Chapter 32
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Back in my room, I shut the door hard and leaned against it. My eyes closed as my head bumped the wood behind me. I was alive, but shoved so deep between thorns and claws that I could barely breathe.
Even if I survived this next trial, I would still have to survive Rhiannon.
A knock came almost at once.
“It’s me,” Dorian said through the door.
I opened it. His face was pale, his hair long and mussed like he’d wrestled sleep and lost.
“I’m not dead,” I said. “Though apparently I’m at risk of having my head rent from my neck by your queen.”
He closed his eyes slowly, heaving a breath. “I’ve been told that at least a dozen times over the decades. She’s bluster until she isn’t. She’s keeping you around.”
“Why?”
He hesitated. Then, “That, I couldn’t say. The whole court thought we’d be dead in the first trial. Maybe we’re a spectacle now.”
A spectacle was good. A spectacle meant I was still underestimated.
“She told me to prepare.” My hand fell on the doorframe as I stepped closer. “The next trial begins in a few hours.”
“Irin’s breath.” Dorian’s fist hit the door. “Of course it would be now.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’ll be night when the trial begins. The Sylvanwild forests are most dangerous at night, and…”
The wraiths.
“You’re with a human.”
He didn’t nod, but I could see the acknowledgment in his eyes. I was blind at night, twice as helpless. His hand came out and touched my shoulder. This time, his touch wasn’t a shock. “Meet me in my quarters in an hour.” His fingers squeezed. “Be prepared for anything.”
I wondered at the Dorian standing before me. The first trial had changed him, and I could see it had changed me in his eyes. He bore a light there now, just for me.
I couldn’t say exactly when that change had happened. It was tucked somewhere between the morning I’d found dew collected on my sword and the night I’d sutured his wounds.
And his features seemed changed. The ghastliness of his eyes, the heavy brow, his slanted lips—none of them seemed so terrible as they had that first time I’d looked at him under daylight, from the wagon’s bed.
He seemed to have a synchrony, every part of him designed by nature’s care.
His irises and pupils, which had seemed to me like pits, now gleamed like onyx jewels. They saw me.
We were partners. At least for now.
I nodded. “One hour.”
Over the next hour, I prepared myself with slow care. I cleaned my body and then, piece by piece, put on my armor—my jerkin, my pants, my boots, my cloak. I braided my hair and wound that braid into a bun at the nape of my neck. I belted on my short sword, my knife, and slung my bow and quiver on.
My mother’s journal took up its spot inside my jerkin, near my heart.
Finally, I stood staring at Thalassa’s unopened pouch.
It was small enough to bring with me without weighing me down.
I attached it to my jerkin. Even unopened, the thought of having the elder fae with me in some form felt like a promise kept.
The door to Dorian’s quarters was open when I arrived. Inside, he was armored and pacing. His hair had been pulled tight and low at the back of his head, just like mine, and his eyes were on the floor.
He saw me, crossed the space in two strides, then stopped hard. He slid a small canteen and a familiar-looking leather pouch from inside his cloak. “You’ll need provisions if we’re separated.”
I took both and found space for them on my belt. “Dried rabbit meat?”
“The finest in the court.”
“I’ll take none less.”
He snapped his fingers and turned away. He disappeared into his study and emerged with a glowing purple object in hand. It was one of the crystals that lit the citadel, but much smaller than any I’d seen before. He extended it to me, palm up. “This light will not go out.”
I picked up the crystal between my index finger and thumb and held it before my eyes. “How?”
“Its power comes from the magic inherent to our realm. And there’s no dearth of that.”
I gazed past the crystal to him. “So I can see at night.”
His lips twitched an acknowledgment, even as his eyes scanned the room. Tonight he was so thorough, so prepared—a contrast to the last trial. And only now did I realize how fully he had expected us to die.
Now, he had hope. Or at least desire. And that knowledge gave me resolve.
I fit the crystal into my belt pouch. “Thank you.”
“Show me your sword.” His hand came out for it.
I unsheathed my sword and passed it to him. He inspected it, holding the blade flat before his eyes. His thumb ran down its edge. He tested its weight and swing. In his hand it was small, and it whistled as it cut the air.
He gave one nod. “None worse for the wear.”
After that he inspected my arrows, my quiver, my bow, and finally my knife. He spent a few minutes in his study with a small whetstone, sharpening the blade. The same blade I’d tried to kill him with.
I stood in the doorway. Some part of me wanted to object, and another part of me took pleasure in watching a man sharpen my blade like it was his own. He was doing everything he could. As would I.
Finally, it was time. We walked side by side through the hallway to the throne room. Just before we came onto the grand staircase, Dorian turned to me. His breath had quickened. “Eury…”
I waited, watching his agitation.
His hand came to rest on the balcony’s wooden edge. He closed his eyes and took a breath. “For what I did that night, when we attacked your kingdom, I didn’t…”
His breath seemed to die out. Or his will.
I held the silence, waited for him to continue, but he only turned away.
If we had been in the Eldermaze under that round moon, I would have asked him. I would speak. But he would not answer here, with Rhiannon below, with the citadel tight around us and a trial waiting.
So I remained silent.
Truth was, I didn’t know if I would ever forgive Dorian for what he’d done that night in the southern district. For stealing me away here. A part of me still hated him. But a part of me was his partner.
And it was that part of me who would match his step tonight.
When he’d collected himself, he gave a single nod and I fell in beside him. We moved in silence down those stairs toward the court’s crowds and its feral queen.
Dorian was right about the spectacle. We stood amidst the whole of the Sylvanwild Court—more, even, than had been present at the start of the first trial—and every gaze seemed to scrape across me. Conversation and murmurs and whispers filled the room.
I was first out of the Eldermaze. The human who was supposed to be dead by now.
Those fae who’d lived through the maze didn’t look like the bright-eyed challengers I remembered from the night before the first trial.
That night they’d stood straight, chests out, their eyes dancing over the crowd.
Tonight, most of them stared vacant or hard-edged.
One of the tall, bulky men had lost an ear and wore a bandage blotched dark where it used to be.
One woman had cut her hair fully off and shaved her head until her scalp shone.
How many of them would be standing here now without the spiritstag’s intervention? I wondered how many would have lived at all. I wondered if, like Rhiannon, they suspected my role. I’d rather they call me pettifey than feel some obligation to gratitude.
On the dais, Rhiannon’s eyes were elsewhere. She stared ahead, that same gnarled scepter in hand. She’d wrapped herself in thick gray fur tied off at the waist with a belt, leaving flashes of her ample chest and thighs. She tapped the scepter three times quickly, and the room fell to silence.
“Welcome, Sylvanwild. And welcome to our young Sylvanwild fae—and human—returned from the maze.” Her hand swept out toward us.
Now she graced us with her gaze. “Eighteen of you live to enter our second trial, which begins this night. I have visited the grove, and the spiritstag has told me its second challenge. It bid me gather you all for what comes next.”
For what comes… That phrase never lifted the heart. Apparently not among fae, either; renewed murmurs broke out, most of them with a downtilt to their voices.
Rhiannon lifted her chin. Three of her fingers went up—the thumb, index, and middle finger. “Some call this a sign for peace. But we Sylvanwild, who live among the forests, know the truth.”
Dorian stiffened beside me. The muscles in his jaw and shoulders went tight as drawn wire. I saw tension, dread, but I didn’t understand why.
All around us, gasps sounded. Fae lowered their heads. Children hid behind their mothers. At least they’re not wailing.
I stepped closer to Dorian. “What is it?”
His jaw had clenched. So had his fist. Before he could answer, Rhiannon’s voice rang out.
“Tonight, after centuries, the Wild Hunt begins in Sylvanwild.”
The Wild Hunt.
I had never heard of it. But children always had the most unvarnished reactions, and I trusted a little girl hiding behind her mother’s skirts far more than I trusted Dorian’s silent stoicism.
The crowd erupted into open talk. Rhiannon tapped her scepter three times again, and this time the silence took longer to fall. People weren’t so willing to heed her as before.
“Nature places a special requirement on this Wild Hunt,” Rhiannon said, her voice rolling over the unrest. “Balance must be restored. This is the way of nature. As such”—her eyes swept to us—“the hunt will not end until half of our aspirants are culled.”