Chapter 57
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
I came to the landing atop the throne room with a wrenched heart. Part of me imagined he’d told me everything I wanted to hear—how desperately sorry he was, how he would spend the rest of his life making it up to me—and part of me lived in the truth.
Dorian hated changelings. He’d volunteered for the slaughter of everyone I loved.
I had to stand alone. Well, almost alone.
Faun stood there, waiting. She gestured toward the staircase. “After you.”
I let out a sharp breath. Below, I heard the sounds of many voices.
She stepped close to me, taking my hand. “Make them fucking see you.” Her voice was steel.
I nodded, squeezing her hand.
Before I started down the stairs, I bent down and, one by one, removed my heels. I set them aside. When I glanced back at Faun, both her eyebrows were raised. I gave a half-smile. “I’d rather not die on the way down.”
A glimmer of amusement appeared in her eyes. “A barefoot queen. Like the old way.”
I straightened and turned toward the stairs, looking down over the mass of Sylvanwild fae in the throne room, and realized I didn’t know the old way. Not at all.
I had won a duel, and that made me their queen. But beyond that…
Faun was right. I needed an inner court—badly. And yet the person who was most equipped to teach me about the old ways was the person who now stood in the hall he had guarded for three sleepless days.
Faun’s words from before the Thorn Rite floated back: Think. Improvise.
As applicable at a crowning as in a mud fight.
I lifted the front of my dress and started down the stairs. I sensed Faun following behind. The wood was cool under my feet, and as I descended, I kept my chin high. The sounds of voices below grew louder, and then they quieted.
I reached the bottom of the stairs—and was met by a thousand sets of fae eyes.
Many more than I had ever seen. Not just highborn and servants, but fae from around the court’s lands.
They wore simple clothes, not ragged but not fine.
These were the workers, the laborers, the villagers Faun had told me would be here.
The backbone of this court, she’d called them.
Just like in the southern district.
They stood at either side of the path to the throne, all of them but the children—and even some of the children—bigger, sturdier, more rugged than me. Their skin was warm-toned, their hair brown and black. I truly was not of this court.
I thrust the thought aside.
I was the queen; I had claimed the crown.
Forward, and forward. I kept my spine as straight as that first night on the wall, meeting fae eyes as I walked.
Faun had given me an hour of preparation—“stare like you see them, like you know their secrets”—and I clung to that.
I could not lower my chin, could not avert my eyes.
I had to walk like the tallest person in the room, or else they would be on me like serpents.
The Sylvanwild fae respected the strongest in the room, and she alone.
I came to the throne, almost expecting to find the seat occupied, and paused in front of the dais. An empty chair, meant for me. So many times I had seen Rhiannon here. She had sat in it like it had been designed with her in mind.
I stepped onto the dais, up to the throne, and turned toward the Sylvanwild Court. Before me, a sea of faces watched on. And among them, not far, stood Faun. Haskel.
…and Dorian, close enough that I could make out the blue-black glint of his hair.
I forced my gaze ahead. Now, it was to wait.
The waiting didn’t last long. The bells began faint but high, increasing in pitch until, with strange slowness, the double doors opposite me opened.
The spiritstag stood there, blinding in the sunlight. The only creature with the power to crown a queen of this court. The only entity with power greater than me. The god who’d brought me here.
It stepped forward, one hoof resounding on the wood floor.
The bells rang on, though none hung from its antlers.
The sound seemed attendant to the creature itself.
It came forward, passing directly down the center of the throne room, toward me.
All parted before it like the fish in the pond at the grove.
It walked with a song’s precision, hooves tapping one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four.
And I wondered, as I stared with that same expansiveness in my chest and inability to focus on anything else but the stag—I wondered at the corners of my mind, where Eurydice still existed despite her awe—if I would ever know freedom again.
If the rest of my life, long or as short as it may be, would be in service to this god of nature.
I wondered if there was anything true, anything real in this court of brambles and fangs.
When the stag arrived at the dais, it paused before me.
Kneel, Eurydice Waters.
That voice, impossible to ignore.
I dropped carefully onto my good knee, then onto the knee of my injured leg, my dress pooling around me.
I say this to you, the spiritstag said, and only you. Even now, as you dip your head and the Sylvanwild hear that I call you queen—
I lowered my head.
The spiritstag inclined its neck forward, antlers lowering toward me.
Even now, you must know this: the path is perilous. It is unsure. You have made a promise, yes, but you would not be the first to break it.
I will not, I thought. It was automatic, like breathing. In the stag’s presence, I seemed to lose myself entirely.
Perhaps the stag sensed this. It said, They see you as weak. You need protection. A pause, then, And they need protection from you.
I didn’t know what that last part meant; it struck through me like a dark thread attached to a fat needle. I have power, I thought.
A scoff resounded through my head. You have the whiff of it. The scent of it. But you step into thousands of years of history.
I will rise to it.
You may, or you may not. The spiritstag’s antler touched my head; the edge of it was as sharp as a blade. But there is a chance, with him beside you.
Him?
The spiritstag didn’t answer. My eyes opened, my head rose, and I found the whole of the court kneeling.
A servant appeared with the diadem—Rhiannon’s diadem—atop an emerald-green pillow. A second servant removed the crown from the pillow with both hands and lowered it carefully over my head.
The thorns slid through my hair to press against my scalp. Pain, pricking at my head. Pain, my ever-present friend. Pain, the only thing I could trust.
I sucked in air. The spiritstag’s hoof rose; it stomped loudly atop the dais, just as Faun had told me would happen.
The servants backed away. It was done.
I rose. Pain, as my leg unbent. Pain, as the diadem settled into place.
The spiritstag remained before me, head raised. From nearby, I felt Faun’s gaze on me like a brand, pressing on me.
It was time. It was time to make them see me.
“Rise,” I said. “Rise all.”
Heads lifted. Slowly, without certainty, the Sylvanwild fae began to rise. I waited, fingers clasped before me, until they were all on their feet.
As Faun had said at least three times, a queen didn’t fucking rush.
Finally, when the shuffling had finished and all eyes were on me, I drew in a breath.
“I know what many of you expect,” I said. “That I will send a champion into the queen trials. That I will name a consort. That I will preserve the old ways.”
I paused. A severe, uncomfortable pause.
My heart thundered—but I had made a promise. A promise to a god. One I could not break.
“I have no interest in the old ways.”
I had expected gasps or at least whispers. But their shock was silent, their stares as loud as shouts. Perhaps, in the spiritstag’s presence, they felt like the awestruck children they’d once been.
I stepped to the edge of the dais. I forced my gaze to travel over those nearest me. To meet their eyes, even as my hands trembled in their clasp. Fear, courage—one always preceded the other.
“Each of you knows I am not of this court. I was kidnapped”—my eyes skipped over to Dorian, who remained unmoving except for a tick of the muscle in his jaw—“from the human Kingdom of Storms. I come from a barren land. A land of acid and scorn.
“And yet,” I said. “I was forced into your trials. I survived them. I was forced to fight your queen. I defeated her. And should any fae in this room wish to claim this crown upon my head, I dare you to step forward.”
I waited, my lips firm, willing my knees not to shake under my dress. The room remained silent. Not one fae stepped forward.
Not one.
I wondered if I could have summoned the power I’d need if anyone did challenge me. In that meadow, it’d felt easy; here, I wasn’t so sure.
With a nod, I unclasped my hands. “So be it. Here is my first act. I name Faun Morraine my second-in-command.”
Faun came forward with hands fisted at her sides, chin lifted, and stepped up on the dais next to me. She turned to face the others. This time there were murmurs. A servant fae as second? Well, get used to surprise.
My eyes found Dorian. My insides wrenched the way they often did at his nearness. I raised my chin and my voice. “I name no king. I need no consort.”
This time a beat of silence fell. Then voices. More, more, until a din had started around the room. And they weren’t sounds of approval; even a changeling raised in the Kingdom of Storms knew these sounds. They were common amongst human and fae.
“It isn’t right,” a man finally called out.
“Look at what happened to Rhiannon,” another said.
“Rhiannon didn’t die for lack of a cock at her side,” Faun said loud enough to be heard, her voice lethal-edged.
Gods, I was glad for her.
The murmuring went on, moving like ripples through the crowd. I had one more thing to say, and I needed them to listen.
So I did what Eurydice Waters would do.
I pressed my lips together and I let out a long, loud whistle. It was a whistle the dead night guard atop the wall would have been impressed by. It caromed off the walls and rang into everyone’s ears.
It worked.
All eyes darted to me and stuck. Waited.
Now, the most important thing of all. The true promise.
“The Sylvanwild Court has already endured its trials. Four hundred years of them,” I said. “It has endured its Rite. And I will not ask my court to spill more blood for the sake of hierarchy.”
I paused. Breathed. Then I pulled the words from deep in my gut, the ones I’d spoken to the stag in the grove. The promise I must keep, could not break.
“I will be my own champion in the queen’s trials.”
This time the voices couldn’t be stopped. They couldn’t be quelled.
They spoke out about tradition. They cried about weakness, about the death of the Sylvanwild. They railed against me, a bitch from another court. A changeling raised as a human. A child.
But none approached the dais. None challenged me.
They were afraid of me. Faun had ensured they’d heard about my acid rain. Soon, they would see what had become of Rhiannon when her body was carried through the gardens to her final resting place. Then their fear would grow.
Good, a part of me thought. It was the part of me that felt small, that longed to be safe. Smallness could make us desperate, could make us grasping.
Sometimes, smallness could make us cruel.
Another part of me wished for something else, something greater—admiration or love. But we took what we could, when we could.
I stared into the eyes of the spiritstag, and it back at me. It didn’t speak, but I saw the promise I’d made in the constellation of its eyes.
Then, slowly, it turned away. Its head swung around, antlers gleaming, that iridescent gaze perceiving all.
The room went silent. It had chosen me for queen, and what fae argued with a god?
The stag took one step toward the door, another—
And it halted.
The antlered head turned again… toward him.
“Dorian veyre.”
Veyre?
The name was a thunderclap. The court turned as one. My breath hitched.
The spiritstag spoke again. Its voice struck through the chamber like a tolled bell: Queenslayer. Bearer of Carys’s legacy. The promise of ice and spite.
And then—
Light. Pure, silver, celestial.
It bloomed from Dorian’s chest, etching through the fabric of his doublet. A sigil appeared there, glowing: a curved dagger pierced through with thorned vines.
I stared, eyebrows lowering.
I recognized that dagger.
It was Carys’s dagger. It was my dagger.
I had held it in the trial. I had seen it in my dream. I had felt its power, coveted its grip.
Across the throne room, Dorian’s gaze shifted toward me. I didn’t understand what had just transpired, but when Faun’s hand gripped mine, I understood the weight of it. Dorian had been given a title. Power.
Queenslayer.
His gaze met mine, and I knew as sure as the acid rain would fall on the Kingdom of Storms each day… our fates were bound.
END OF BOOK 1