41. Chapter 41
Chapter 41
S ix more days to go, and the only news I had received about Lord White Throat was that he was a minor lordling of Samhradh, who no one seemed to think overly much about. I had Green Man watching him for any unusual movements, as his duties mostly consisted of working the palace’s extensive gardens, where many of the Summer court congregated. If The Oaken Rose was working with him, she never appeared, and he gave no indication of it.
They must be meeting in secret for some reason. And if she had thought that the spider message had been from him, she must owe him something dire.
The hunts were gathering at the base of the stairs to flow up into the palace, escorted by their individual usual guards. Silvertree was waiting for me. His eyes locked on me as I stood with my back flat against the small half wall of my alcove. He waited until the last of the humans had gone up to their duties before approaching me.
His dusky gaze grazed over every surface of my hovel and then fell back on me. I had underestimated Silvertree. A lesser guard wouldn’t have even bothered to look in, but he was skilled enough and experienced enough that he was always checking. I wished he would be on my side when this all shook out, but he struck me as far too loyal to side with humans .
When his eyes fell back on me, he bowed his head slightly, even though, as a daoire, I had no rank that afforded me such courtesies. “Miss Cricket, the Captain wishes me to deliver a message.”
I snorted and crossed my arms. “Please excuse me, er . . . You know, I don’t think I caught your rank last we met.”
“Esquire. Though my parentage is of some debate, the Ducal title is afforded to me by proxy.”
“Esquire Silvertree? That seems . . . cumbersome.”
“Well, the alternative is just Silver. If you would be so inclined to use it.”
I canted my head, regarding him as he gave me a somewhat sheepish smile. “Silver seems awfully familiar.”
“Well, Miss Cricket, as I am to attend to you as your personal guard from now on, it seems only right that we be familiar.”
A personal guard. Cute. If The Oaken Rose thought assigning me a personal guard would keep me from carrying out my threat, she was sorely mistaken. Silvertree was far too sweet to miss the opportunity to be a chivalrous knight, and I would push that button if needed.
“Well, then, Silver, if we are to be familiar, please just call me Cricket. It’s my name, after all.”
He drew in a deep breath and exhaled it with patience. “If you wish, Miss Cricket. The Captain did warn me that you could be . . . prickly.”
“I bet he did.”
“But he also said that you were more than your surface and to give you a chance to surprise me.” He turned crisply and extended a hand toward the stairwell. “You are to attend the Temple today, Miss Cricket.”
The way my adrenaline rose and joy bubbled at the edges with the hope that I would be able to see the Bandrui again was disconcerting. I had been kept away from the temple ever since I had been returned, and I wished nothing more than to sit at her table and peel crust off her bread and talk. She was the closest thing I had to a true friend here. She needed nothing from me and owed me nothing. We were all but equals in this strange world, even though titles and station separated us. She treated me as if I were an old friend, and it was a balm to the inner wounds of a broken child.
I nodded and went ahead of him, sweeping up the stairs but pausing at the top. My path to the Temple was obscured in fever dreams and shattered memories. The way back into the palace had been just as obscured, though only because my attendants had insisted a daoire should not know the path of the gods.
Silver came up the rear and began guiding me through the twisting corridors at a leisurely pace. I noticed as we walked the path he chose and a silver thread, obscured by the myriad colors and glosses in the floors to distract my eye, became clearer.
So, this was how the Fae got around. I had suspected that I was only seeing things and noticing patterns where there were only circumstances, but now that I was testing it against an unknown destination, the silver thread was almost bold in its unobtrusive weave.
I made a mental note to self-assign some floor-scrubbing duties at one of the larger crossroads of corridors. If I didn’t need The Oaken Rose to find the exit of the palace, I would sleep better at night. Perhaps if I spent enough time peering into the woodwork, I could find another thread that had been hidden, and I hadn’t noticed.
Our path took us through two different court wings and, finally, to a foyer of a sort of polished granite that opened into a section of the gardens I had not seen before. Great sweeping landscapes of well-kept hedgerows and vistas of fat blossoms of flowers I knew the names of and some I had never seen before were laid out before us. In the distance, on the other side of the garden, stood an unassuming circular structure with stone walls and a domed, grass-covered roof. A mere twenty or thirty years of neglect, and the entire place would disappear into the vegetation around it, looking like nothing more than an oddly placed hill.
“Miss Cricket,” Silver whispered before guiding my attention down to his offered elbow.
“Silver, I’m a daoire. Not a lady of the court. ”
He shrugged, the leather of his livery creaking. “The last I checked, there was no law against treating a human with grace and dignity. And it is a fine day. The sun is warm and full on the gardens. It would be a shame to get lost and not be able to find my way back to you. You would be doing me a favor.”
I couldn’t resist the infectious, child-like grin that spread across his face and smiled back at him. “I guess if I’m saving you from yourself.”
I tucked my hand into the crook of his elbow and ignored the twist of longing that whispered that I wished it was The Raven and not Silver taking me on a stroll through the gardens.
This portion of the gardens were far more populated than I expected them to be. Fae strolled with each other at almost every turn. I didn’t mind the stares as we passed them. Silver didn’t seem to mind, either.
“As I said, Miss Cricket, the Captain wished me to bring you a message.”
His voice was pitched low slightly above a whisper, a tone I knew was solely for me but still clear that he was not hiding anything.
“Silver, it’s a perfectly delightful day, and I haven’t had the sun full on my face in weeks. Could we just . . . pretend like you gave me the message, and you keep it to yourself?”
I didn’t mention that I was seething in my righteous jealousy and indignation over the lies he had woven and had no interest in having my tender little heart carved up by proxy.
He snorted. “Miss, you’ve met the Captain. I could try that. And he’d send me right back after you to deliver it. We both know he is singularly minded when he wishes to be.”
“So I’ve been told over and over again.”
I could feel his eyes on my cheek. “So, you aren’t unaware?”
“That he’s a brutish lying prick like the rest of you Fae? No, I am absolutely informed.” The sugar in my voice could have supplied a candy factory for a decade.
He snorted a laugh and turned his eyes forward again. “We aren’t all that bad, Miss Cricket. Some of us are more . . . Well. Some of us are more than others. ”
“If you only knew Silver, if you only knew.” I sighed and put on a happy face.
There would be no use in spilling my guts along the packed earthen walkway as we wound our way through the gardens.
“Miss Cricket, you have to know that avoiding the Captain won’t work. You must know that, right?”
I stopped at a particularly beautiful bush of dahlias and bent to smell them. Silver grabbed me bodily and pulled me back. “What are you doing, Miss Cricket? Don’t you know not to smell the flowers without permission?”
The terror in his voice sent shivers down my spine as I looked back to the simple flowers and then up to him. “What?”
He pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes as if looking for the patience he needed to explain something so simple to a child. “The flowers. You must respect their boundaries. If you take from them without asking their permission, they could very easily kill or curse you, depending on your trespass against them. Clipping flowers without their permission is the deadliest of curses.”
“But . . . they are just flowers.”
“Cricket, nothing in Magh Meall is just anything. Every single rock, flower, fruit, animal or creature is imbued with the magic that flows through this entire realm. None of it is untouched by magic, every single square inch of this realm is touched by it. Flowers and trees, especially since their roots touch deep into the well where magic is produced.”
My gaze slid back to the dahlia, and I dipped low into a curtsy I had been practicing. “Please excuse my ignorance, fair dahlia. I did not know and my ignorance is not an excuse for invading your space. Thank you for gracing these gardens with your beauty and allowing us to enjoy it . . . respectfully.”
I rose and looked to Silver and whispered from the corner of my mouth, “Think I’ll be getting a curse?”
His gauntleted hand clapped over his mouth to stifle a deep guffaw that petered off into a snicker. “I think you’ll be fine, Miss Cricket. ”
I winked at him and took his elbow again. “Avoiding him is working out fine for me.”
“Why are you doing it, though? That’s what I cannot understand.” He was frowning into the path ahead of us. “Has he been unkind to you?”
“Depends on what you believe is unkind, Silver. It doesn’t truly matter why I am avoiding him. It’s very sweet of you to play interceder and try to settle his business, but in the end Silver, it is just that. His business. And a venture I care not to be involved in any longer. It’s for the best for both of us.”
He grunted and fell silent as we walked.
“Was that his message to me? To stop avoiding him?”
Curiosity had been piqued, and I hated to admit it, but some small part of me liked that he had grown frustrated enough to send a messenger.
“Oh. No.” He slid a small, folded piece of paper from his belt and handed it to me.
There was no seal, no flowery language. I shouldn’t have expected there to be. After all, we were not lovers, and this was not a love letter.
You promised. E
I stared at the paper. A simple message scrawled in a tight masculine hand with a simple letter at the bottom. It could have been from anyone, to anyone and about anything.
“He said you’d understand.”
“Well, he was mistaken. I have no clue what it means.” I shrugged. “Do you have a pen?”
“No, but the Bandrui should have a quill for you to use if you’d like to write him back. I’m sure she’ll have paper, too.” His face softened into a doting smile. “He’ll appreciate your return note, I’m sure of it.”
I doubted that, since I knew exactly what I would write.
We had wandered out of the gardens and to the front of the enormous circular building, and I stood back, marveling at how from a distance it could have easily been mistaken for a hill. But up close, each block that made up the face of the building was adorned with script in a language I had never seen before. Each timber that held up the blocks of the entrance was carved with an intricate pattern of knotwork and animals.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Silver said behind me as I ran a hand up the side of one block.
“It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”
“árus Contráth are masters of their trade and masonry has always been of a particular interest to them. This temple was the first structure in all of Magh Meall, and it predates almost all the courts as well as most of the gods who are worshipped within. They say that, once upon a time, before the palace was built as the seat of power in Magh Meall, the Well of Magic resided within these walls until it was moved to Canai eter Duthracht.”
“How exactly does one move a well like that?”
“No idea. The old stories are often just parables.”
“It could be that the well always resided in the lands of the Cailleach and this building was moved here. It could be that the Well of Magic was simply what the lineage of Túathal was called before his line took over. The Fae are as ancient as ancient could be. We came before humans. We witnessed the great darkness of your realm be split apart and light giving birth to life, and we were ancient then. We will be ancient still when the next breed of humans rise from your ashes. We have forgotten more of our history than humans have even been aware enough to write of their own.” The Bandrui stepped through the doorway that led down into the temple and smiled up to me. “Cricket, my sweet, come to visit me finally. I have only spent a moon sulking at your absence. The two of you come in and greet the gods. We will have some bread, and you can tell me of your victorious return to court, my dear. You can come, too, Silvertree.”
I wrapped my arms around the Bandrui and drew myself up into a tight hug around her neck. I had missed her and her teasing eyes more than I could say. More than I had even realized.
Her twinkling laughter filled my head and drove the doubts and hardships away as her arms encircled my back and held me to her. “ Clever girl, I knew you’d come around to finding my weakness for hugs eventually.”
Silver chuckled behind me. We followed the Bandrui past the gallery of the gods into a large room with a long plank of ash roughly hewn with the bark still curling at the edges and polished to a satiny sheen with oils. At the head of the table were three settings, two loaves of bread and several milúll, already split the way I liked them and bleeding their juices into their wooden charger. And next to one seat was a pot of ink and a quill.
“I see someone has been spying.” I cast her a knowing look as I took my seat.
Silver waited for the Bandrui to seat herself at the head of the table and then followed, sitting across from me.
I took up the quill and, in the margins left on the paper, I wrote:
So did you. S
It was not elegantly scrawled, my hand unfamiliar with the proper way to hold or maneuver a quill, but it would do. I folded the paper back up and handed it to Silver. “Do you mind delivering this while the Bandrui and I talk in private?”
“You were asked to clean the candles and the incense trays of the gods today,” he said, rising and taking the paper from me. “Just be sure that’s taken care of before I return to collect you. And remember, Miss Cricket, no straying along through the garden. You’re my only hope to get back to the palace.”
He gave a wink and then bowed deep to the Bandrui and excused himself. She returned his gesture with a simple canting of her head as she sipped her tea.
We fell silent as we waited for him to leave.
The moment the Bandrui sensed he had left the building, her eyes slid to me, and she flicked her hand, sending the door to the dining hall slamming closed and locking.
It was the first outward show of magical power I had seen so baldly performed, and it fascinated me how easily it had come to her. She hadn’t even tried .
“You, my dear, have secrets piling up around you and near to burying you. First things first, though, why have you not called on me?” She set her teacup down and leaned on her elbow toward me. “I haven’t felt a single shiver in the beads I sent you with.”
I paused in the greedy chewing of the piece of bread I had shoved in my mouth the moment Silver slipped out of the door. “What do you mean?” I asked around a mouthful of crust.
“Manners, dear.” She sipped her tea while I swallowed the lump. “I’ve kept myself on alert, waiting for even the slightest twinge from the boon beads I set with you. And nothing, yet I hear whispers from the palace of you constantly. Why have you not called for me?”
“Bandrui, what the hell are you talking about? I have called for you several times, and you never came. Not even a single time. I crushed the beads, and you never came.”
“Darling girl, I assure you that, had you called for me, I would have appeared immediately. I may have said that I could not be counted on to keep you from all danger, but I assure you that was a bluff to keep you from frivolously using them. I had intended to ride in on a white horse to save you from even a paper cut. But you never called to me. And I had grown convinced that you had turned your heart from me.” She frowned into the edge of the teacup. “You say you broke beads? What did they look like?”
“It’s the same beads you’ve been delivering to me since I arrived! What do you mean what did they look like?”
The Bandrui stilled, seriousness drawing a caul over her. “Cricket. I have not been delivering beads to you since you arrived. The first time I became aware of you was when you were brought to me.”
The room tilted to one side, rose like the bobbing ice on a Michigan lake, and crashed back down into the wake of my mind.
“Wh-What do you—no, you gave them to me. They’ve been—what.”
“Think very carefully, dear one. Do you have the beads on you?”
I nodded sharply and hiked up my skirts, pulling the strand of beads from the makeshift belt. I had rescued them from The Raven’s rooms, where he had set them conspicuously on the bedside table. I set them delicately between us, as if they were a coiled viper and, at any moment, would strike out at me.
Using a butter knife, the Bandrui scooted them closer to her and raised one russet brow. “Which of these three beads did you crush, Cricket? Are there any left of the same kind?”
I nodded. “The little brass stars.”
“Which of the brass stars? There are two here, one that is subtly different from the other.” She separated two beads so similar that, had I not been looking for the subtle dark patina of it, I would not have noticed the difference.
“I . . . I don’t know. I crushed them one after another. But they were all stars. I’m sure of that,” I whispered, fear weaving itself into my body.
Who had I called to me? Whose boon had I snapped?
The Bandrui took up a small jar and sprinkled salt over the little stars then picked the strand up and examined them. “Tell me who came to you when you crushed the beads, dear one.”
“No one came.”
She clucked in the back of her throat. “That is a lie, and to think I thought we were friends. Dearest of friends. He came. He could not help but come to you when you called for him.”
The room was spinning, the thunder of my heart kicking against its enclosure.
“Who.”
She smiled and set the beads down, sliding them back to me. “The Raven of the Dawn.”
Thunder cracked, loud and sharp, across my heart as I looked down to the beads, and she went on. “I can’t tell you who the other star belongs to, a cuach, though they seem not to have ill intentions. But these stars? The vast majority of them? These all radiate with his unique magic I feel the Dawn brushing me even merely touching them. Can you not feel it when you hold them?”
I hesitantly ran my finger over the strand of beads, past the small armored fists and to the string of stars that had been growing day by day as they appeared in my alcove. I hadn’t known what they were when I first arrived. I knew that, every morning, one appeared, and I would tie it to the strand. I knew that I had liked them, that they made me smile when I held them.
“Dear girl, you look like a ghost has slithered into your soul. What is it?” she asked me, but there was a needle to her words, a certain knowing that threaded its way into her words, and she could barely hide the way the corners of her mouth fought to stay still.
“The whole time? The whole time ?!” I shot a look up to her. “I’ve been getting these beads every morning since I first arrived. The whole time. Every day. I never knew what they were. I just thought they were pretty little beads. He’s been giving me these the whole time?”
She quietly sipped her tea like a cat who ate the canary, overly smug and pleased with herself.
“You knew?”
“Of course I knew. Do I look daft?” She set her teacup down, leveling me with her gaze. “I’ve known since the moment he brought you from the palace that the man is sick with his need for you. I have known him since he was still suckling at his mother’s breast. He can hide most everything from every other Fae but me? He might as well have shouted it in my ear. I didn’t need to see the desperation and devastation in his face when he brought you here after that ass of a Ard Rí nearly killed you. I didn’t need to see the way he came to your bedside and washed you every day when he had far more pressing duties. I didn’t need to see the way he raged against the Ard Rí as your soul balanced on the precipice of death. I didn’t need to watch the duel for your fate they had when the Ard Rí forbid anyone to watch its outcome. I didn’t need to see the way he bent and broke those around him until they yielded the necessary magic to heal you. I didn’t need to see any of that. I knew from the way dawn crackled on the horizon every morning with its heir growing stronger for his heart’s joy.”
I stared, dumbstruck, at the beads in front of me. I hadn’t known any of those things. I didn’t know any of the little things that had happened while I was dying in the backroom of this very temple .
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked in a voice as thin as rain-soaked tissue paper.
“Would it have mattered, dear one? Would you have treated him any different? Would he have treated you any different? Would either of you have reacted to each other in any other way?” Her hand slid across the table and took mine, squeezing. The warmth of her skin flooded into the chill of mine. “Your fate is your own, dear one. A fate I can merely sit by and watch unfold. I cannot interfere with the hearts and minds of my flock. I can but heal your wounds and celebrate your joys.”
“Do you know?” I asked, looking from her hand to meet her eyes.
I could feel the tears gathering at the edges of my vision.
She tilted her head at me, an enigmatic emotion fluttering in the depths of her wine-soaked eyes. “I know many things, sweet girl. The gods whisper secrets to me all day every day. Some things come to pass, some things are merely the rumors of the wind. Some will never come to pass, simple potential left to rot on the vine.”
I nodded, understanding, even though she was doing her best not to say it. She knew more than she would ever admit to and more than was wise of me to admit even now. To speak the words into the air would make them solid weapons that could be wielded against the two of us. It was better that we had a silent understanding between us and let the truths go unwhispered.
The wind carried rumors and truth just as easily.
She squeezed my hand and then brought it up to her lips to press a tender kiss to my knuckles. “I hear that you have met my cousin?”
And just like that, the sullen mood of an unspoken goodbye, of sorrows shared and kept silent, of deeds kept in darkness and shadow was shattered and levity returned to us.