Chapter 46
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
I stared at the silhouetted figure above me. “Who are you?”
He extended a gloved hand to me. He was armored in leather with a quiver of red-fletched arrows peeking over his shoulder. “Cirevan, my lady.”
Cirevan. The name meant nothing to me. “And where are we?”
“The battlefield. You took a blow.”
That was when I felt the pain. My head throbbed, and I placed a hand to it; blood smeared across my palm. I blinked, my vision blurry. A moment ago I had been in the citadel with Rhiannon and Dorian, and now…
“Let me help you,” Cirevan said. “You need aid.”
I nodded. My palm slid into his, and with slow tenderness he helped me to my feet.
Only then did I notice the heaviness of my clothing.
I wasn’t dressed in the leathers I’d been wearing in the throne room.
My armor was far more elaborate; intricate fae designs in bright green were woven onto my brown-leather gauntlets and into my pants and the edges of the cloak I wore.
An unfamiliar quiver looped over my chest, the arrows’ fletching touching my hair. At my hip was a dagger, sheathed tight.
Around me lay a great, verdant plain, with green grass and tall trees at its edges. A wide road cut through the center of it, leading straight to high stone walls and a massive portcullis.
The walls’ light stone gleamed in the sunlight. They were so tall, I had to raise my head to see the battlements. Men stood atop them, bows in hand. At the center of a turret a great flag flapped in the breeze.
I knew that flag. White, with three black interlocking circles at the center.
Around me, armored men and women rushed across the plains toward the walls. Arrows flew in both directions, toward and away from us, thwicking into the grass.
This was a battlefield. An unfamiliar place. And yet that flag was entirely familiar to me. Those walls looked exactly like the ones I had spent my entire life climbing. This plain…
I turned in a slow circle, taking in the open vista and the trees all around.
“Where are we?” I breathed.
“Ah, the blow was bad,” Cirevan said. “We are at the walled kingdom, my lady. What you call ‘the wretched human cesspool.’”
I stopped with my face to the tree line. From this direction, everything gained a new familiarity. Yes, there was lush grass and a brilliant sun and no clouds in the sky. But the geography was unmistakable.
This was my home.
My head throbbed. “The Kingdom of Storms?”
“No, my lady.” He took my hand, urging me forward. “The Kingdom of the Plains.”
Not storms, plains. Kingdom of the Plains.
I allowed him to lead me toward a green battlefield tent with flaps we ducked under.
We stepped onto a gray animal fur and were surrounded by a dim interior with a table set up at the center and carved wooden pieces atop it.
Two chairs sat at either side, and on the far end lay a wide bed draped with another animal fur.
“Galenna!” Cirevan called out. “Our queen has taken a blow.”
Our queen.
The man urged me into a seat, and I sank into it.
This all felt real. The pain was real, the touch of his hand was real.
The sun’s touch had been warm on my skin.
This was all real, and yet I, Eurydice Waters, was not.
I was someone else—a queen. But I had all the memories of my life, and none of the queen’s.
Was I inside a memory? Or maybe the actual past? Was the spiritstag’s magic that powerful?
From a far flap a young, dark-haired woman emerged with a medic’s bloody apron already on. She wiped her hands on it as she approached me, but my eyes were still on the flap. When it had been open, I’d glimpsed—and heard—a man groaning on the other side. He had blood all over his belly.
Galenna came to kneel beside me. Her fingers rose to my head. “What happened?”
I shook my head. “I…”
“Arrows,” Cirevan said. “Carys led our people in a charge atop her mare, and the fucking front line didn’t even protect her from the volley.”
Carys. That name sounded familiar, even through the pain. I closed my eyes. There was a reason I’d been sent here, to this battle in this place, and separated from Dorian in the process. This was a trial, but of what?
Galenna’s fingers explored my scalp, bringing on fresh pain. “She took an arrow?”
“It took the horse right in the chest. The mare toppled, and the queen with her.”
I had no recollection of any of this. I hissed as Galenna’s fingers found the most tender part of the wound.
“I apologize, my queen,” Galenna said. “I recommend stanching the bleeding and stitches before anything else.”
A brief silence fell, and my eyes opened. I found both Galenna and Cirevan staring at me.
“Your orders?” he said.
They were waiting for me—for me to give orders. And I had no real idea who this man was.
Outside the tent, sounds of battle carried over the plains—the pounding of hooves and boots, screams, metal clanging. This was a bloody time, a crucial time. I was expected to lead.
I didn’t know the first thing about leading, about warfare. I only knew one thing—a skill I had picked up and honed during my childhood in the Dip, which I’d had to put to good use in the Sylvanwild Court.
Improvisation. I was the queen of that.
“Stitch it,” I said to Galenna. She immediately went to work with her tools, preparing to stitch my scalp. My eyes lifted to the fae standing above me. “The concussion has made me foggy. Remind me of who you are.”
His eyebrows rose. “Why, I am your second, my queen.”
“My second.” I rolled the word in my mouth. He was my second-in-command. As a guard, I understood that. “Give me an overview of the state of things, Cirevan.”
“Certainly.” He stepped to the table with the wooden pieces upon it. His fingers settled over the tallest piece, a tower. “This is our final and best assault on the Kingdom of the Plains, my queen. For years the humans have beset us with their sunlit iron, and taken your husband consort hostage—”
“Sunlit iron?”
“Yes, Your Highness.” His brow lowered, as if he’d become more fully aware of how impaired I was. “Without the essence of the sun, their iron would have no power over the courts.”
Dorian had once told me that sunlit iron had vanished four hundred years ago. Carys. She had destroyed it.
“And my husband consort,” I said. “He’s being held hostage?”
Cirevan nodded, his finger sliding to a smaller wooden figure atop the table. His fingertip rested atop it. “Yes. He’s being kept here, beyond their innermost wall. They knew such a move would draw you out of Feyreign.”
“And it has.” I hissed as a sharp pain lanced my head. Galenna had begun her work with the needle.
“My apologies, Your Highness,” Galenna said.
“Keep talking, Cirevan,” I said, closing my eyes tight as the thread was pulled.
“It’s their final blow against Feyreign,” he went on. “It’s… how they intend to capture you.”
“What of the other courts?” I said through gritted teeth.
He hesitated. “They watch on. Should the Sylvanwild queen fall to the Kingdom of the Plains, the other courts will mass. They count on you holding the dagger.”
My eyes opened. “The dagger?”
His gaze dropped to my hip.
I carefully lowered my eyes without moving my head.
One of my hands went to my hip, gripped a bone-white handle.
I jerked my fingers away; it was painfully cold to the touch.
Then, carefully, I touched again, drawn to the feeling.
I unsheathed the weapon, and a dagger with a vicious curved blade came into view.
It distended the air as it moved, leaving cold smoke in its wake.
Even here, on these warm plains, I could hardly hold it. My fingers felt as though they would freeze. And yet I could not take my eyes off it; the blade was as captivating as my own reflection, the first time I saw it in water.
The blade reflected a sharded view of myself back at me—a broken reflection of a raven-haired fae with hunter’s eyes and a brooding brow.
“Only one may hold it,” Cirevan said, his voice almost reverently low. “Anyone lesser would lose their hand.”
A bit of Carys flowed into me, knowledge from the ether.
Now I remembered. I was not just the Sylvanwild queen—I was the queen of the four courts, Seelie and Unseelie. And in my hand I wielded a power like none I’d known, had not even imagined.
This was not just a blade. It was a triumph, the last note—the decider of history. I didn’t know how anyone could ever give it up. All I wanted was to have it here in my hand, to see myself reflected back at me.
Galenna’s needle pierced my scalp again, and I sucked in air. Outside, a man yelled and then went silent. The spell was broken.
I was not this queen. I did not hold this blade.
I was Eurydice Waters, and I was inside a trial.
It took all my willpower to sheathe the blade. It slid into the leather sheath with icy ease, a cooling weight at my side. “We aren’t winning this battle at present, are we, Cirevan?”
He remained still with his finger atop the wooden figurine. “No, my queen.”
“And what makes the difference?”
His Adam’s apple bobbed. “You, my queen.”
I would make the difference. Me, Eurydice. When had that ever been true in my life? Not once, not really, until I’d entered Feyreign. The thought of it—even if Cirevan wasn’t speaking of me, even if he thought I was Carys—clenched my fists, straightened my spine.
I was the tidal force in this battle.
Without moving my head, I shifted my gaze. “Are you finished, Galenna?”
She tugged once, jerking my scalp and forcing a wince out of me, before she bit off the thread with her teeth. She sat back and began gathering her supplies. “I am now.” Galenna exited the tent, leaving me alone with my second.
I stood, the spirit of Carys and my regiment commander both filling me. “What’s our objective, Cirevan?”
He pointed to the table, one finger drawing a line between two sets of figurines. “Breach the outermost wall.”