Chapter 4 The Fae Prince Is Lying to Me

I spent the first two hours after sunrise aggressively scrubbing my mahogany workbench with a lemon-and-salt paste, as if scrub-brushing wood could somehow scrub away the cold, pulsing crescent mark sitting beneath my right sleeve.

It didn't work. The mark thrummed against my radial artery like an impatient ticking clock.

"He lied to me," I muttered, dunking my bristle brush into a bucket of soap foam. "He sat right on that stool, drank my lavender tea, looked me straight in the eye, and pretended he was just an overly stressed Student Council bureaucrat."

Sir Fluffington stood atop my ledger stack, preening a sleek white wing feather. He gave a low, questioning honk that sounded suspiciously like you're an idiot for believing him.

"I am not an idiot, Fluff," I snapped, pointing a soapy finger at his orange beak. "He had a silver coat! He complained about paperwork! How was I supposed to know he was the literal Crown Prince of the Moon Court? They don't put crown prince badges on high-school discipline officers!"

"We generally prefer to keep our royal titles out of administrative files, Bellweather," a smooth, spun-ice voice drawled from the doorway.

I spun around so fast my bristle brush flew out of my hand, arc-welding a soapy arch across the air before landing with a wet splat against Rowan Nightshade's spotless black leather boot.

Rowan stood in the frame of the smashed trapdoor, looking like an ethereal painting that had somehow wandered into a damp damp basement. His silver-trimmed coat was freshly pressed, his dark hair was styled in that infuriating, wind-swept-yet-perfect way, and his pale face showed zero signs of having spent the night dodging academy proctors.

He looked down at the soap suds sliding off his boot toe. His jaw twitched.

"Oops," I said, offering a bright, utterly insincere smile. "My hand slipped. Terrible shame about the boot, Your Royal Highness."

Rowan lifted his gaze, his dark eyes narrowing into sharp slits. "So you've heard."

"Heard?" I let out a loud, theatrical laugh, tossing my cleaning rag onto the desk. "Oh, no, I didn't hear. I spent three hours in the archives at dawn digging through restricted court registers because my right arm wouldn't stop glowing! Imagine my absolute delight when I found a portrait of the High Fae Royal Family and realized my annoying, tea-critiquing customer is actually Prince Rowan of the House of Nightshade!"

Rowan stepped into the cellar, his boots clicking rhythmically against the stone floor. He casually kicked my soapy brush under a stool. "You shouldn't have been in the restricted archives, Iris. That requires a Class-3 clearance pass."

"I used a hairpin and a very polite distraction spell on the librarian," I countered, leaning my hands on the edge of the workbench. "Why didn't you tell me? You let me bargain with you! You let me charge you double rates for fixing your watch!"

"You charged me triple rates, actually," Rowan corrected smoothly, stopping on the opposite side of the desk. He folded his arms across his chest, the posture so regal and infuriatingly relaxed that I wanted to chuck a brass gear at his forehead. "And my identity is irrelevant to our business transaction."

"Irrelevant?" I gasped, throwing my hands in the air. "Rowan, the Moon Court governs the High Seals! If the proctors had found you in an unlicensed shop with a Bellweather witch and a forbidden pre-Concord watch, they wouldn't have just suspended me—they would have declared it a political conspiracy!"

"Which is precisely why I lied," Rowan replied, his voice dropping into a quiet, icy register. "Had you known who I was, you would have panicked, refused the job, or attempted to bow. None of those outcomes would have resulted in my watch being repaired."

"I would never bow to you," I spat back. "I don't even bow to Headmaster Vane, and he holds my scholarship check!"

Sir Fluffington waddled to the edge of the desk, puffing his chest out and letting out a menacing, hiss-pitched honk directly at Rowan's face.

Rowan didn't even flinch. He merely reached out one long, pale finger and gently tapped the top of the goose's beak. Sir Fluffington froze, his eyes widening in complete outrage as Rowan subtly neutralized the bird's aggressive posture with a tiny spark of frost magic.

"Your accountant lacks manners," Rowan noted calmly.

"Leave my bird out of this!" I snatched Sir Fluffington up, cradling him under my arm like a feathered cannon. "You lied to me, Rowan. You brought royal danger into my cellar, gave me a glowing black tattoo, and now I'm on Head Proctor Vance's personal watchlist!"

"I also saved your shop from being seized," Rowan reminded me, his eyes locking onto mine with an unyielding, intense weight. "I stood between you and three diagnostic wands, pledged my personal reputation to cover your illegal inventory, and bound my own magical signature to mask the mark on your wrist."

I opened my mouth to shoot back another sharp insult, but the memory of his bleeding palm from the night before flashed in my mind. The silver blood tracing a protective ward across my mahogany desk. The way he had stood firmly in front of me when the proctors smashed through the door.

My anger sputtered, deflating into a frustrated sigh. I set Sir Fluffington back down on the desk.

"Why?" I asked softly, crossing my arms. "Why would a prince risk his reputation for an unlicensed shop owner in a basement?"

Rowan remained silent for a long moment. He turned his head slightly, staring at the shattered hinges of my cellar door. The harsh, arrogant mask he usually wore seemed to soften, exposing a deep, quiet exhaustion beneath his sharp features.

"Because at Moonvale, everyone looks at me and sees a crown," Rowan said, his voice barely above a whisper. "The professors expect perfection. The court demands obedience. The students either fear my position or try to manipulate it for political favors." He looked back at me, his dark eyes raw and startlingly direct. "When I walked into this damp, disorganized hole three days ago, you didn't see a prince. You saw an annoying customer with a broken watch. You yelled at me. You threatened to charge me extra. You treated me like... a person."

I blinked, completely caught off guard. "Rowan..."

"I didn't lie to deceive you, Iris," he continued, taking a slow step closer to the desk. "I kept it secret because for one hour a week, in this illegal shop, I was just a student paying a skilled Mender to fix a watch. I didn't want to lose that."

The silence in the cellar stretched out, heavy and thick with unsaid things. I stared at him, feeling a strange, uncomfortable lump form in my throat. I had spent three years at Moonvale feeling isolated—the poor scholarship witch who didn't fit into the high-society world of grand elementalists. I hadn't considered that the golden prince sitting at the top of the academy pyramid might feel just as isolated as I was.

I cleared my throat awkwardly, turning away to pick up my bristle brush from under the stool.

"Well," I muttered, wiping the dirt off the bristles against my apron. "Your pathetic little sob story doesn't change the fact that you still owe me forty gold pieces for the repair job."

A faint, almost imperceptible curve touched the corner of Rowan's lips. "Thirty-five. You agreed to thirty-five."

"It's forty now for emotional distress and royal deceit," I countered smoothly, leaning against the desk and catching his eye with a sharp, guarded grin. "And if you ever use frost magic on my goose again, I'm doubling it to fifty."

Sir Fluffington gave an approving honk from his ledger stack.

"Deal," Rowan said softly. He reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a small, leather-bound notebook, laying it on the mahogany wood between us. "Now that our personal grievances are settled, we have a far more pressing issue."

I leaned over the book. "What's that?"

"The anonymous report Vance received last night," Rowan said, opening the notebook to reveal a list of names written in precise, elegant handwriting. "The tip-off didn't come from a student. The handwriting on the parchment was sealed with an official academy proctor wax, but the ink used was Moon-Lily extract an ingredient exclusively imported by the Vale estate."

I frowned, the cold mark on my wrist giving a sharp, icy thrum. "Seraphina Vale?"

"Seraphina's family has been attempting to secure my court's endorsement for years," Rowan said, his jaw tightening. "She saw me enter the West Tower basement holding my mother's watch. She didn't report you because of your shop, Iris. She reported you to force me to reveal what I was carrying."

I looked down at my right wrist, pulling back my sleeve slightly to reveal the black crescent mark resting cold against my skin.

"She knows about the watch," I whispered.

"She suspects," Rowan corrected sharply. "Which means we are no longer just dealing with an illegal repair business or a broken watch. We are dealing with people who know what the Bellweather Mending line was capable of—and who want to ensure those seals stay broken."

I looked up, meeting the Fae Prince's dark, guarded gaze. The anger and distrust that had filled the cellar five minutes ago was gone, replaced by a cold, shared understanding. We were tied together now not just by a bargain or a repair bill, but by a secret that could destroy us both.

"Alright, Your Royal Highness," I said, rolling up my sleeves and grabbing a fresh rag. "I'll keep your secret, and you keep mine. But if we're doing this, we need a new door. And you're paying for the hinges."

Rowan looked at the smashed trapdoor, then back at me. The faint smile returned to his face, dark and unexpectedly warm.

"Consider it done, Bellweather."