too. I'm a good listener." Rian interlaced his long fingers with mine and, lifting our joined hands to his mouth, pressed a kiss on the back of my hand.

"Oh, God," I breathed, looking at him and totally giving in his charm.

I needed this badly. I needed to be touched, and kissed, and whispered to. I had spent lonely months, treacherously reliving every moment of forgetting myself with Henry, and longing for his kisses and the feeling of his hands on my body. I had imagined the countless times when we got to the second or even third base, wanting more and more. Apparently, it was I who was sex-starved, not him.

Being unable to avert my gaze from Rian, I let my eyes wander around his handsome face, now smiling to me seductively. "What will it be, Lexi?" Rian asked softly. "Will you tell me who wrote those books?"

"What will it be, Lexi?" Henry asked, closing the car boot and lifting our suitcases. It was the first day of our four-day stay in his parents' lake house and we were the first ones to arrive. The rest of our friends were still on their way to Lake District to spend the best New Year's Eve in the world. "Where will we sleep? In the master bedroom?"

I laughed, following him into the house. "If you think you can persuade me to give you more tonight… I have to disappoint you. Not yet, darling."

"Well, at least it was worth trying." Henry stopped for a moment and put the suitcases on the ground. "I've forgotten something," he said unexpectedly.

"What is it?" I asked, feeling confused.

"This." He pulled me up to him and kissed passionately.

Overwhelmed by the sudden and painful memory of Henry, I drew back from Rian and yanked my hand from his grasp. Sitting far from him and avoiding eye contact, I said, "I'm sorry, I don't know who wrote them. There was no name."

Rian sighed with resignation and murmured, "I see." But he didn't move back to his chair.

The room went quiet.

"We will try to find Bryaxis and do something with the bargain," Feyre announced. "In the meantime, Meleri will show you your room and provide refreshments."

I looked at her. "Thanks but I don't need a room. I won't stay that long."

"Nonsense." Rhysand stood up, clearly ending our conversation. "You are our guest after all and we want to host you."

"Can she stay in my bedroom, Father?" Meleri asked. "It's quite big and… she won't feel alone here."

The High Lord of the Night Court regarded his youngest for a moment but then said, "Fair enough."

Meleri smiled and approached me. "Come, I'll show you my bedroom," she said, taking my hand. And we disappeared.

###

Meleri's bedroom was really spacious and bright. It had high beige walls made of the same stone I saw previously and two big windows overlooking the woods, making the inside illuminated and cosy. Her dark bed stood in the centre of the room and I noticed it had a beige canopy. Lucky she. I had always wanted a bed with a canopy but my room wasn't big enough for such unnecessary extravagance.

Looking around, I said, "Wow. Your bedroom is… amazing."

"Thank you." She smiled and sat on her bed. "I like it a lot. Though, I preferred the one at the mansion." She sounded a bit upset.

"So what happened to it?" I asked. I remembered vaguely that Rhysand created a house for Feyre in that hidden city after they married. But apparently this wasn't it.

"It burnt last month. My parents were away at that time and I was flying with Rian above Velaris. When we got back, it was gone."

"I'm so sorry, Meleri," I said, sitting next to her and holding her hand. "It must have been awful."

"It was." She sniffled, letting me hold her hand.

Okay. I had to admit I wasn't good with children. I had no idea what to do or say to comfort her. So I decided to quickly change the subject. "You said you were flying. Do you have wings?" I asked.

"No, I don't. But Rian does." Meleri stood up and stretched her arms. "That big!"

"Of course. How could he not?" I murmured and then said louder, "That's fantastic. Do you like flying with him?"

She nodded. "He's one of the best flyers in Prythian."

"One of the best?" I repeated and smirked. "So he's not the best?"

"Well, it's hard to choose between Mother, Father, Uncle Cass, Conri, and him. I love flying with all of them, you know." Meleri sat on the bed again and her violet eyes beamed with joy. "And I like winnowing but I don't do it often. I'm rather afraid I will spoil it and end up somewhere remote." Her smile faded.

Unexpectedly, we both heard Rian's voice, "Don't worry, Melly Jelly. You'll learn in no time."

Setting my eyes on the door, I saw him leaning against the doorway with his arms crossed. He was looking at his younger sister with a faint smile. "All you need is patience, practice and a good teacher," he said with tenderness in his voice that didn't quite fit him.

"Rin, are you spying on us?" Meleri asked.

"No, I'm just checking on you." Still not moving from the doorway, Rian fixed his eyes on me. "Father feared you'd harmed our guest on the way here."

I glimpsed at Meleri who suddenly blushed. Feeling rather uneasy, I said, "I'm perfectly well, thanks."

"Thank the Mother," Rian answered and disappeared.

He was the weirdest man I had ever met in my whole life. I couldn't work him out; one minute he was Prythian's greatest playboy, posing as sexy, seductive and sensuous, and the next an arrogant and cold-hearted bastard, ready to squash you like a bug. I didn't know which Rian was the real one, though I wasn't going to stay here long enough to find out.

"He isn't married, is he?" I asked Meleri, staring at the now empty doorway.

"Rian? No, he isn't. Though I know that he was once in love. It was long before I was born. But… it didn't end well," Meleri whispered.

"I see." Turning my eyes on her, I pondered over her words. She said that Rian was in love long before she was born. But what did she mean by that? Was she really a child or an adult in a body of a child? Well, curiosity killed the cat but hell with that. "How old are you?" I asked.

"I'm twelve."

"So you're very young." At least I knew she was like a normal child. To some extent of course.

She shrugged and lay on the bed. "I'm the youngest. I've always been. My siblings had all grown up by the time I was born. You see, Cerys and Ciaran are now seventy-eight and Rian is one hundred and three."

Blood rushed to my head, making this rumbling sound. "What?" I gaped.

"We're Fae. We could live hundreds of years. My father is almost six hundred and forty, and mother is one hundred and twenty-five. You didn't know?" she asked, looking at me.

One hundred years, I thought. Over one hundred years have passed in Prythian since the end of war with Hybern and the ending of the trilogy. Over one hundred years of new events and new people I've never heard of. But that's impossible. I looked at Meleri and mumbled, still shocked by the news, "I… I haven't expected this."

"Well, that's true." She shrugged, sitting up. "I'm not lying."

"I do believe you. But it's hard to comprehend all of this," I admitted. "And your parents surely don't look that old."

"After reaching eighteen, I will stop aging, too," she said with a smile. "And for the next couple of hundred years I will look the same. Just like my father." Meleri stood up and approached her dressing table. Looking at herself in the mirror, she chuckled. "Hopefully, I will take after my mother and be as beautiful as her."

I smiled back at her. "No doubt."

Meleri turned around. "My mother wants to know if you're hungry."

Blinking with surprise, I said, "No, I'm not. How did you–"

"I can read her mind, just as she can read mine." She broke in. "Even if we are miles away from each other, our whole family can do that. So if you ever see Ciaran and Rian smiling wickedly to each other, remember – they might gossip right in front of you and you wouldn't even know that!" She laughed.

"Yeah, I'll bear that in mind." I was sure that handsome muppet would do that in front of my eyes and have the time of his life.

I looked at my white bathrobe. "Um… Meleri, is there a place I can borrow some clothes? Because I don't feel comfortable enough in this one."

Meleri eyed me. "I think I can get that done."

"Thanks a lot." I smiled and opened my mouth to say something about the choice of clothing but she vanished into thin air. "Not again," I grunted.

Glancing about the room, I set my eyes on the doorway.

The open door of Meleri's bedroom had been inviting me to explore the rest of the house since the moment we came in. I didn't know where she had gone to get some clothes for me but I was left alone in somebody else's house. And that house was probably somewhere in the Night Court which – from what I remembered – was quite big. So in either event, I could have been in the middle of nowhere with no way of escaping or coming back home. Yay.

Good God, what have I done?, I thought for the millionth time, standing up and looking at the woods outside. For miles and miles, there were only big dark coniferous trees covered with fog, making the whole area gloomy and deserted. I didn't see other houses, cities in the distance or even wild animals. There were just the trees and nothing else. Indeed, in the middle of nowhere.

Slightly turning my head, I glanced at the door. Well, I knew it was best to mind my own business and stay in Meleri's bedroom, but I was more than eager to walk around this huge building and search its every nook and cranny. I was in a bloody book, for fuck's sake! I had been already imagining all the weird rooms I would go into, all the peculiar fairies I would meet and all the stuff I would find. It was my one and only chance. Would someone find me, I could always tell them I got lost. So without a second thought, I went out of the bedroom.