Chapter 45
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
A rap on the door pulled me awake. I jerked, eyes opening.
The bed was bare beside me. Rumpled, slept-in, empty.
I sat up, pulling the blanket over my chest. The door remained shut. “Dorian?”
“It’s Eleyrie,” said a muffled woman’s voice through the door. I didn’t know that name. When I didn’t answer, she said, “I escorted you up here yesterday.”
One of Rhiannon’s handmaidens. My gaze traveled, but Dorian didn’t emerge from either of the doorways around me. “What is it?”
A pause. “I’m to escort you to the throne room.”
The throne room. Now.
Dorian was gone, I was alone, and Rhiannon wanted to meet me in the throne room. Too much a coincidence.
Everything about this felt orchestrated, wrong. But I had no choice.
I nodded, slipped from the bed, and dressed myself while the handmaiden waited outside. I cleaned my face and fixed my hair in Dorian’s washroom and tried not to look at the tub.
When I left his room, she escorted me through the hallways and down toward the central throne room in silence. In my head I practiced what I would say, how I would say it. But the sharp, sure words I’d had for Rhiannon felt far more distant than they had when I’d emerged from the dungeon.
I didn’t want to win any fights against her. I only wanted to protect him.
The two of us walked down the staircase, our steps echoing into silence until we came to the base of the stairs and Eleyrie turned the corner.
I took a breath, deep and quick, and turned toward the throne.
There she was.
No—there they were.
Rhiannon and Dorian.
He stood beside the throne, and she sat in it in her queenly furs and resplendence. But I hardly saw her; she could have been dressed in a thousand gemstones glittering under the sun and I wouldn’t have noticed.
Dorian’s eyes were brighter, more faceted than any stone. And when they fixed on me, as they did now, I felt like the only creature who existed in the world.
He was in pain. Glorious, aching pain.
Something was very wrong.
He saw me, and his throat moved. His chest rose under his leather jerkin. I sensed he wanted to speak, but he didn’t. He only stood.
“Welcome, Eurydice of the Kingdom of Storms,” Rhiannon said into the echoing throne room. “It has been some time since I saw you last. You look somewhat better for wear.”
With effort, I ripped my gaze from Dorian.
Before me, Rhiannon sat ensconced and entirely unpractical.
Her diadem rested on her head, her hair parted at the dead center and flowing in tight curls into which some fae had been tasked with twining white flowers for hours and hours.
Her furs, also white, draped so far they touched the dais.
I could not see her feet beneath the bottom, which pooled atop the floor. That scepter lay across her lap.
Beside her, Dorian was dressed in the same simple black armor he had worn in the second trial. Clean now, fresh, but austere. They were a pair of opposites. The closer I got, the greater the effect.
The handmaidens led me to stand directly in front of the dais, and then they dispersed to take seats on the floor at either side of the throne. They watched me.
I stared at Rhiannon, unmoving, unspeaking.
She observed me from her throne, eyes slanted down to me. “I have not congratulated you for your success in the second trial. Well done.” She gave a small double-clap. “You are worthy in the eyes of the Wild Hunt.”
I still didn’t speak. I sensed a trap held open, teeth wide, waiting to clamp on me.
Rhiannon’s fingers slid over her scepter. “You may be wondering why I imprisoned you. Unfortunately, it was a necessary measure. You see, changelings can be unpredictable once they discover their magic.”
Her eyes flicked to mine, steady and intense. But I only had eyes for Dorian.
Don’t pretend, he’d said. Rhiannon couldn’t kill me, anyway; I was still in the trials.
I’d speak the truth.
“I’d have done the same.” I raised my shoulders, dropped them. “If I were queen.”
The corner of Rhiannon’s lips twitched. “Would you?” She studied me in the silence that fell. Finally, she said, “You think I’m quite stupid. Do you think we Sylvanwild fae do not learn the subterfuge of the winter court as children?”
I didn’t know quite what she was getting at. The winter court, that was Noctere. “Subterfuge?”
She gripped the scepter. “I can see the hatred for me in your eyes. From the start, you made yourself into a rabbit because you knew the power of appearing small. Now you act at nonchalance when you’d kill me if you held iron. We invaded your kingdom. We killed your people.”
She wore a cold frankness in her gaze. She was trying to inflame me. Yes, most of Rhiannon’s power truly did come from her cunning.
But for once, we could be transparent. And I wasn’t inflamed.
“Speaking of iron.” I lifted one hand to my cloak and brought the edge of it down off my shoulder. The old guard’s pin, secured to the lapel of my cloak, came into the light.
Rhiannon’s eyebrows lifted from their incisive stare. Her face settled into something calmer. But before it did, I caught a glimpse of surprise. She hadn’t known about the pin. “Now that is a relic.”
“Given to me by an old fae in the Eldermaze,” I said. “I wonder why it shines so bright.”
Dorian, too, stared at the pin. I could see on his face what Rhiannon had hidden: shock—even trepidation. Like the pin was more than a pin.
Rhiannon’s lips twitched again, though I couldn’t tell if it was humor or pure rage that moved them. Finally, she said, “Perhaps Dorian can tell you. He’s quite well versed in changelings.”
“He told me everything. About changelings, about sunlit iron, about—”
She lifted her chin. “About his hatred of you?”
I paused, lips parted.
“Oh,” Rhiannon said, almost like she’d discovered a prize. “This is a thing you truly did not know. You see, there’s a reason Dorian was in your kingdom the night of the attack. And it had nothing to do with retrieval. I’m sure he told you as much.”
A needle of pain pierced my chest, a sense of a box being opened that could not be shut. Before I could stop myself, my eyes were on him.
He stared back at me with agony in his eyes.
No, no, no. This I didn’t want to hear. His secret, the thing he’d held from me. We were all entitled to our secrets, but Rhiannon would wrench open that box if its contents could hurt me.
And right now, she was. And he was letting her.
“Or perhaps he didn’t.” Rhiannon’s hand went out as though reaching for him. “Tell her, Dorian, why you traveled to the Kingdom of Storms.”
He didn’t speak. He only stared beyond me like he’d seen something in the distance, like he could perceive his way to the Kingdom of Storms and the southern district even now. He didn’t move from his spot on the dais, but his fingers clenched until the knuckles appeared white under the skin.
“I was there”—his voice was low, practically a growl—“because I was promised I could kill a changeling.”
“But they’re useful tools for the courts.” Rhiannon’s eyes glittered on me. “Why would you want to do that? Give me your exact words.”
A pause. Then an intake of air. Those dark eyes stared at me, the soft lips parted, and—
“They’re fucking abominations. Monsters.” He spat the words like fat seeds, one after another. “And none should live.”
“And why were you the one I sent, Dorian?”
A muscle in his jaw feathered. “Because I volunteered. I begged to go.”
“And why would I send you?”
His gaze stayed past me. He stared into a distance I couldn’t see, even if I looked over my shoulder. “Because I kill changelings.”
I studied Dorian, waited for him to meet my eyes. What did I want to see there—empathy? Compassion? Nothing would change what he’d just said, but I still wanted it.
But his eyes had gone unfocused. He wouldn’t look at me.
I had been right about my instincts:
Dorian had intended to kill me that night. He’d intended to kill me because he hated changelings. To him, we were monsters. He had killed us—more than one of us. How many? I didn’t want to know. I desperately wanted to know.
This fae had slept with me. Been inside me. And he hadn’t told me.
And now he wouldn’t even meet my eyes.
Rhiannon let out a chirp of a laugh. It was the first time I’d seen real delight from her.
“So it seems Dorian did not tell you his truest feelings about your kind. I bet you asked, didn’t you?
I bet you asked him questions when he had your clothes off, when you were already wet between the thighs for him.
And he would not answer. Didn’t tell you he’s a changeling killer.
Far more effective at that than trawling through history books. Though we all have our indulgences.”
I no longer saw Rhiannon or Dorian. I only vaguely heard her words. My head moved up and down in an approximation of a nod.
In this, she had won. She had won, and I had lost.
Rhiannon leaned forward, placing her chin on her hand. “He has a nice cock, doesn’t he?”
My throat felt parched. My face lowered.
I deserved this. I deserved this for opening myself to him. For letting him know me, and thinking I knew him.
Never again.
You’re a daughter of scorn, Isa the nurse had told me that night I’d had my nose broken by four men. Never trust a man, especially not outside these walls.
But something Dorian had said twice now also came to mind: When your queen gives an order, you obey. He’d said it with glassy eyes, a hollow voice.
The confessionals. Those went both ways. She could force her subjects to speak—but also to be silent.
That was why Dorian had not told me his truth. That was why he spoke it now. He was forced.
Even so—even if he were bound to silence—did it matter?
He still murdered changelings. He still loved it.
He still hated my kind.
“But why would I send someone to kill a changeling?” Rhiannon went on. “That, my sweet, is a question for you to turn over for yourself. In the meantime, you’ve passed the first two trials. One remains. Just one before you may represent our court, a champion among champions.”
I closed my eyes. Her voice was like the brambles of the Eldermaze, sharp and unyielding. I had to push past it, to press aside any vulnerability or hope, to be the Eurydice I had been before all of this bullshit.
There was something I still didn’t understand—the question Rhiannon herself had posed.
Why would she send someone to kill me?
If changelings were useful tools, meant to be harvested at the right time, it didn’t serve Rhiannon to destroy me before I’d even been trained. Before I’d ever even seen Feyreign.
A question to turn over in my mind. Perhaps back in my chambers—
Rhiannon sat back. “For you, that third trial begins now.”
My gaze sharpened on her. I realized I was alone here with the two of them. “Where are the others?” I said, my voice thin. “The other fae in the trials.”
“The other six are already inside,” Rhiannon said. “You and Dorian are the last to come before me.”
Six. That meant six had survived the Wild Hunt.
Next to Rhiannon, Dorian had pressed his eyes shut. His jaw was hard.
My heart twisted in my chest. Last night he’d kissed my forehead, asked me for permission, wiped my body, held me—
Gods, I needed to stop staring at him like he’d actually look at me with those unshuttered eyes and that softness. That was done. He was exactly the killer I’d always thought.
Fuck him.
One thing remained true: a solid determination lived inside me. We had to survive this—if not for us to be together, then at least to simply survive.
“If we pass,” I said, “then we’ll become your champions?”
“Oh.” Rhiannon tilted her head to the side. “I suppose your hearing isn’t your best sense. I never said champions, my dear. I said champion.”
Her hand rose before her. Four of her fingers folded until only the index finger remained upright.
“One champion for each court.”
I stared, uncomprehending, at that slender finger. Then my eyes moved to Rhiannon’s. Her lips had curled, as though she had dealt me a greater blow than she ever could have with scepter or arrow.
And she was right. She had done that.
She’d sent me to Dorian’s chambers, knowing how I felt about him, allowing me one night with him, just so she could devastate me the next day. So she could make me weak, vulnerable.
And then she delivered this news. One champion, only one. Not a pair. But it was always pairs who fought as champions, wasn’t it?
Rhiannon’s voice, still chirpy, sliced into my thoughts.
“Well then,” she said. “Off you go.”
She snapped her fingers—loud, sharp, jarring.
Before I could speak, a curtain of blackness fell in front of my vision. The floor seemed to evaporate, and I was no longer standing but falling.
I fell until I hit hard earth. Not the wooden floor of the throne room, but real earth. Dirt and grass.
I lay sprawled, my eyes shut, as yelling sounded around me. Hundreds of voices, thousands of them. Men, women. Footsteps pounded over the vibrating ground.
I opened my eyes to the sun beating down on me from a cloudless sky. Figures rushed by with swords in hand.
One of them stopped and hovered over me, his frame silhouetted by shadow. Man or fae, I didn’t know. Only that he extended his hand.
“My queen,” he said. “Are you hurt?”