Chapter 43
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
We sat in Dorian’s study. Me, dirty as hell, in the armchair across from him. He with a tome laid out on the desk, thick old pages split wide to dense, tight lettering.
He stabbed a finger at the page. “Carys was the first changeling. Well, the first one that mattered.”
Queen Carys, the originator of the trials. My chin lowered, gaze tight on him. “She was raised in the human kingdom?”
“Out of desperation.” He blew out a breath. “We fae were weak, Eury. The humans had total domain over us with their sunlit fucking iron.”
I sat forward. “Sunlit iron is real, then.”
“Was real. The formula was lost four hundred years ago and hasn’t been seen since. Carys saw to that.”
“What happened? She was raised in our kingdom, and then…”
“Taken back to Feyreign, once she was old enough,” he said. “Not in a show like you saw in the southern district that night. It was quiet. Carys resisted Sylvanwild, at first, but she loved power. Once she understood her own power, her magic, she came around.”
I sat back. I couldn’t blame her for that. “A changeling placed out of desperation, you said.” There was only one good reason the fae would place a fae baby inside the human kingdom. “The court traded her out for a human baby with the intent to make her into a spy, once she was grown.”
“It worked,” he said. “Her knowledge of the kingdom was deeper than any of us would ever possess.”
It made sense. I knew the southern district, knew the culture of my kingdom, knew the gods, the loyalties, certain secrets.
“And the human baby?”
He winced, said nothing.
It was all ruthlessly pragmatic. So very Sylvanwild. And it worked: in the outer districts, people died quietly, without fanfare or interest. I wondered now if that was because of the fae.
Still, it was hard to believe humans had ever dominated the fae. Not after what I’d seen in Feyreign. “How could sunlit iron have been so powerful?”
His palm swiped overtop the book. “It cut through magic. All of it.”
My eyebrows rose. What a power to possess.
“So the legends go, anyway,” Dorian said.
“And Carys got rid of the iron,” I said. “She crippled the humans’ best weapon. So why did the practice of changelings continue?”
His hand dropped to the page. “You remember she was called the Courtbreaker?”
I nodded once.
“Changelings are different.” His eyes traveled over me. “They aren’t like a Feyreign-born fae. When they come into their magic, they sometimes tend toward more power.”
Warmth—and tightness—filled my chest. “Why?”
“I could speculate all night.” He tapped his desk. “The point is, the courts gather them up every hundred years.”
Every hundred years. “That’s the cadence of the trials.”
Dorian nodded.
“You said the courts. Were they there that night, the other courts?”
“They’d done what they needed to do in the years before—quietly.” Dorian scoffed, sat back. “It’s meant to be quiet. Rhiannon broke that precedent.”
They had done what they needed to do. Which meant… “You’re saying there were other changelings in the districts. And they were taken.”
“One at a time, carefully.”
I stood, stared down at him. “Why?”
Dorian’s eyes lifted, held mine. Waiting.
He thought I already had the answer. It had something to do with the trials, a tendency toward more power, childhood spent in the Kingdom of Storms.
Yes, I did have the answer. It was obvious.
“We’re useful,” I bit out. “Like a hoe or a quill.”
“More like a blade.” Dorian’s jaw worked over something invisible inside his mouth. “Particularly when it comes to the trials.”
“Why the trials? Why not just train them?”
“Look at what happened in the second trial.” One eyebrow curved. “You think you could have thrown the Wild Huntswoman off her horse without that desperation?”
No. Absolutely not.
“Memento mori,” he murmured.
“What?”
“It’s from the language they spoke in your kingdom, long ago.” He paused. “It means ‘remember death.’ It’s what Carys lived by.”
Memento mori. Remember death.
Death had shadowed my every step since the night of the attack. Since I’d known my mother was gone.
It was death that had propelled me—the water—the Huntswoman and her horse. The promise of it, the terror. The willingness to do anything to cast off its pall.
Death made me a blade.
I let out a breath and turned away, toward the rest of his book-lined study. Dorian’s refuge; I could see it in the careful tuck of each tome on its shelf. Could see it in the wear on the armchair in the corner.
“Why you?” I asked. “Why did she send you?”
Silence. Long, longer. I was rubbing up against that history, the one I’d seen all over his face. I could feel it in the air like a physical thing.
I had already decided he could keep his secret, whatever it was. But I needed to know how badly he wanted it. How much friction he was willing to endure to keep it from me.
In the silence that followed, I had my answer:
Enough. He was willing to endure enough to let this silence wrap around us and hold tight.
Fine. I had never lived without secrets—even and especially from the ones I loved best. Though, as I knew now, nothing I’d ever thought was a secret was invisible to my mother.
I kept secrets and I loved her. She kept secrets and loved me.
For fae and humans, it seemed, both things could be true.
I glanced at him without fully turning, just enough to glimpse him over my shoulder. “You called Carys the Courtbreaker.”
His voice came low, harsh. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“She became capable of wielding the magic of two courts at once. She only did so once.” Dorian stood, chair shifting loudly over the wood floor. “And it didn’t just break the courts.”
I went still as he stepped around his desk, as he approached. My heart sped until it was audible in my ears. I didn’t know why I was nervous, what I anticipated or feared. Not until he came close. Not close enough to touch, but enough that I felt the heat off him.
I wanted to turn toward him. Felt the pull like a tug.
“It broke her, too. Irrevocably.” His breath on my ear. His warmth near my side. “Memento mori.”
Goosebumps rose on my arms. I was done learning about history. Tonight, at least, I only wanted to know the present.
I turned toward him. His attention was full on me, pupils large, breath raising his chest like he’d just walked fast and far.
I wanted to kiss him. I couldn’t break the spell of our apartness. Now I knew the truth, knew what I was, I couldn’t decide if I felt a kinship or estrangement. Was I more or less like her, Eurydice?
And yet my body thrummed. It knew what it wanted.
“Dorian…”
His breath caught. He set a hand lightly on my shoulder as he stepped past me. “What am I thinking? You’ve slept with the worms for three days. I’ll fill the bath.”
I don’t want a bath. I want—
But he’d already disappeared into the washroom.
I stared after him, my insides moving in strange ways. I wanted to stay. I wanted to follow.
My feet moved toward the soft light.
I stood before the stone tub and set my fingers into the water. It was gloriously hot, the steam rising like a spell cast just for me. And I wanted. I wanted what I wanted, and I didn’t know when else I might be allowed to simply want.
Don’t ask him to stay. Don’t ask him, Eury.
It was a terrible idea. I had learned too much, felt too much; out of that dungeon, I was raw as a split fruit under sunlight.
And yet.
Behind me, soft footsteps sounded. Dorian entered, a bundle in his arms. Mosscloth towels. He set them beside the tub without looking at me. “Take as long as you need.” He hesitated, then turned to go.
“Wait.”
He paused, his back to me. He wore only a loose white shirt and dark pants, clothing I’d never seen on him. Sleepwear, maybe. He looked softer in it. Unguarded.
My heart thudded. “Stay.”
He remained where he stood, unmoving. For a breath, I thought he would keep walking. Then he turned. His eyes dragged over the tub and up to me. “Eury…”
“I want you to stay.”
I knew I smelled terrible and looked worse. I didn’t care.
His gaze lifted, rising up my body until he reached my face. He looked haunted, like shadows I couldn’t see hovered all around me. I couldn’t read what weighed on him. Perhaps it was the pain of knowing I’d never escaped Sylvanwild.
His voice was quiet. “I—”
Now, or never. “I’m injured. I need help out of these clothes.”
He breathed in deep, nostrils flaring. He held still, as though fighting some internal tide. Then he stepped toward me, and my chin lifted as he came face-to-face with me. That was when I saw it, his eyes darkening, pupils widening with desire.
He wants this as much as you do.
It was the first time I’d felt power over him. Real power, like I could send him to his knees—and he’d thank me for doing so.
He reached for the clasp of my cloak, his fingers moving with deliberate care as he unbound it. The cloak slid from my shoulders and fell to the floor in a whisper of heavy fabric.
I stood in my torn, dirt-encrusted leathers, eyes fixed on him. His gaze went straight to the wound I’d taken from Faun’s sword. He stilled, brow lowering. “Has no one treated this since that night?”
I had almost forgotten about it. The pain had disappeared when I’d stepped into his bedchamber—but I hadn’t tried touching it, either. “My options in the dungeon were limited.”
He growled and his hands left me. “Fucking Rhiannon.” He strode past me and into the adjoining room. And just like that, the tension shifted into a familiar place—pragmatism.
I listened to him pass through his bedchamber and into the other room. Distantly, glass clinked.
He was avoiding me, even as he desired me.
When he returned, he held a leather wrap in one hand and a wooden chair in the other.
He’d pulled his hair back in a tie. He set the chair down and unrolled the wrap across the vanity table along the far wall, revealing an assortment of vials and tools.
“Come here,” he said without looking at me; his attention was fully on the kit laid out before him.