Chapter Thirty-Seven
The funeral for King Arcus, five-thousand-year ruler of the Court of Pleasure and Torment, draws faeries from all over the kingdom.
The only people missing are Luthian and Kathras.
I sit beside Cassan on a matching throne outside the ritual circle. In the center, a bier has been constructed over the cold remains of the bonfire, and atop it is a small bundle, wrapped in white.
All that was left of Arcus when the poison did its work was a tarry stain on his coverlet. That’s what will be burned today.
I suppose it’s preferable to the smell of a burning corpse.
Through the black veil drawn over my face, I note that Cassan looks…bored. As if his father’s funeral is an inconvenience. Indeed, he hasn’t said a word about his brother’s escape, and seems mostly troubled with the fact that court mourning will interfere with his birthday celebrations.
Which, he has assured me more than once, he looks forward to with great anticipation.
“It is too soon to sleep with my father’s fiancé after his death,” Cassan explained over the breakfast he summoned me to this morning. “And while Luthian was glad to hand you over to me, we had such grand plans for my birthday celebration. Now, I fear they’ve all been ruined.”
“Not ruined,” I promised him. “Delayed.”
I have no ill feelings toward him over his ambivalence to Arcus’s death. If I had lived my entire, immortal life under the thumb of that tyrant, I wouldn’t care if he died, either.
While the priestesses circle the bier with censers of burning herbs and low, droning chants, Cassan leans over to me. “I never expected to be king. This is very strange.”
I place a comforting hand on his arm. “You’ll be a good king. Perhaps even a better one than my beloved Arcus.”
Cassan blows out a breath. “It won’t be difficult. And you can drop the ‘beloved’ act. At least, with me. In public, you should still grieve appropriately, but I know you didn’t love him.”
“Your Majesty—”
“If you did love him, you would be foolish. And I know you are not foolish, Cenere. Luthian praised you as the best student he’s ever had, and he’s taught many to adapt to life here at court.” He pauses. “Did you know that he was once the official court tutor?”
“I did not.” The mention of my guardian turns my blood to ice in my veins.
“I might order him to come back,” Cassan muses.
No, I want to say. I will not survive if I must see him and not touch him. I will die if I have to watch him love another.
A slow, steady drumbeat begins, and a priestess lights a torch with flame conjured from the air. One by one, the others set their torches alight in a chain that begins from that first flame, standing in a circle around the bier.
“All right. I did not love him,” I admit in a whisper. “He wanted me to love him, and I took pity on him for that.”
Cassan nods. “He needed everyone to love him. It was a sickness. So many consorts over the centuries did not survive his possessiveness.”
So, there were others after Parphia, before me. I wonder how many of them were tutored by Luthian and handed over to that monster. How many innocents were sacrificed for Luthian’s revenge?
“A fitting end, I think, to a cruel man.” Cassan flicks a fallen leaf from the arm of his throne.
“How did he die?” I ask, images of Arcus’s bulging eyes and blackened mouth flooding me with giddy warmth. I hope I didn’t smile when I asked that.
“Honey, as it turns out.” Cassan chuckles and hides it as a cough. “Melted him to his bed.”
“Can faeries not have honey?” I worry I may be playing too ignorant, too innocent, but I need to express curiosity, so Cassan doesn’t become suspicious.
Although, I’m not certain he cares enough to suspect anyone, especially when Kathras has been deemed guilty in the eyes of the courtiers.
“The inquisitors say it was tainted with iron. Probably stored in an iron container for long enough to poison the honey.” He shrugs. “My brother must have been planning this for a long time.”
“Do you really believe it was Kathras who poisoned your father?” Do I go too far in defending him? I don’t know Cassan well enough to read him. I can’t tell if his carefree act is a mask for a more devious mind. After meeting his father and seeing how easily Kathras kills, I cannot imagine how Cassan has turned out differently.
“It was him, no doubt.” Cassan murmurs, watching as the priestesses put flame to the bier. “They found a lid to the jar. It was emblazoned with Kathras’s seal.”
My stomach lurches. I nearly vomit my breakfast onto my mourning gown.
“Stupid of him, really. I think he believed that inheriting the throne would protect him from prosecution, but the rules of fae succession simply don’t work that way. Otherwise, we’d all be murdering each other, all the time.” He gestures a limp dismissal with his hand. “Well, some of us.”
Another point he’d brought up at breakfast. Cassan doesn’t want to be king; if anything, he resents the time it will take from his carousing and debauchery.
“That’s why it’s so important that you have a strong queen at your side,” I whisper, and give his hand a comforting squeeze.
The bier catches fully, and flames rise into the air. Heat crumples and consumes the last remains of a foul king, dispatched in a foul way, with foul treachery behind it.
Luthian gave me that honey with Kathras’s seal upon it so that Kathras would be suspected. Was that always a part of the plan? Or was it revenge for the labyrinth?
Or perhaps Luthian didn’t care that Kathras’s seal might implicate me, if I hadn’t wished for his escape. Kathras could have simply blamed the entire assassination on me and accused me of framing him.
But the escape has set the court’s opinion. Why did he run if there was nothing to run from?
Because sometimes, running is the only option. There is no reason that I should run from Cassan, yet I wish to. I study his handsome, boyish profile. He looks exactly like someone whose affections I would have been eager to win in my human life. Though he is serious now, I know his smile is breathtaking. Though the crown somewhat flattens his messy black curls to the sides of his head, I have seen that without it, he appears rakish and wild, like a forest spirit disguised as a faery. I should want him.
I came to this court to be his queen, and now I am, though I will not be crowned before a respectful amount of time has passed in the wake of Arcus’s death. But without the prize of my revenge, my victory is hollow.
We lead the procession back to the palace, my arm through Cassan’s. The sky is uncharacteristically gray, and the strangest, most irrational rush of anger comes over me. How dare the sky mourn a tyrant king. How dare it mock the degradation I experienced simply because he willed it.
* * * *
After dinner, I find my way to the new royal chambers. Cassan has no wish to occupy the room his father died in, which I understand. When I am queen, I’ll request a change to my living quarters, as well.
Cassan’s room is both nothing that I expect and everything I would have guessed. The walls of the circular room are painted in shades of green ranging from sedate to garish. There is no fireplace or candles, but floating orbs of golden light drift about in the air to illuminate the space. Fire would be inadvisable, owing to the enormous tree that reaches almost to the top of the high, glass-domed ceiling. All the furnishings are of polished wood that matches the tree’s broad, sturdy trunk. I find that a bit ghoulish; the tree must stand among the mutilated corpse parts of its brethren.
My mood is perhaps too grim for the task ahead of me.
Cassan made it clear that after dinner, I was to meet him in his chambers. I assume he’s changed his mind about waiting to have me. Knowing what I know of him, he will expect a seductress, ready to please him in every way. And while I appreciate that his tastes don’t seem to run toward the painful, I don’t feel the enthusiasm for erotic congress that I once did.
How do these faeries stay interested for centuries and millennia? How do they enjoy themselves, night after night, in empty pleasures and shocking pain? I grow weary of it already.
At least, I was smart enough not to wish for immortality.
A staircase rises in a spiral around the tree, disappearing into the long chains of leaves that fall from its gnarled branches. The leaves part for me as I ascend, revealing a round bed nestled in the space where the branches converge. Without the benefit of magic, I must remove my own clothes. I drape my gown over the railing and set my slippers carefully aside, where they won’t trip Cassan when he comes to bed. Nude, I arrange myself on the green velvet coverlet, spreading my hair out like an aura of copper around my head and tilting my legs just so, to hide the most tantalizing part of my anatomy. I pluck at my nipples to harden them, then languidly pose my arms above my head.
This will be the first time Cassan fucks me, and I want it to be perfect for him. So perfect that he won’t have any thoughts of ridding himself of a human queen who will not last long. I want him too drunk on lust to ever suspect me of his father’s death at all.
“Cenere?” he calls from below. I say nothing, so as not to spoil the effect. His boots thunk on the stairs as he approaches. He reaches the top, and his eyes go wide as he beholds me.
“I’ve been waiting, Your Majesty,” I purr, and shift my legs slightly, offering just a flash of the curls at my center.
He groans and smiles. “You are too tempting.”
“Am I tempting, or are you simply eager to give in?” I ask, arching my back. I lay a hand between my legs and gasp at my own touch. “I’m eager for you.”
But he doesn’t make a move toward me. “I didn’t ask you here to fuck you.”
I don’t mean to drop my seductress act so easily, but I blurt, “What?” so forcefully, there is no reasonable way to return to my simpering. “I thought you changed your mind.”
“I want to,” he quickly assures me. “Believe me. I’ve been endlessly counting down the days.”
“The wager is over,” I remind him. “Luthian said—”
“Luthian said that it would be more satisfying to wait. He taught me well and he’s never given me bad advice, so I plan to wait.” Cassan’s gaze rakes over my body. “For perhaps the first time ever, I am declining a truly delectable offer.”
He snaps his fingers and I’m fully clothed. I sit up, examining the sleeves of my black mourning gown.
“Please, don’t take it personally,” he goes on. “If it makes my rejection sting less, know that I nearly came in my breeches the moment I saw you lying here.”
I laugh in disbelief and sit up. “Luthian made you out to be some kind of—”
“Deranged sex monster?” Cassan chuckles, moves to sit on the bed, then thinks better of it. “Please, come downstairs before I prove him right.”
Cassan leads me to a small table nestled in an alcove. One of the globes of light follows us and hovers above our heads. He motions over the table and a teapot with two cups appears before us.
I reach to pour for him, but he waves my hand aside. “You are my guest. Allow me to serve you.”
“I am your queen, Your Majesty,” I say softly. “I live only to serve you.”
“Nonsense. You live to enjoy all the pleasures of my court. Including tea.” He fills my cup, then pushes it toward me. “And call me Cassan. You’ll find me a much less formal ruler than my father was. And less vindictive.”
I try to form a response, but his words are too kind, when I haven’t heard much kindness.
That’s not true. You had Kathras. For a whole night, you had Kathras.
I shake my head and force a smile as I stare down into my teacup. “Your father was—”
“I know what he did to you,” Cassan says. “I helped my brother cut up the cephalopire.”
“I—”
“When he told me what our father was doing to you… It wasn’t right. And maybe it wasn’t right to kill that creature when it was only feeding. When he was probably starving it. But Kathras was right when he said that as long as my father had access to it, he would use it to hurt you.” He reaches over and touches my hand. “I’m not going to hurt you, Cenere. I didn’t call you here tonight to fuck you or punish you. I called you here to tell you, in private, that you are safe now.”
The tension that has been steadily winding in me since the moment Luthian appeared in the graveyard bursts apart like a spring in an over-wound clock. There is no fighting the flood of emotions that burst from me, beginning with hysterical laughter and ending with chest-crushing sobs.
Cassan comes to my side and lifts me up, taking my chair and settling me in his lap. He soothes me, kisses my forehead, and rubs my back while I cry.
“You will never have cause to fear me, Cenere,” he promises. “Never.”
And yet, after all I’ve endured, his kindness might be the most frightening thing to face.