Chapter 52
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
At the end of the hour, Dorian and I left my quarters. We strode through the hallway toward the throne room, he beside me, face forward, close enough that our shoulders almost brushed. Almost, but not quite.
I wouldn’t allow it.
But he was my only ally, besides Faun. The only one who had shown up. And in this hour I would take what allies I could get.
The residue of the herb remained on my tongue, bitter and sharp.
I felt no different, but I had only chewed it ten minutes ago.
While I had, Dorian had inspected my bow and arrows and my short sword.
He had touched the fletching on every arrow, lifting the shaft to eye level and balancing it on his palm.
He had urged me to lose every scrap of extra weight I wore—the cloak, the leathers. I needed to be light; this was a fight of endurance as much as skill. So I wore only a linen shirt and trousers, boots strapped tight, quill and short sword on a light belt, the bow slung over my chest.
My hands shook at my sides. I fisted them as we began to descend the stairs. I clenched them, unclenched, then clenched again.
I couldn’t deny an almost overwhelming truth:
I was walking toward my death.
A duel versus the Sylvanwild queen? She was hundreds of years old. I had seen her power in this very throne room, the wildness of her magic, the ruthlessness of her rule.
And I… I was just a changeling. A guard trained to run around the barracks’ yard until she retched or fell. A fae from another court, if Dorian was to be believed. And I didn’t even know which one.
Compared to these people, I was a girl who knew almost nothing.
Dorian and I came to the base of the stairs to a cleared-out throne room. The empty throne sat like a watching specter. “They’re all outside,” he said, as though he’d heard the question in my head. The double doors were open and a large swath of moonlight streamed in.
I started toward it, but Dorian stepped in my path. He didn’t dare touch me, but his eyes were wide, deep, haunted. I faced him, waiting. Wanting to slap him and curse him and bite him.
“Before you leave this room, there’s something I need you to understand.” His voice was a rasp.
Not now. Not here. “Dorian…”
“I came to your kingdom to find you. I came to kill you.”
Cold anger wrenched at my chest. “I already understood that.”
His lips twitched. “I hated you. I hated you before I’d ever laid eyes on you. And then I hated you more when we were paired. You were my burden, my death. I didn’t want you yoked to me—”
A face appeared in the doorway behind Dorian. Faun. “You’re out of time.” Her voice was deep, reproachful.
I stepped back from Dorian. “Thank you,” I said. “Thank you for helping me understand.”
He turned as I stepped around him. “Eurydice…”
He was the queen’s liar. He had looked into my eyes, slid his hand between my thighs, and told me again and again he didn’t want to hurt me. He was one of them, a Sylvanwild fae, as ruthless and as cunning as he needed to be.
No matter if she’d forced him into silence. No matter if she’d forced him to speak.
Even now, his words were part of some scheme. Even if they weren’t, I didn’t trust anything he had to say.
“I’ll walk with Faun,” I said. “You can follow, if you must.”
The part of me that had chewed on the numbing herbs had taken control. She could not feel pain, could not allow it to pierce through.
Even when that pain wasn’t an arrow, wasn’t a sword.
Even when there was no obvious wound.
I couldn’t trust him. I couldn’t.
Dorian walked behind us to the meadow, his broad form limned by moonlight when I glanced back. We went silently, following a narrow path between the trees. Bushes reached out, snagging and scraping at our legs—until the trees stopped and my face lifted and my mouth opened on the scene.
The meadow was swathed in moonlight, all the grass silvered and gleaming. It looked like water in its smoothness, like the largest lake I had ever seen. I had not even imagined the trees broke this far and wide in any part of the Sylvanwild Court’s lands.
At the far side, torchlight gleamed. Ten torches flickering in the night, so far away they were the size of candles. The night was almost still, without a breeze.
I started toward the light, but Faun caught my shoulder with her fingertips. She nodded to the left, where more torchlight gleamed much closer by. “Over there is Rhiannon’s camp. This is yours.”
Her camp. My camp.
As though we were in a battle. Or maybe even a war.
We approached the nearby torchlight, and there stood Haskel with crossed arms and eyes on me.
“I can’t say I expected this,” he said, the golden light casting moving shadows on his face.
“Nor I,” Dorian said as he approached. “Nor I.”
Haskel swept an arm out once I’d come close. “I hope you don’t mind, but I claimed the position of your weaponsmaster.” He gestured to a rack of bows and one of swords. “I made sure to pick your favorites.”
I stared at him, my eyes softening. I had more allies than I’d known. “I don’t… I…”
“None of that.” He reached down and hefted a bow twice as large as the one I’d practiced with. Its dark wood bore no reflection in the torchlight. “I think you’ll want this one. You need range. It’s light, though—good for a woman. Have a feel.”
I accepted the bow. It was surprisingly light for a longbow, but still an unfamiliar weight in my hands. “How far am I shooting?”
Haskel pointed toward the far camp. “About twenty paces short of that is where she’ll be standing.”
My stomach hollowed. “That’s impossible. It’s nighttime, and I’ve never shot that far.”
“Not for her,” Dorian said, his voice clipped and tense. “She’s the best fae in two hundred years with a bow. And her eyes are trained to see at night.”
I turned my head to meet his eyes. No words needed to be spoken.
This wasn’t a duel. It was a slaughter.
Dorian stepped forward, by my side. “Your best chance is to survive. Evade her arrows, Eury.”
“Much as I hate to admit, he’s right,” Haskel said. “I’ve seen you shoot. You’re good, girl, but you’re no match for her. It would take you forty years to gain an ounce of her skill.”
My throat felt as though someone had pressed a cork down it. “That’s helpful, Haskel.”
“The truth does tend to be,” he said.
“How will evading her arrows make me worthy?” My words came out thin into the night. “She shoots, I run like a rabbit. That’s no queen.”
“The best rabbits survive,” Haskel said. “It’s how nature persists.”
I glanced over at him. “And the spiritstag respects that?”
“Nature respects that,” he said. “The spiritstag is nothing if not nature’s sentience.”
My gaze returned to the far-off torchlight. Over there, I caught the shadows of movement. Someone was high-stepping through the grass. A cloud had obscured the moon, and now it moved away.
Rhiannon came into sharp relief, her light-wood bow low at her side. She came to a stop facing me, like she could see me.
She probably could.
Haskel pressed something into my side—a bundle of long arrows. “If you intend to shoot, you’ll need these arrows, not those tiny ones. Don’t worry, I’ve fletched them myself.”
I pulled the shorter arrows from my quill and replaced them with the longer ones, my hands trembling as I fumbled one.
I didn’t know whether I would shoot. I could barely remember how to draw.
“It’s almost time,” Dorian said, sounding breathless beside me. “Once you begin, you won’t be able to stop until it’s done. Your best hope is to close the distance. She’s most formidable with a bow.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off Rhiannon’s form in the grass. “Dorian,” I whispered.
So many words pressed at my throat. Cruel things, angry and grieving things. I wanted to tell him I hated him, but that wasn’t right. I hated the way I felt next to him right now, the wrench of my chest.
Most of all, I hated that I had no time to say anything.
“If I die,” I said, “does that mean you die, too?”
A pause. The silence lengthened, long enough I thought he wouldn’t answer. Then, so quietly only I could hear, “My life is yours.”
I didn’t know what he meant, and I couldn’t ask. Not here, not now, not with my veins flowing hot and my mind stripped of everything but instinct.
I gripped the bow tight and stepped forward.
“Irin go with you, girl,” Haskel said.
It sounded like a benediction. It sounded like a eulogy.
My step faltered. Then I forced myself to take another, and another, until I’d counted twenty paces away from the torchlight and I stood opposite Rhiannon in the meadow.
We stood like that in silence, and a glint from the tree line captured my attention. A stag, head raised, stood at the far end of the meadow exactly between the two of us.
The spiritstag. It was here to witness.
A creak split the night. My attention sharpened on Rhiannon. She had raised her bow and now pulled at the gutstring until the wood bent for her. An arrow with white fletching sat snug against the wood, the end of it close to her eye. She raised the bow degree by degree, sighting me.
I lifted my own bow and one of the arrows from my quill. It was awkward and long; everything about the weapon I held felt wrong. I wasn’t used to the shape, to the string, to the arrows.
Nonetheless, I fitted the arrow to the bow. The Rite required it—bows, swords, and magic.
I pulled the string to my eye, and my shoulder burned with the strain. Through the taut line, I fixed Rhiannon’s distant form into my sights. Then, as she had done, I raised the bow three degrees.
We stayed like that, two statues in opposition, until a voice issued into my head. The voice of nature.
It didn’t speak in words, but in a pulse through the marrow of my bones.
Begin.