Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
Before me, the tree wasn’t quite a tree.
Into its enormous trunk were tucked glowing, flickering lights—rooms and balconies.
The branches were hung with large lanterns that gave off luminescence like low-hung stars.
And twisting toward its highest point, the boughs entwined into a single, enormous spire reaching into the night sky.
My face lifted, following the braid of branches, but I couldn’t see the top.
A chill spread over me. This place wasn’t benevolent; its light was discomforting. There was order to this tree, yes, but barely tamed, as though long ago someone had bent nature into shape and it still remembered the violence of it.
“Sylvanwild,” I said.
“Yes.” Beside me, my captor seemed unwilling to move. “Look long on the sky, for you may not see it again for some time.”
My eyes shifted to him. I tried to catch his gaze, to understand, but he fell into a stride that suggested a march. Imperious, thorough, necessary.
We came onto the stone bridge, fringed with thorny brambles. They seemed to long to overtake it; one bad step and I would be pierced or caught.
Beside us, the moat’s surface rippled in the breeze. The water sparkled under the moon, blue and silver, looking clear and drinkable, and I hazarded a long, long look.
Where I came from, water this color was hoarded. It was rationed out to us by the innermost districts, and only the guard in the outer districts were afforded the resources to dig deep enough for a well.
Here, it had been used to fill a moat. I’d thought those belonged in storybooks, too.
Ahead I began to discern the shape of a trellised entrance to the tree. Brambles choked the latticework that fielded the path up to large double doors that were only distinguishable from the trunk because of the symbols etched into them, which sometimes caught the moonlight and shone silver.
Here in the inner ring, gnarled wood had been shaped into benches for two.
Something like gardens adorned either side of our path, and the flora that grew in them was unfamiliar.
Purple-leafed blooms were wide open to the sky, and smaller red flowers furled tightly in vines over the benches and trellises.
It was dark and beautiful—it was empty. We were the only two around.
We passed under the trellises and up to the large doors. My captor stopped here and turned to me.
“Don’t speak in there,” he said, brow drawn. “And put that stupid thing away.”
I didn’t move. I kept the knife in my hand and stared up at him. If I was going to obey him, I needed a reason.
He stepped closer, looming. “Do you want to die here tonight?” The carmine limning his pupils seemed brighter.
“If it’s a stupid thing, then what difference does it make if I hold it?”
“Proper fool. It’s not me who’ll take offense—it’s them.”
I could handle barbs. I’d been fielding them my whole life. “Who?”
He wanted to swipe the knife from my hand; I could sense it in the flick of his eyes and the swick of his fingers together. Instead, he said, “The court.”
The court. Who the hell was the court? All that mattered to me was the sincerity in his voice and his eyes; those were all I had. And for the first time, I thought I saw and heard something like it.
I slid the knife into my belt.
With a low, unconvinced breath out, he turned toward the doors. His hand went up to the center of the leftmost one, and I realized they didn’t have handles or knobs. Both doors opened inward as soon as his long-fingered palm lay flat on the surface.
They opened to a grand, open room. I stared, unmoving, at the inside of a tree, which had been hollowed out.
A parquet wood floor swept a hundred feet beyond me to a far, gnarled-wood throne set atop a dais.
It was occupied and surrounded by people, but that was the least of my focus.
The floor had been laid variously with animal skins and woven rugs.
The same strange symbols I’d seen on my captor’s cloak and on the doors of this place had been etched on every wall.
They looked like vine-runic lines: angular slashes softened by curling strokes, like a blade that had sprouted a flower.
Some glowed faintly; others were darkened as though seared into the bark with a hot brand.
Along the walls, cut purple crystals emanated their low light into the space.
Twin spiral staircases climbed each side-wall, converging on a central balcony where a wide curved doorway led deeper in.
The walls were alive with purple blooms like lichen, but which grew like vines in striations as far up as I could see.
Their scent was heady and pleasant, like incense but earthy.
My chin lifted and lifted. The ceiling towered and continued into impenetrable darkness. Up there must be the spire.
Finally, my gaze lowered to the many pairs of eyes staring back at us.
Men, all of them in some way or another resembling my dark-haired captor, stood in various poses around the occupied throne.
One with hands clasped behind his back. One with crossed arms. There must have been twelve or fifteen, each of them at least six feet tall.
They didn’t wear cloaks; their clothes were simple, fitted browns and blacks and greens. The colors of nature.
And at the center of them, upon the throne, sat a woman. Burgundy curls tumbled in waves to her chest, a woven bramble crown sat upon her head, and her forearms and palms rested on the arms of the throne.
In our kingdom, anyone sitting the throne wore decadence in cloth and gems. I had seen drawings of our king draped in plum and white velvet, a lush cloak clasped at his throat, and a tall golden crown on his head.
Not her. Like the men, she wore simple, spare, earth-shaded pants, a jerkin, and boots. Clothes meant for movement. Nonetheless, there was nobility about her, obvious in her poise and severe gaze.
And in the way the men gathered around her.
A pulse of envy tightened my chest. Until tonight, I had never seen a woman sit higher than a man.
Their attention pressed in on me like a living, disdainful entity. I had entered a place I was not meant for.
“That explains it,” the man with crossed arms said, his voice loud and echoing. “Dorian and his obsession.”
Dorian. Was that my captor’s name?
Beside me, he started forward, his pace even as he approached the throne. I squared myself and moved with him. Unwilling to be left behind.
I didn’t trust him, but I trusted them less.
“And he’s brought a pet,” another said.
“Pet?” a third said, eyeing me. “Barely a pettifey.”
Laughter burst forth from the men, swelling to fill the space. I didn’t know that word, but I knew I’d been targeted like a clip upside the head. I met eyes with a few of the men as we passed, but none bore the red in their irises like the one who’d brought me here.
My captor came to stand eight feet from the throne. I stopped with him.
“Rhiannon,” he said to the lone woman.
This close, she looked more than noble. Mulberry-colored blooms peeked from the bramble crown, as did jagged edges. Her light-brown skin had an almost stunning, unbroken luster. Her eyes were cerulean, the dark pupils fixed on me.
Like my captor, she vibrated with latent violence. At any moment she could be out of the throne and have the tip of one of those torn-off brambles up under my chin.
I wanted to wither, to shrink away, but I didn’t—I couldn’t.
If I did, I would never look up again.
“Dorian,” Rhiannon said to him without shifting her gaze off me, “this had better be a good fucking story.”
Dorian—that was my killer’s name. A human name. A noble one. I had never stepped into a district where I could actually meet a Dorian, but I had heard the name.
Whatever these creatures were, they sounded and looked human. They had human names. But they were unequivocally not human.
Beside me, Dorian straightened. “It’s true. That’s the part that matters.”
Rhiannon’s sharp eyebrows rose. “Do tell.”
“In the battle—”
“Which ended three days ago,” one of the men called out from behind us.
Three days? Three days? I’d thought it was the next day. If three days had passed, where were we now? I’d thought we were just outside my kingdom, but if we had been traveling for three days…
What had happened to my people? Had all the walls been breached? Had the whole kingdom fallen three days ago?
Rhiannon raised a staying hand to the other men, then lifted her chin for Dorian to continue.
“In the battle,” he said, “I came across this human.”
Her eyes flicked again to me, then back. She gave a small nod, and I wondered what amount of power this woman possessed over these men, and how she had come by it. It seemed tectonic, and a fresh pang of envy knotted in me again.
“And you did not end her,” Rhiannon said.
“I was about to, but”—at this, I could barely keep my face straight; heat flared in my cheeks and neck—“I was interrupted.”
“By the wraiths?”
The wraiths. Briefly, I heard a surge of screaming metal.
Dorian nodded once.
“And why did you not allow them to do their work?”
His breath left him heavy. “She turned and stood at the end of my blade.”
A chortle erupted from the men, some slapping their legs. “You’re fucked now,” one said.
Only Rhiannon did not laugh. Surprise crossed her features and those cerulean eyes shifted to me with new interest. “Is that so?” The fingers of her left hand began to tap on the gnarled wooden arm of the throne. “You’re sure it was this one?”
Another invisible cuff to the head. I found myself staring back at her, lips pressing together, fingers rubbing. Surely my knife wasn’t so blunt it couldn’t cut through her smooth skin.
Rhiannon’s eyebrows rose a degree, and I lowered my eyes.
This wasn’t the moment.
“Looks like she’d bruise from a harsh word,” one of the men said.
“Says the warrior who’s never set foot outside the gates,” Dorian said without moving.
I could not stop thinking back on that moment in the battle. It was hazy, and came only in flashes: Dorian’s footsteps behind me as I stared over the destruction of my home; his blade at my back; finally, the tip of it at my neck, and the sight of his shadowy form standing before me.
I must have stood. I must have turned. I didn’t remember why.
“Unexpected.” Rhiannon’s fingers stopped tapping; her deliberation seemed done. The edge of a smile took hold of her lips as she raised a finger, pointing at my chest. “But not unprecedented. We shall let the spiritstag have the final say.”
Dorian sucked in air. He didn’t seem to expect this.
I stared at her, uncomprehending.
Rhiannon stood, pushing off the arms of the throne. “On the morrow. It is late.”
Dorian opened his mouth to speak, but Rhiannon descended the dais and brushed past him. I was surprised to discover she was nearly as tall as him and all the other men.
“The girl will have accommodations until then,” Rhiannon said, heading toward the leftmost staircase. She flashed a look at Dorian over her shoulder. “Above, not below.”
He let out a breath that sounded almost like relief.
All of us kept our eyes on her as she ascended the stairs, right up until the moment she disappeared under the wide arch into the tree’s deep interior and her footsteps were gone.
Then, every gaze swung to Dorian and me. The room felt fuller with cocks and bluster.
A red-maned brute crossed his thick arms. “You deserve nothing less, Dorian.”
“Ah, the bramblesucker speaks. Must be a full moon.” Dorian set his hand under my arm and made to lead me through the throng; I jerked from his hold. “Shouldn’t the lot of you be tucked up in your beds with your thumbs in your mouths?”
They all laughed anew at this—aside from the red-haired man, who wore a scowl—and the jeers continued as we passed toward the rightmost staircase. “Pettifey” was repeated like a curse, and my gaze fell on the men as we started up the stairs.
They reminded me of the guard who had attacked me in my bunk. Put them in a group, and men were half as intelligent and twice as rabid. Seemed that held true of these creatures, too, whatever they were.
Dorian and I ascended in silence, the jeers following us up.
At the landing, I said, “And now?”
He barely regarded me as he passed under the arch. “Now, we sleep.” His words sagged, tired, resigned.
I trailed a few feet behind, my gaze flicking from wall to wall and the arch above.
Here, in this enclosed space, the purple crystals seemed to hang in the air without string or vine.
Their luminescence was all the light we had.
Patterns were etched on the walls, symbols I didn’t recognize.
Those mauve blooms like lichen spread in trails, weaving their way up.
At the next landing, the passage branched in three directions. The one before us continued up, but the two to our sides were on the same level. I spotted closed doors before the passages curved away.
He nodded left without pausing, his stride quick and loud. I had to walk fast to keep up.
We passed door after door, each inlaid with the etchings I had seen on the tree’s entrance. At last he stopped at one as nondescript as the others.
Dorian set his palm to the center of the door, and like the ones below it opened inward. He stood aside, eyes on me. He jerked his chin toward the interior. “Are you hungry?”
Not in the least.
I didn’t move. Questions rattled through me like dice, but none of them felt like they would be answered. One of them found its way out, though—the one I’d been asking myself since the night of the battle.
“What are you?”
His chin lowered, his under-eyes becoming dark-purple hollows in this light. “You know what I am. You’ve known since the start.”