Chapter 10 #2
My skin prickled with the instinctual awareness of being watched, and I glanced down the line to find Torin and Rowena staring at me.
Rowena was even lovelier close up, with sky-blue eyes, doll-like features, and a smile so bright I immediately distrusted it.
Torin had Roland’s heavy jaw, and his lips tilted with the same sneer the former Light prince had often worn.
His wavy hair was cut short, just curling over his ears, and his pale blue eyes made me think of chips of ice.
I nodded at them in acknowledgment, since that seemed like something I ought to do, though my skin crawled as I remembered what the other alliance members had said about them. Cunning. Sadists. Insane.
Rowena’s grin widened. She whispered something in Torin’s ear.
I focused on the room again, hating how exposed I felt. Though most faeries were smiling, tension hung in the air. We might all be wearing silver, but that tradition hadn’t been practiced in over a thousand years, and Imogen was Osric’s blood.
Everyone was seated, which meant the dinner should begin shortly.
Underfae would carry in the first course of salads, soups, bread, and other light fare, which would be followed by the meat and main courses, after which would come dessert.
At that point Osric had usually clapped his hands to make some awful speech or publicly execute someone.
I wondered how long Imogen was going to make everyone wait in suspense before giving a speech. The revolt had only been two nights ago, yet here we were, sitting side by side as if nothing had changed in Mistei but the bodies on the dais.
Imogen clapped her hands.
The noise startled me, and I sloshed my wine and had to immediately set it down. Drustan gave me a sidelong look but didn’t comment.
Silence had fallen over the chamber—the hush of dreadful anticipation.
“Citizens of Mistei,” Imogen said, rising from her chair.
Her voice echoed, and I wondered if she’d forced an auditory hallucination on everyone to sound louder than she was.
“I know you must be anxious about what is to come now that King Osric is dead. It is tradition for Mistei’s ruler to speak after the dinner, but I’m not going to prolong this unnecessarily. ”
My heart raced. I’d mentally prepared myself for a variety of awful outcomes after dinner, but I hadn’t prepared myself for the possibility they might happen this early.
Imogen could still declare immediate war. She could use her Illusion magic to make me blind to danger. She could kill us all, and there would be no need for this farce of a peace month.
Imogen wore the same crown Osric once had—heavy and dark, with brutal spikes that spoke of a certain type of power. It didn’t fit with her delicate pink-and-purple dress, which had layers like overlapping flower petals, and I wondered what message she was trying to send with that contrast.
Her eyes swept over the crowd. “I am the new Queen of Mistei. As one of Osric’s closest living relatives and a direct descendant of Princess Ceridwen, this is my right by birth and power. I claim it here, in front of you all.”
Oh no. I glanced at Drustan, but his expression was unreadable. Because this was what he’d expected? Or because he had some other scheme boiling behind those calm gray eyes, ready to explode into violence?
“King Osric was a powerful leader,” Imogen said, “but power needs to be tempered by prudence. I understand why Void, Fire, and Blood made the choice they did.”
A whisper raced across the room. Her condemnation of Osric shook me, too. Speaking ill of the king had been illegal for an eternity in Mistei, and though Osric was dead and gone, part of me irrationally feared he might rise from his grave to punish anyone who defied him.
“To demonstrate that I am committed to being a more generous ruler,” Imogen said with a smile, “I have declared an Accord. During these thirty days of peace, we will celebrate the ending of an old era and the beginning of another. You will learn how it feels to serve a merry queen instead of a cruel king.”
“A merry queen?” I muttered under my breath, eyeing Drustan.
Despite his lingering smile, his eyes were narrowed in a way that told me he wasn’t pleased. “It means she’s going to try to win them over with hedonism.”
One of the six Fae virtues. It was a strange strategy to my thinking, but that was because human rulers were expected to be either wise and temperate or strong and decisive.
The Fae valued strength and cunning, but they also adored their pleasures.
And wasn’t Drustan proof of how effective that strategy could be?
I couldn’t resist making that jab. “Upset she’s stealing your approach?”
He shot me a swift, dark look before resuming the lazily amused expression of the Fire prince, as if Imogen’s plans mattered little to him.
Imogen was still speaking. “I plan to enter into negotiations with the other house heads during this time so we can discuss the best outcome for Mistei under my rule—and how we can all be part of it.” She spread her arms wide.
“I’m glad we can all be here together at the dawn of a new era.
Tonight is for eating, drinking, and dancing.
This celebration—this peace —is my first gift to you as queen.
” Her smile turned sly. “And this is my second gift.”
A metal sculpture appeared on the table in front of me, and I barely restrained myself from toppling backwards as if it were a venomous snake.
It was several feet high with a wide base and tapered tip, like a furled rosebud with overlapping copper petals.
Similar sculptures had appeared in front of the other house heads and in the center of all the tables below.
A delicate whirring sound came from within the copper bud, and the petals unfurled in a spiral. In the center was a single golden apple.
Drustan cursed under his breath.
“These apples were plucked from the Dreamer’s Tree at the heart of Illusion House,” Imogen said. “I hope you enjoy them.”
Below, faeries were already reaching for the apples, jostling to get the first bite. A Fire faerie at a nearby table sank his teeth into the golden fruit, and a look of euphoria came over his face. Someone else snatched it from his hand and took a bite.
“Let the revelry begin,” Imogen announced. She sat, spreading her skirts.
A cheer started at the Illusion tables, then spread across the room to Light’s. Even some members of Fire, Void, and Earth House clapped along, grinning. Whatever Imogen had just done was apparently significant. “What is this?” I muttered to Drustan.
“The apples induce euphoria and some mild hallucinations,” he said. “They never spoil, and if you eat more than one a year, it’s rumored the craving for the next will become uncontrollable.”
I hadn’t been planning to eat the apple, but I certainly wasn’t going to now. Imogen had taken a healthy bite, but none of the other faeries on the dais had touched their gifts. “Why is everyone so eager to eat, then?”
“Because they’re rare and expensive. And because pleasure feels most potent when it’s a step away from destruction.”
A shiver moved down my spine at the dark words. Even humans were drawn to desires that cut, and that lure must be especially intense for the Fae, who were far more difficult to destroy.
“She’s been preparing for this for a long time.” The whisper came, surprisingly, from Oriana, who was looking contemplatively at the apple in front of her. “The tree only produces a few hundred each year. There’s no way Osric would have allowed her to harvest them all.”
If she was able to steal twenty a year, even if there were only a thousand apples in the room, she still would have been collecting them for fifty years. Which meant Imogen’s ambitions were very old.
“It’s an extravagant gift,” Drustan replied.
“Very.” Oriana picked up her wineglass, looking at the red liquid within. “A sign of things to come.”
Even someone who’d grown up as poor as me recognized a bribe when I saw it.
Watching the glee spreading through the room—the laughs and grins, the swift kisses, the dreamy-eyed gazes at the lights drifting above—I felt the sting of trepidation.
It was easy to mobilize hate against a tyrant who hurt their subjects.
What were we supposed to do against one who offered bliss instead?
The food was brought in then, some heaping plates carried by servants and others seemingly floating in midair.
Acrobats skipped down the aisles, swirling their ribbons, while contortionists and jugglers followed.
A troop of faeries dropped from the ceiling, dangling from swaths of fabric as they danced in midair.
The music grew louder and faster, careening exuberantly. Every empty wineglass abruptly grew full again. The Fae cheered and laughed.
The unease prickling through me intensified.
Drustan lightly nudged my hand, and a shock went through me at the touch. “Smile,” he said through his own bared teeth. “It’s just the opening move.”
I swallowed, then nodded, forcing a smile to my own face. The opening move—and the game to come would be brutal.