Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
ALLERIA
I’m standing at the window of my bedroom, watching servants cross the courtyard below, when a wave of sadness hits me. One moment I’m fine … or as fine as I’ve been since I came back … and the next, I want to cry.
There’s no reason for it, nothing I can point to and say this is why I feel this way. But my eyes are burning, my throat has closed up, and there’s that weird achy feeling that comes before tears.
Nella looks up from where she’s rearranging my closet. “Are you all right?”
“Fine.” The word comes out thick. I clear my throat.
She studies me for a moment, then goes back to her work. She’s been doing that a lot since I came back. Watching me when she thinks I won’t notice. I wonder what she’s looking for.
The grief ebbs and flows throughout lunch.
Sometimes it’s so strong, it steals my breath.
Other times it’s nothing more than a small ache around my heart.
And no matter what I try to do—going for a walk in the gardens, looking through books in the library, wandering through the gallery where artwork covers the walls—it won’t leave me.
When a page finds me in the gallery, I’m grateful for the interruption.
“The king requests your presence immediately, my lady.”
“What for?”
“I don’t know, Princess. Only that all council members have been summoned.”
I’m not a council member, which means whatever they’re meeting to discuss has something to do with me. I trade glances with Nella, who looks worried, then smooth down my skirts and follow the page.
The council chamber is already full when I arrive. My father sits at the head of a long table, his face carved from stone. Merina is at his right hand, her fingers laced together on the tabletop. Lords and advisors fill the remaining seats.
The air is thick with tension.
What has happened? Why was my presence requested?
As the younger daughter, I have no need to be at meetings. My sister’s presence makes more sense. She has been frequenting council meetings more and more as my father trains her to take his place as queen someday.
My father’s eyes find me as I enter, and he gestures to the remaining empty chair near the foot of the table.
“Alleria. Good, you’re here. Please sit down.”
I take the chair. Across from me, Lord Vessen glances over, then looks away. He hasn’t spoken to me since my outburst. It’s no great loss. I hope he never will again.
“I’ve gathered you all here because we’ve received concerning news from Huntsman Dell.” The room goes silent at my father’s words. “Maester Sharok, the Dell’s mage, arrived at the palace an hour ago.”
He nods toward a man seated to his right, who rises to his feet, and my eyes move over the dust-stained robes he’s wearing, and drop to the hands clasped at his front, shaking visibly. When he speaks, his voice cracks on the first word, and he has to start again.
“Three days ago, I fled Huntsman Dell.”
Every eye in the room fixes on him.
He licks his lips, eyes darting from face to face, then they land on me. My heart gives a weird little jolt, and starts racing.
“It came back.” He doesn’t look away from me.
“The fae that escaped. It came back to the Dell, and it broke through the wards. I felt … I felt them shatter. Then the collars started breaking, one after the other.” He takes in a shuddering breath.
“By the time I understood what was happening, it was already too late to stop it. I didn’t wait to see what it was going to do next. I ran.”
My fingers curl around the wooden arms of the chair, knuckles turning white.
I think about what Cairn did in the forest. The way he pressed my palm against his collar, how he licked at the blood, and broke the wards on the forest.
You carry my blood. And now it seems you are tied to me.
No. No no no.
“How is that possible?” Lord Ashworth’s voice is sharp. “The wards at the Dell have held for centuries.”
“I don’t know.” The mage shakes his head, still not looking away from me. “There was something about this one. I’ve never felt anything like it. The power it used to break the collars. It shouldn’t have been possible. Not from a fae that has been contained by iron for so long.”
“How many collars broke?” My father’s voice is calm.
“A dozen before I realized what was happening. The rest once I’d fled. By the time I was a few miles away, they’d all broken. Your Majesty, every fae in the Dell is free. I knew if I stayed—” His tongue comes out to wet his lips again.
“Why did it take you so long to get here? The Dell is only a few hours ride.”
“I hid in the forest for a day, hoping to gather information but … Majesty, everyone who worked there … the fae slaughtered them all. I heard the screams of the guards. I only survived because I ran before it found me.”
The chamber erupts. Voices shout over each other in demands for information, calls for retaliation, questions about how it could have happened. And through it all, I sit frozen, my eyes locked onto the mage’s.
He went back. He broke the collars.
The dream … the nightmare I had. Cowen’s head mounted on the trophy wall dripping blood. The satisfaction that curled through me like smoke.
Forty-four.
Oh god, was it a nightmare?
My stomach lurches, and I grip the chair harder, fighting the urge to be sick right there in the council chamber.
It was real. All of it. It wasn’t a nightmare conjured from fear and exhaustion.
I’d watched him kill Cowen. I was there, somehow seeing through his eyes and feeling his rage as though it were my own.
He tortured the huntmaster for information, and then he mounted his head on a wall like he was another trophy.
And I felt his satisfaction when he did it.
“We need to send men to the Dell immediately.” Lord Vessen is on his feet, his voice carrying over the crowd.
“I agree, but we need to handle it carefully. We don’t know what we’re walking into. If the fae are still there … if they’re waiting …” another lord shouts.
“Then we go in force! Hunt them down and—”
“And we will lose men if it’s a trap.” My father rises from his chair and the room quietens. “We will confirm what the situation is first. Marak.” He turns to Lord Marak, the general of his army. “Send a scouting party, armed but cautious. Once we have information, then we decide how to respond.”
If my dream was real … if I really saw what he did … then the scouts my father is sending are going to find bodies and empty cages.
“Your Majesty.” Lord Vessen speaks again. “If the collars at the Dell have been broken, what of the other fae? What about the ones kept in homes and in other preserves? Should we be warning those who own them?”
“Yes. We will issue warnings, and request mages check every ward and collar they can.”
The discussion continues, but my mind is still caught up in the nightmare I had, replaying it in my head over and over. The way the poker glowed as Cairn pressed it to Cowen’s cheek. The crack of bone as his fingers were severed one by one. The smell of burning flesh.
I didn’t just see it. I felt it. The rage, the satisfaction, the deliberate cruelty.
How is that possible?
“—anything you can tell us that might help?”
I blink. My father is standing beside my chair, the council chamber emptying around us.
“I’m sorry. What?”
“The fae—the one who took you. Is there anything you remember that might help us understand what has happened, and what it’s thinking? Anything about how it escaped or how it might have broken through the wards?”
The nightmare rises in my mind again. Bodies with their throats cut. Cowen screaming. His head on the wall.
I can’t tell him that. I can’t say I dreamed it without sounding crazy. And even if I could explain it, if they believed me, what would happen then? They’d want to know how I’m seeing things that happened miles away.
And I don’t have answers for that.
“No.” I force myself to meet his eyes. “There’s nothing I can tell you that I haven’t already said.”
He studies me for a long moment. I hold his gaze and try not to think about blood and burning flesh, and the sound of Cowen’s screams.
“Very well.” He sighs. “You can go. I have to go and speak further with Marak.”
My legs don’t feel entirely steady when I stand up.
But I walk to the door, with my back straight.
The hallway beyond is crowded with lords, ladies and courtiers wanting to know what the meeting was about, their voices raised in heated discussion.
I keep my head down and move through them as quickly as I can.
The whispers start before I’ve even taken ten steps.
“—the princess defended fae, and now they’re breaking free—”
“Quite the coincidence, don’t you think?”
“My husband says she hasn’t been right since she came back.”
I walk faster, but the whispers follow me.
“Something is wrong with her, you can see it in her eyes.”
“She screams in her sleep.”
“Fae do things to the mind.”
By the time I reach the east wing, my hands are shaking. I press them flat against my thighs to still them, but the trembling just moves up into my arms.
And then Lady Maren steps into my path.
She’s flanked by her two companions, the same two who were discussing fae entertainment in the gardens.
“Princess.” Maren’s voice is smooth and sweet, and carries just far enough for the people behind me to hear. “How terrible this must be for you.”
“It’s terrible for everyone.”
“Yes, of course. Fae breaking free, running loose … who knows what they’ll do.
” She tilts her head, studying me the way a cat studies a mouse.
“Though I have to say, the timing is rather remarkable, don’t you think?
You come home defending these creatures, speaking out against their use, and then … ” She spreads her hands. “This.”
“The fae who took me escaped days ago. What happened has nothing to do with me.”
“Doesn’t it?” Her smile sharpens. “Some might say that you know something the rest of us don’t.”