26. Chapter 26
26
Zara
A fter leaving the dining cavern, I’d returned to the bath chamber to wash off the wine and the humiliation, and had sat in the hot water for so long that my fingers turned to wrinkled little raisins and the place where Cas had touched my shoulder had burned from how hard I’d scrubbed it.
But no amount of scrubbing could erase the memory of his touch.
I skipped the final meal of the night, and after an hour of attempting to fall asleep, gave up and got back out of bed. As I took the dress offered by the wardrobe, I reimagined, for the hundredth time, Casimiro’s face as he’d walked toward me in the dining cavern. The way my heart had surged at his appearance. The way he’d held me upright until I could stand on my own. None of it made any sense. None of it fit into my plan to hate him endlessly.
The silver dress slipped over my head, and I felt as if I’d stepped into a cool spring. I ran my hands over the fine material, white pearls exquisitely sewn in a pattern across my chest that mimicked the sparkling light on a windswept pool. The immortals did appreciate the finer things in life, at least—anything to push back the relentless boredom of their long lives. Today’s dress covered the spot of raw skin on my shoulder, for which I was grateful.
I glanced at the place I’d stored the ruby as I’d slept. The vacant place on the armoire’s lone shelf reminded me I was without his protection now. I’d have to find the information he sought and return his favor of saving me. Then, I’d be free to forget about him. Which was what I needed to do. But as I left my room without his ruby, I felt a small twist of trepidation. The ruby’s presence had allowed me to face the halls of Nightsong without fear.
I stole from my room on quiet feet, smiling at the blinding sunlight that glistened on the newly fallen snow outside the floor-to-ceiling windows. One floor below, a waterfall thundered with the sound of constant escape. The water had the privilege of leaving this place, every second of every day. Every time I saw the water fleeing this wretched mountain, it fueled my hope that I, too, might find a way out.
The halls were quiet, as usual during daylight hours, though a few servants shuffled here and there, carrying folded garments, pitchers, or a look of profound purpose. They never so much as glanced at me, but their chins lifted as I passed.
The shock of Adán’s death had caused a more pointed silence among the mortals here, but I wouldn’t let another day go by without attempting to uncover the secrets of the poisonings.
I nodded at a white-clad servant carrying a small stack of books and heading, I assumed, toward the library, a room I’d discovered during my exploration of the palace. The servant, a tall, thin man with tattoos up both arms, cut his eyes vaguely in my direction, but they never landed on me. He hurried around the corner, and I was left staring at an empty hall.
“Wait,” I said, hurrying toward him.
He kept walking.
“Do you know where I can find Malik?” I called after him. I hadn’t seen the man I’d met that first night in several days.
The servant paused and glanced back at me. “Malik was sent through a doorway the night of the full moon. Hasn’t returned.” The man spoke in thickly accented Avencian.
“Sent through a doorway? A magical one? Was he allowed to return home?”
He frowned at me, shifting the stack of books in his arms. “You are the newest one, yes?” The man shook his head. “Second-newest. The heir brought back another one last night.”
“He did?”
“Yes. He chose to serve,” said the man with an air of pride. “But as to Malik, I suppose you are still new enough to know the fae sometimes bring humans through the doorways with them to help with their nightly raids in the mortal lands.”
A disturbed frown tugged at my lips. “Nightly raids?”
Now the man’s expression drooped in annoyance. “The fae plague the mortal lands at night. You know this much, yes?”
I nodded.
“They take us with them sometimes, because they need mortal puppets, as they like to call us. And sometimes, we don’t return.”
“That’s awful,” I whispered, feeling the loss of the kind servant like a stone dropped in my gut. “This place is a nightmare.”
The servant’s lips tightened. “You haven’t been here for one of their equinox nights.”
I shrugged. “No.” It was late summer, so the fall equinox wasn’t for several weeks.
“They are worse than the full moons. But I suppose you may not live long enough to see one.” He turned to continue walking.
“Wait,” I said again, not wanting him to leave without a useful piece of information. “I know the servants are being poisoned.” The man’s steps halted again, but he didn’t look back at me. Recalling Cas’s words about the mortals being coerced not to speak of the topic, I said, “You don’t have to say anything. I only wanted to ask if it’s happened to you.” Cas had said the ones who’d been poisoned didn’t know who was behind it.
The man’s eyes narrowed. “I cannot speak of it.”
I sighed, my eyes flicking to the title of the book on top of his stack. Herbal Remedies of the Southern Plains .
“Was the heir reading those?” I asked as the man once again turned to walk away.
“Yes.”
“Where can I find him?”
“Why would you want to?”
I schooled my expression as best I could. “Maybe I have a poison to test on him.”
The servant coughed.
“So you do know something about it,” I said.
The man took a few brisk steps, shaking his head as he went. As I hurried to follow, he shot me a puzzled look and said, “He was on his way to the weapons range, I believe.”
I stopped pursuing him, resting my hands on my hips. “Thank you.”
The door to the weapons range opened to a small tunnel that bored through several feet of rock before opening up into a cavern so smooth it must have been made by magic. No stalactites or dripping cave walls in here. The space was pristine, polished to a shine, and dotted with stone statues laden with weapons of every kind. The statues depicted male and female fae warriors in their shadow forms, wings lifted skyward.
Wide chandeliers—thankfully, not full of monsters—hung down the center of the arched ceiling, casting thin white magical light into every corner and illuminating two lone figures locked in a rapid duel in the far-left quadrant of the vast range.
I paused as I stepped from the tunnel to the wide, arched space, mesmerized by their blurred movements as they fought faster than my eyes could follow. One wore a white shirt and dark pants and had short hair. The other had long hair that paled at the ends and flung wildly around her twisting body.
My lips parted as the two royals jabbed, dodged, parried, flipped, and dove, steel flashing and grunts echoing. I realized then that Alba had gone easy on me in our sparring session the other day— very easy. Any human who chose to fight a fae in a real battle had lost before they’d ever begun. The memory of sticking an iron dagger in Casimiro’s stomach brought an unexpected chuckle to my lips.
The figure in white paused immediately at the sound, his attention snapping toward the door where I stood.
His sister lunged directly at him with a victorious scream, but he was already gone, a wisp of smoke vanishing near the chandelier over their heads.
I blinked, and Casimiro materialized before me. Sweat matted his hair against his forehead and his chest glistened with droplets that drew my eye. His features appeared different , less polished, less glowingly perfect. Then he wiped the sweat with the back of his arm and his features smoothed to their former perfection. He’d had his glamour down.
And before he’d erected it again, I’d seen a pale line running from his throat past the collar of his shirt.
A scar.
This immortal had at least one scar, and I suddenly wondered where else he might carry the reminders of past wounds. Did he have a scar where I’d wounded him? He cleared his throat, and the muscles in my shoulders twitched, as if he’d read on my face that I was envisioning his abdomen.
“Valencia.”
My eyes flicked up to his. Why was I sweating? I wasn’t the one who’d been dueling. I smoothed the front of my flowy dress.
“I…I spoke with a servant but did not learn anything.”
Casimiro’s brow lifted. “You came here to tell me you learned nothing?”
My chin jutted upward. He was so much taller than me that when he stood this close I felt like a petulant child demanding my way. He likely enjoyed staring down his nose at me. “You did not give me any directions or helpful tips.” My arms lifted briefly at my sides, but I quieted my unease and clasped my hands at my waist, the way a proper lady should. “You told me only that the servants can’t speak of the one topic you ordered me to talk to them about. Seems a bit unfair.”
Alba strolled quietly across the vast space, still carrying her sword in her hand. Casimiro’s sword lay abandoned on the floor at the back of the room, appearing no larger than a needle from where we stood.
Casimiro leaned forward, his dark eyes narrow. “You’ll figure something out.”
“Don’t you have magic for this sort of thing?” I hissed, feeling Alba’s approach like a thief feels the approach of a guard. “Spells you can cast to force the truth out?”
“In certain situations, yes,” he replied. “But I don’t feel like lecturing you on the difference between a binding spell, a geas, and a curse, all of which can prevent someone from speaking.”
I cocked my hands on my hips. “I may not be able to do magic, but I apparently can retrieve information you cannot, so I would refrain from the derogatory comments.”
His lips quirked as his sister approached from behind, but he didn’t break eye contact with me as he stepped aside to include Alba in the conversation.
Alba smiled and lifted her sword so the tip pointed at the ceiling. “Hello! Ready for another sparring session?” Before I answered, she looked at her brother. “You’re right, she is good, for a mortal.”
I glanced from her to Casimiro. His eyes darted away from me.
“I stabbed him,” I blurted, feeling the need to prove that for a mortal , I’d been good enough to wound the prince of shadows.
“You what ?” Alba said, turning to her brother with a gaping mouth.
“And shot him with an arrow,” I added.
Alba used her free hand to smack her brother. “You didn’t tell me that.”
The fact that he’d said anything at all about me to his sister was shocking enough.
Cas turned aside, one hand moving to tousle his sweaty hair. “You wanted a sparring partner. You’ve got one. Now I can go.”
Alba’s face fell, then brightened quickly. “But we were having so much fun.”
“You said it yourself, I’m too busy to do this with you anymore,” Cas said, storming off toward the abandoned sword.
Alba winked at me, then hurried after her brother. She turned back and waved me forward. “Come on!” she whispered.
Cas glanced over his shoulder but only increased his pace. “If you enjoy winning, you’ll have much more fun with her.”
“She stabbed you,” Alba said, catching up with her brother as I walked rather bewilderedly toward them both.
I should have turned around, gone back to my room, and awaited whatever torture was next. But I’d come here to tell Casimiro what the servant had said and to demand he give me some pointers for how to draw out this magic-locked information.
“I wasn’t there to fight,” Cas retorted.
“Oh, so you let her stab you?”
He didn’t respond. “Use the wooden weapons.” He pointed to one statue. In each hand was a wooden sword and strapped to it in a dozen places were wooden weapons of all shapes and sizes, from a battle axe down to a dagger.
Alba disappeared and reappeared in front of me holding the hilt of a wooden knife toward me. Her sword was gone, replaced by a wooden dagger of her own.
I was too stunned by her fast movement to respond immediately. Finally, I took the proffered dagger, mostly to get it out of my face. Casimiro lifted his sword from the ground with a single move of his foot and caught the blade in the air with his hand. He dissolved into shadow, and I blinked, furiously searching for him.
Alba pinched her lips and nodded toward a statue that now had a sword replaced in its upraised hand. Casimiro had put it there without me ever seeing him move, and he was nowhere in sight. My cheeks flared under her scrutiny. It didn’t matter if Cas left without talking to me again. He was the heir of this court of monsters, and he had better things to do than—
“You should speak to Ariana, your servant. In the confines of your room, she might divulge some information,” Cas said from behind me.
I whirled around, the wooden dagger pointed toward him instinctively. “She hates me.”
Cas tilted his head. “Even now that you’ve given her my ruby?”
“Her religion tells her that I’m not supposed to be alive, that my life doesn’t matter.”
“Is that so?” He clasped his hands behind his back and tipped his chin at me. “Then you will just have to prove to her that your life does matter.”
The way he said it shook me to my bones. This was the same man tasked with ending my life for sport. He’d told me a mortal’s life was nothing but a breath, a pointless little blip that could at least be laughed at by those more powerful. He certainly didn’t think my life held any value.
“But…” I stammered, unsure how to respond or how to keep my heart from racing so much as he looked at me with those two dark eyes.
“Cas, catch,” Alba said.
Cas’s arm shot up, snatching the wooden dagger Alba had taken from the statue. His eyes never traveled to the weapon. They never even left my face. He twirled the blunt blade in his fingers.
“Shall we even the score?” he asked, eyes still on me.
My stomach flipped over inside me as the heir of the Shadow Court took a ready stance, arms out at his sides, knees bent.
“Are you serious?” I balked.
Alba clapped once. “Better move, Zara, or you’ll regret it!”
Casimiro had already vanished. The flat side of the wooden dagger popped the side of my shoulder, alerting me to Cas’s liquid presence moving behind me. I spun. Panic sprouted in my veins, and heat surged through every pore as sweat and desperation poured out of me. He was going to kill me. Right here. With a wooden dagger.
All because I’d offended him by stabbing him back in my garden.
Another pop on my other shoulder told me he was playing with me. I was just his toy. His sister cackled nearby, slapping her leg like it was the funniest thing under the stars to see a mortal flounder like this.
There was no beating him. Not if he could move instantly and disappear like rising smoke. But I wouldn’t go down without a fight.
I spun away and sliced at the flicker of white fabric blazing past me. My wooden dagger whooshed through nothing but air, but Alba squealed with glee. Tracking Cas as best I could, I turned, dodged, spun, and cut. Again and again and again I hit nothing.
Fury drowned out Alba’s excited clapping, and I honed in on my circling adversary. He knew he had me beat, so he was merely prolonging the inevitable. The side of his wooden dagger slapped my upper arm, my ribs, my thigh.
Dead. Dead. Dead.
Or at least I would be if he’d wanted to kill me. I doubted I’d even bruise from the quick taps of the training blade. He was being gentle.
A frustrated growl peeled from my open mouth as Cas knocked the wooden dagger from my hand so fast I barely had time to blink before it clattered to the floor. I whirled on him and stomped my foot, my gossamer dress trailing behind me in the movement and hugging my legs as it finished spinning.
Cas stood still for a single moment, watching me with a slack posture that said he was temporarily stupefied by something. Surely not me.
“It’s nice to dance with you again, Valencia,” he said with a smirk, his sharpness returning.
I swiped my weapon from the floor and lunged at him, this time purposefully not hitting him with my dagger. I couldn’t win by attacking a shadow. Instead, I anticipated his own jab, which I’d handed to him on a platter by exposing my ribcage. A good fighter wouldn’t miss that mark, and he did exactly as I’d planned.
His dagger poked at my ribs, and I grabbed his arm, wrapping my hands around him and spinning into his chest until he was at my back. He was much taller than me, so the move was risky, but it was all I had. I yanked forward and kicked up with my hips, hurling his body—which was lighter than I’d imagined, over my shoulder.
My eyes caught the briefest glimpse of Alba staring open-mouthed in sheer delight as Casimiro flipped onto his back on the polished floor.
But I couldn’t let go. Casimiro had gripped my arm in turn, and I was sailing forward before I could stop myself. The countermove brought me curling into a roll on the floor to save my neck from cracking.
By the time we stopped crashing across the floor, I lay sprawled beside him, breathing rapidly, fully aware of how close he was. He sat up and propped his elbows on his knees, staring down at me.
“Now we’re even,” he said through the curtains of his dark hair framing his face.
Alba’s peals of laughter and happy clapping countered the thudding of my heart.
He chuckled as he stood up, then held out a hand as if to help me. I stared at his hand like it was tipped with dragon talons.
“Come on, Valencia, haven’t I proven that I’m not going to hurt you?”
He had. And it unsettled me because I had no way to know what he would do. A fae who wanted me dead was predictable, was easy to hate. Casimiro was…neither of those. I tentatively placed my hand in his.
He lifted me so fast that my feet left the ground briefly before I found my balance. His grip did not falter as I wobbled, our hands clasped tightly between our chests.
“Steady there, little spark.”
I coughed and backed away, unsure if the fae prince had just used a nickname for me or if he’d been attempting to make fun of me in some way. I tried to cram my loose curls behind my ears, but it was little use.
Casimiro bent to collect my wooden dagger from where it had fallen a few steps away, then he handed both instruments out to his sister, who took them with a small smirk and scurried off to replace them on the statue.
“What did you really come here to say?” Cas asked, carefully rolling up his sleeves where they’d come undone.
Words were difficult to form as I studied his forearms, ridged with veins. When he’d finished with one sleeve, he glanced over at me, quirking his brows.
“Oh, I—the servant I spoke with seemed to know something of the poisons.” My cheeks had caught fire, and I looked away. “When I asked where you were, he wouldn’t tell me until after I suggested I had a poison to test on you. Maybe he’s working with whoever is poisoning them.”
Cas chuckled and looked up at the ceiling. My eyes raked over the point in his throat down to his open shirt collar. Stars above, I couldn’t stop staring at him.
“If he knows who is behind the poisoning, then I doubt he assumed you were involved,” he said.
“Maybe none of them know,” Alba said, materializing beside Cas. I started at her sudden appearance, and Alba giggled at my surprise. “I think whoever is behind this is working without the mortals’ help. They isolate a servant, administer the poison, then leave them to die with a spell to erase any memories, should they live.” She elbowed her brother. “Which, thanks to Cas, most of them have so far.”
The word most caught my attention, as did Casimiro’s flinch at Alba’s words.
Alba cocked her head to the side, her long hair swishing beside her waist. “Cas usually finds them from the trace of magic left on them from the memory spell. But sometimes he’s away and…the poison takes them.”
“Alba,” Cas chided, clearly annoyed at how much information she was revealing. She rolled her eyes. “Speaking to the mortals is still our best bet, for now. I know my court, and I know they employ humans to hide secrets.” He stepped toward me. “Speak to Ariana. Giving her the stone might have been the smartest thing to do. She’ll feel the need to return the favor.”
I nodded and turned away, not waiting to be dismissed. I needed space to think, to breathe. With each step I took, however, the words little spark repeated in my head.
“You were wrong about something else,” Alba said to her brother as I walked away. “You told me that all humans were weak.”
The side of my mouth flicked up despite the strange reminder that fae hated mortals. She thought I wasn’t weak. My calves burned from my hurried pace as I approached the small tunnel leading out of the large room. Behind me, their voices dropped to heated whispers, and I could no longer decipher their words.
The door handle cooled against my hand, and I yanked on the door.
A large hand reached over my shoulder and stopped the door from opening.
I didn’t turn around, didn’t let go of the door handle. I was breathing as hard as I had in the arena after a training round.
Casimiro’s forearm brushed against my shoulder as he kept his hand on the door, preventing my escape.
“Don’t listen to her,” he said, his voice low and closer to my ear than I’d have liked.
“Let go,” I said.
“She’s never really spoken to mortals, and all she knows of them is what our court has taught her.”
“What you taught her.”
Cas huffed, his cinnamon scent washing over me. “I too believed all mortals were the First and Last’s proof that we were not his worst creation. It is a myth we shadow fae cling to, trying always to prove it.”
My hand nearly slipped from the door handle, but I regripped it and kept pulling against Cas’s hold. “Believed?” I nearly choked on the word.
“I’m starting to change my mind.”
To hide my small gasp, I yanked harder on the door. Cas removed his hand, and I darted back out into the vaulted space bracketed with wide stairwells leading up and down. I wouldn’t stop until I was outside in the freezing air, bathed in blazing sunlight. Outside in the sun, I felt strong and safe. The shadow fae wouldn’t pursue me there.
My feet raced almost as fast as my heart as I scurried up the wide stone steps, away from the heir and his sister, trying to escape from the strange twist in my chest that his words had caused.