Chapter 55 #2
Now, more than ever, I understood some part of Rhiannon. Why she couldn’t keep anyone close. Here in Feyreign, secrets were like vipers waiting to be uncovered. And Dorian was masterful at keeping them.
My eyes closed. I turned my face to bring Faun back into view. The act made my head throb and my eyes ache as I opened them. “How long?”
“Three days,” Dorian said. His voice was low, a rasp.
“During which you’ve only slept,” Faun said, “and he hasn’t.”
My eyebrows rose. “At all?”
Faun gave a slight tilt of her head, pressed her lips together. An affirmation.
Three days. That was an eternity. “Dorian…”
He came around the side of the bed, appearing next to Faun. “What matters now is your court.”
I could barely form the words. “My court?”
“Your inner court,” Faun said. “You must name one. Today, before everything gets away from you. Your second, your weaponsmaster, your consort…”
I lifted my head an inch. “My consort?”
Faun’s gaze flicked to Dorian, who met it with a dark one of his own. Something passed between them, and he gave a single nod. His eyes snapped to mine and softened. “I’ll be outside.”
I watched him turn. He didn’t walk like a man who hadn’t slept in three days. He was still as upright, as powerful as ever. I still remembered the way he’d walked toward me that night, in his bedchamber.
A sting pierced my chest. Forget that night.
He opened the door, stepped through it, and left Faun and me alone.
She sat on the edge of the bed next to me. “Listen to me. The other courts already know.”
“Know what?”
“Of Rhiannon’s death. Of your ascendance. They know you’re weak, untrained.”
How had news spread so fast? Then Faun’s words sank in: weak, untrained. “I beat her,” I said, heat rising to my throat. “Isn’t that enough?”
“Not nearly.” Faun’s chin lowered. Her gaze on me was imperious, and I wondered at how a fae like her could ever be a servant.
“Rhiannon was a weak queen. Paranoid. She got rid of her second-in-command fifty years ago—cut off his head. She never named a king or consort. She had terrific aim with a bow, a great grasp of magic, and no foresight.”
That heat stayed in my throat. “It wasn’t a lack of foresight that killed her.”
“The spiritstag never would have directed her to attack the Kingdom of Storms if she had been stronger.”
“Directed her?”
Faun’s face shuttered. “Our magic doesn’t extend past our kingdom except at the direction of the gods. You saw wraiths that night, didn’t you?”
I nodded.
“The wraiths cannot leave our lands unless the stag wills it.” She paused. “You think a queen with no foresight contrives a plan to attack your kingdom of her own volition? We don’t batter down walls, Eurydice. We climb them in the night.”
I sucked in a breath. “But if the goal was to kill changelings…”
“Rhiannon thought it was.” Faun’s hand landed on my forearm. “Is that what you believe?”
No, it wasn’t. Our kingdom hadn’t been attacked in generations, so why now? If the goal was killing changelings, why not just send assassins in the night? Clearly the fae were so capable of infiltrating our kingdom, we’d never suspected that our babies were being replaced by changelings.
Battering down our wall—killing my people—had filled me with terror, with rage, with hunger. I’d felt vulnerable since the moment I’d seen that fragment of wall hit the barracks yard, and no one was more exploitable than the vulnerable.
That left an obvious answer. Faun saw it, and now I did, too.
The spiritstag had wanted this. Had wanted another Carys—a desperate, furious changeling to make a promise to a god. I had asked it to put me in the trials, and it had. It had asked me for a promise to save my life, and I had made that promise. Not unwillingly, but with relish.
If I had died in that attack, no matter; another generation of changelings would come in a hundred years. The stag had all of eternity to wait. But because I hadn’t died, because I’d survived—and survived, and survived, and survived—I became more and more the changeling the stag wanted me to be.
Which meant gods could be bastards, too.
It also meant queens were figureheads. Pawns of the gods.
There was only one other thing—
“The stag couldn’t have known,” I said. “It couldn’t have known Dorian would save me rather than kill me.”
Faun gave a soft laugh, just a bit of breath from her nose. “How could he look upon you and not be enspelled?”
I stared at her, blinked once, uncomprehending. No one had ever spoken of me that way. “How many changelings has he killed, Faun?”
Her face went serious. She studied the blanket beside me, tracing a flower pattern. “I don’t know. That’s the truth. I only know he’s gone into your kingdom three times in three years. When he brought you back, that was a shock.”
Dorian had been to my kingdom before. Three times in three years.
“To kill changelings?”
She gave a nod, continued tracing with her finger. I’d never seen her avoidant like this. “Mostly Aurelia and Highmark. Some Noctere changelings, too.”
To what end? But the answer was obvious: if changelings were tools, and the courts were always vying for power, then what better way to deprive a court of that power than by destroying its tool?
My hands fisted in the blanket. “He isn’t a historian, is he?”
“He is, but he’s better with a sword than a pen.”
Yes, that much I had gathered.
I straightened. “I’ll need your help, Faun. With all of this—Seelie, Unseelie, the four courts…”
“They’re wolves, the other courts.” Faun leaned closer, her gaze flicking up to me. “If you don’t form an inner court around you today, you’ll become their meal.”
“Even the Seelie?”
Faun scoffed. “The Seelie may wear pastels and smiles, but they’re as sharp-toothed as snakes.”
I searched her eyes. “But a consort?” How would that help me?
“Would you rather name a king?”
The word burst from me. “No.” I’d rather name no one.
“Then unless you want to have a hundred noblemen throwing themselves at you from every court, you’ll name someone. Someone you trust.”
That was a commodity I was in short supply of.