Chapter 51
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Dorian followed me to my quarters in silence. Once inside, he closed the door behind us and leaned against it as though someone might try to force their way inside. His eyes were lit and wild.
I faced him with fingers clenched. “Do you plan to try killing me or screwing me this time?”
Pain flitted over his face. Then it was gone. “I deserve that. And more.” He didn’t move from the door. “But we don’t have the time. What happened inside that trial, Eury?”
I scoffed. “You were there.”
“Yes, but that isn’t how the trial goes. The one time it occurred in the past, the male partners—every one of them—came out blind. Well, those who came out at all. You saw Faun’s partner.”
“Does it matter now? I thought you wanted to help me prepare for this duel.” A duel, after everything. “Why this? I passed her fucking trials.”
His breath came fast. His head shook faintly. “The Thorn Rite. Two queens cannot exist in the same court.”
My heart felt like a bird inside me. “I’m no queen.”
“The spiritstag invokes the Rite when a queen arises. You, Eury. It spoke to every one of us in that throne room.” He pushed away from the door, took a step forward. “The rain. You brought that rain.”
Anger clenched my fists. “It was the only way.”
“The only way to do what?” His voice was softer now.
“To stop it all—the torture, the violence.” To save you.
He took a step forward. “How did you make it rain?”
“I…”
“How, Eury?”
I closed my eyes and pressed the heels of my palms against them. How had I brought the rain? Even here, even now, I felt the memory of power in my body. But how had I gotten there? The dagger, the feeling. “I don’t know. I just did.”
“Four hundred years ago, Queen Carys did the same. She’s the reason it rains acid there every day. She’s the reason your home is called the Kingdom of Storms.”
My hands lowered. They came away wet with tears. I tried to focus on him. “She was a changeling.”
He nodded. “Like you. And Eury, there’s more.”
I let out a scoff of a laugh. “Gods, there always is.”
He took another step forward, and I took one backward. He stopped, palms out as though he offered no threat. But he did. “You aren’t Sylvanwild.”
“What?”
“You look nothing like us. Surely you’ve noticed. You’re blond, pale…”
The world felt vertiginous. I set my hand on the bed frame and considered what he’d said. It was true that they were all dark-haired with warm undertones. I hadn’t thought anything of it; I’d spent most of my time here thinking I was human.
This was too much. I had to duel Rhiannon, and now this.
“You’re petite, smaller-framed—”
“Damn it, Dorian. Stop.”
“There’s a reason I’m telling you this.” His voice was a clear thread into my brain. “This is a duel to the death, Eurydice. If you want to have a hope of survival, you’ll need your magic.”
I faced away from him, still holding the bed’s frame. My blood thundered. “Oh, I can’t just stab her and be done with it?”
“But your magic isn’t of Sylvanwild.”
“You told me I used my magic in the cave. You said—”
“You did. You tapped into water.” He loosed a breath. “I don’t know how. You aren’t supposed to be able to do that.”
I clenched the wood with both hands now. “And what am I supposed to be able to do?”
“Sylvanwild is nature magic—feralis. The other courts, they’re different. Noctere is noxveil, Highmark is solaire, Aurelia is viridane…”
“And which of those four am I?” He didn’t answer. I half-turned to see him in my periphery. “Dorian?”
“You’re Seelie.” Seelie—that meant Highmark or Aurelia. “Beyond that… I don’t even know how you touched that waterfall, Eury.”
My thumbs pressed over the ornate etchings on the bed frame. “You really are more of a dumb blade than a historian.”
I knew without looking that he flinched. Good. I would be petty, spike him right where it hurt; maybe then he would feel a modicum of what I had felt when I’d stood in that throne room before Rhiannon while he’d stayed silent at her side.
“It’s true,” he said, his voice soft. “I’m painfully ignorant of a great many things.”
I hated his acquiescence. Hated it more than if he’d fought back. At least then I’d have good reason to continue my pettiness.
My breath sawed through my nose. “So I’m a changeling from another court. Why am I still here? Why did Highmark or Aurelia not come retrieve me?”
He hesitated. “It should be obvious, Eury. We’re Unseelie.” His eyes were sad and apologetic, and then I understood.
“My court doesn’t know where I am. That’s it, isn’t it? Steal a changeling from another court, maybe you’ll gain an edge.”
His nostrils widened as he breathed. His voice came out as a whisper. “I wasn’t sent to steal you.”
Right—he was sent to kill me.
I stared at him, cold truth hitting my nose and eyes and making them sting. We stood before each other just like the night we’d met, when he’d pointed a sword at my heart.
I would not cry. I would not give him that.
My lips twisted. “I called you a blade, but you’re just a lowborn killer.”
Those words passed over him, paling his face, thinning his lips. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, the feeling was gone. It had been replaced by hardness.
“Right now, Eurydice, I’m also your second.” Only his lips moved, like any other movement would destroy his focus. “And I’m telling you in the time we have: no weapon will be enough. You cannot defeat Rhiannon with sword or bow.”
“All I know are swords and bows.”
“You know magic. You’ve used it.”
I let out a bitter laugh. “I have no idea how I did that.”
“Irin’s breath, we don’t have the time…” His eyes darted right, toward the tapestry on the far wall—the one I had studied the day I’d arrived and in all the days since. The four courts. He stepped to it, finger pointing. “Here, you see this?”
I didn’t move any closer. “It’s a forest.”
“Threaded through with gold. Do you know what that gold is?”
I stared at the spot where he pointed. I had always thought the gold on the trees was the sunlight on the leaves. Every day here, my understanding of this world seemed to shrink even as it grew. I learned more, but the world expanded around me. New truths, new turns.
“No.”
He turned toward me, his hands together as though he clasped some invisible valuable between them, right at the level of his heart. “It’s what becomes of us Sylvanwild fae when we die. We lace the trees like gilded spiderwebs. We become magic. Memento mori, Eury.”
I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand how this translated into using magic.
I could only see Rhiannon’s face like a ghost before my eyes, every time I blinked.
This felt like the first lesson in years—decades—of learning to use fae magic. And Dorian was having to start at the beginning with me when we only had precious minutes to get to the end.
A knock came at the door. Three hard raps.
Dorian’s brow drew together. “It’s not yet time.” He stalked toward it. “What?” he snapped.
“Let me in,” a voice said on the other side.
I knew that voice.
“Leave us,” Dorian said, but I was already striding to the door.
I pushed past him and opened it.
There on the threshold stood Faun, her face hard, her mouth tight. “I need to speak to you.”
I didn’t hesitate; I stepped back to allow her in.
Faun strode into the room with a pouch in one hand, and I closed the door behind her.
Her eyes shifted to Dorian as she moved past him.
She was so small, and he so large beside her, and yet she seemed outsized when she met his eyes.
She was a servant, yet she did not need to request he move aside. He simply did.
She crossed two steps to the center of the room, then turned toward me. When we met eyes, I felt the same feeling I felt every time I looked at Faun, and she looked at me.
We were alike. We shared an unspoken strife.
“You’ll need this.” She thrust the bag toward me.
I accepted it. It was leather and light. “What is it?”
“Open it.”
I pulled the twine tie and the leather blossomed open in my palm to reveal an assemblage of herbs.
“Ground nightleaf,” she said. “Thornroot. A drop of ambervine.”
In my palm, the scent of the herbs rose up—sharp, biting, suffused with a floral tang. Before I could stop myself, my gaze shifted to Dorian. I hated myself for that instinct.
He grunted. “It’s good. Rhiannon will have those in her body when the duel begins.”
“What does it do?”
“It numbs pain,” he said. “The herbs will keep your head clear when she tries to break your focus.”
“Don’t take too much unless you want to see the gods,” Faun said.
My gaze lifted to her. “Why help me?”
She began to pace. “Rhiannon leads with her right hand at the start of any fight, but her left wrist is stronger. She’ll switch eventually, and if you live that long, that’s when you’ll know she’s no longer holding back.”
I stared. I listened.
“When she spins, don’t chase her blade. Let her spin. If you must, step in. Drive upward.”
“I was told no sword would win me the duel.”
Faun’s eyes sharpened on Dorian. “How little you’ve prepared her.”
Dorian let out a hard breath. “We’ve been short on time, and we were interrupted.”
She continued pacing. “It won’t win you the duel, but you don’t want your blade to lose you it, either.”
I let out a shaky breath. “Someone explain the rules to me.”
Faun and Dorian met gazes. He nodded once at her. “The Thorn Rite is more than just a fight to the death,” she said. “It’s proof of queenship. First you’ll start with bows. If you both survive, you’ll draw blades. And should you survive that, you’ll use your magic.”
“A queen who cannot survive a bow or a blade cannot rule,” Dorian said. “Only she who can wield all three and prevail may claim sovereignty.”
Faun’s eyes closed. Those were words she had heard before.
Bow, blade, and magic. And I couldn’t even use the third.
How could I possibly win?
“If I understand you right,” I said, “then she’s the best in the court with a bow.”
“None better,” Faun said. “Your best hope is to survive it. You must always think. Improvise.”
Think. Improvise.
I was good at that, at least.
“And if I survive the blade,” I said, “then I must use magic. But I can’t even…”
“You can,” Faun said, turning fully toward me. “I saw it in the cave. I saw what shouldn’t be. Do you not feel it?”
The cave, the waterfall, the Sylvanwild magic. I began, slowly, “I’ve seen something in the air since the day I entered this place. I see it all around us, even now.”
Her chin lowered. “Yes.”
I raised my free hand, floating it through the air. In the soft light, whorls of iridescence washed over it. In a certain light they might be golden strands. “But it does me no good.”
“When we were children—” Faun said.
“If you’re going to talk to me about spiderwebs laced over trees, Dorian’s already given me that speech.”
Her eyes glinted. “Think back on it, Eurydice.” It was the first time she had addressed me by my name. “You did something magical in that third trial, didn’t you? Something you weren’t meant to. What was it?”
I swallowed. The image of the cloud-darkened square flashed before me. The sight of the king’s throat opening to my blade under the acid rain. The sound of his skin hissing. The feel of that dagger under my grip. My free hand flexed. “Rain. I brought rain.”
“Acid rain,” Dorian said.
“She invoked Queen Carys’s curse?” Faun hissed.
My gaze darted between them. “Wasn’t that the only way?”
“No,” Faun said. “It wasn’t.”
The two of them stared at me a moment, their eyes narrowing as though they understood a truth I did not. Not just any truth—one about me. And in both their eyes I saw something else. Something I had never seen before. An emotion I couldn’t place.
I was about to speak when Faun said, almost in a whisper, “What Dorian said about the spiderwebs is true. What you see in the air is our fallen fae. Remember what it took. It’s what you’ll need.”
She started toward the door. When she set her hand on the latch, I stopped her with a hand on her razor-blade shoulder.
Faun glanced back at me.
“Why are you helping me?” I asked.
Faun’s eyes were once again hard, her lips pressed tight. A stream of thoughts seemed to pass over her face, twitching her jaw. Then, finally, “Because I’ve seen her kill. And I’d rather she not kill you.”