Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
An hour of training later, I approached Dorian under the shade of the citadel tree. He had taken a seat against the tree’s trunk and had been reading a slim book, which now lay beside him, open, the lettering entirely foreign. And he had long ago fallen asleep.
His posture was deceptively relaxed—one leg stretched out, the other bent, his arms resting loose at his sides. But even in sleep, he looked braced. Like some part of him didn’t trust the stillness.
His head tilted slightly against the bark, dark hair falling over his brow in a way that made him seem younger, though not softer. His expression wasn’t peaceful. His mouth held the same faint downturn as always, and there was a line between his brows, as if his dreams refused to be gentle.
“Doesn’t he need to train?” I whispered to Haskel.
“He trains by night,” Haskel said from beside me. “Always has.”
“Night?”
“If you can fight at your best by moonlight, then you’ve got a leg up by sunlight.”
That sounded like something the regiment commander would say to us night guard.
“The daytime training is for your sake.” Haskel added, his hand warm on my shoulder. “Because of your sight.”
“My sight?”
“Human sight—it’s notoriously poor.”
I angled my face up toward him. “And you can see well at night?”
“Well, not so well now, but—”
“Don’t give away all your vulnerabilities.” Dorian’s eyes had opened a fraction. “She’ll leap on you like a briarling and try to shank you with a blunt knife when you least expect it.”
“That was before we were partnered,” I said to Haskel.
In the short time I had known him, I had developed a small affection for the older fae. At the very least, I wanted him to continue training me; I had learned more in an hour with him than in three months with the guard.
“I’d have shanked him long ago if he weren’t so pretty,” Haskel said. “None of the women here would allow it.”
Dorian’s booted foot surged forward, narrowly missing Haskel’s calf.
Haskel laughed, stepping back more quickly than I’d expect. It was strange to see camaraderie like this, and even stranger to feel a modicum of safety.
Dorian gathered his book and got to his feet. “I take it you’re done for the day.”
“Her arms have gone to jelly.” Haskel lifted one of my limp arms by the wrist. “Best fill her belly with boar and wait until tomorrow.”
I pulled my arm away. “I can go on.”
Haskel laughed. “You can’t, but you do have the Sylvanwild spirit. Anyway, tomorrow’s only a sun’s revolution away.”
Dorian nodded for me to follow. “See you, rot-spawn,” he said to the other fae.
“Until then, mossback.”
I paused in front of Haskel. “I appreciate it.”
He threw out a dismissive hand and bent, picking up the weapons. “The best thanks I can get is you coming prepared on the morrow.”
Together, Dorian and I walked the innermost path around the citadel’s trunk. “Never thank him,” Dorian said when we were out of earshot. “It’s in vain.”
I glanced at him, then away. “Now I’m going to thank him every time.”
He sighed, but his lips curved in my periphery. “He’ll like you less for it.”
“Liking doesn’t strike me as a Sylvanwild value.” I paused. “Where are we going, anyway?”
“My chambers.”
His chambers? I glanced over, brows drawing together.
He seemed to sense my unease and said, “Everything we need is there. My books. My research.”
“Research? I thought you were…”
His eyes shifted to me, glinting. “A simple soldier sent off to the Kingdom of Storms to beat my club on the ground and carry off a human?”
“Isn’t that what you did?”
His gaze went forward, shuttering. “Yes, it is.”
There was more to his words, a depth beneath their simplicity. But I sensed he wouldn’t reveal it if I were to ask.
Inside the citadel, we walked up the staircase and into the bowels of the tree.
We passed down winding hallways and up more flights of stairs, and though I tried to map them as we went, I lost my sense of direction by the time we passed a group of young women with Rhiannon at the fore.
All were barefoot in fur robes, their hair done up in elaborate styles, and they were so busy in conversation none of them noticed us.
Except for Rhiannon.
She gave a nod to Dorian, who’d stepped aside to allow them to pass, and then a nod to me.
I watched after them. They were elegant and tall and how those of us in the Dip imagined royalty might look and walk. Once I had seen the queen’s dais pass through the southern district, but the lace curtains were drawn.
“Who are they?” I said once the women had disappeared down the hallway.
“Our competitors. Fresh from their confessions.”
I jerked my head around to Dorian, expecting to see a smirk there. But he wasn’t smiling.
“They saw you,” he said. “Though they pretended they didn’t.”
“But those women. They didn’t look like fighters.”
“Never underestimate a woman in this kingdom.” He resumed walking. “No matter how they might look. They’re the most dangerous of us all.”
Words I never thought I’d hear. They frightened me. They thrilled me.
I caught up to him. “Why is that?”
“They have the greatest connection with nature. The queen even has the power to bind her subjects to silence.”
A bouquet of questions flowered in my mind, the first of which was— “What do you mean by silence?”
“Her magic. With it, she can force us to keep secrets as well as reveal them.” He glanced over at me, eyes narrowed. “The better question is, how can she leverage it?”
So many ways. More ways than I could fathom.
Just then we stopped before a door. Dorian set his palm to the surface and it yielded, opening onto a bedroom much like mine. It had been furnished similarly, but these quarters were larger and included a second room almost as large as the bedroom. Through the doorway I spied a whole wall of books.
“You’re not shy, are you?” he said as I stepped in, my eyes traveling everywhere. He shrugged off his cloak and set it on a hook. “There’s food in the study. Cheese, fruit, meat.”
I stopped at the study’s archway. There, on a round dark-wood table with two chairs, had been set a full meal with at least three different dishes. A carafe of red liquid glistened under the room’s crystal light. Hunger lit in me, but I hesitated.
The room was so much more than food. Bookshelves lined every wall, each of them brimming.
A wide wood desk had been set with a high-backed oak armchair with a gray animal skin slung over it.
Papers lay in semi-disarray over the desk’s surface, and a white-feathered quill sat upright in a wooden inkpot.
Just like Elisabet’s room over the inn. What would she have thought of this place?
“What are you,” I breathed, “some kind of archivist?”
“Archivists are for musty dungeons and candlelight.” His voice drifted from the washroom. “I prefer historian.”
Historian. The word pinged through me with sharp edges. That didn’t cohere with the Dorian I’d seen that night in the Dip, his sword raised, on the verge of running me through.
You didn’t send a historian to a battle.
“You? The court historian?”
Water splashed from the other room. “You expected white hair and spectacles?”
“Not white hair. Spectacles, yes.”
He let out an amused, echoing breath. “It’s not a particularly valued role in the court.”
I stood closer to the doorway of the washroom. “You don’t value history?” Elisabet would be horrified.
“Oh, we do.” He appeared, hair dripping, as he wiped a moss-towel over his scalp. “But not every monarch does.”
I suspected he was referring to Rhiannon.
“How long have you been the court’s historian?”
“What you really want to know is whether Rhiannon killed the previous historian.” Dorian wrung his hair with the towel. “Yes?”
I swallowed. “Yes.”
“Of course she did.” He said it as casually as he wiped his hair.
“But—why?”
“He served the previous queen. Rhiannon had always distrusted him, and then, on a visit to Highmark, he had a meeting alone with their historian—” Dorian drew a finger across his throat. “Terrible idea.”
I stared. Rhiannon had killed the historian for meeting alone with someone from another court.
A pretense. It was an obvious pretense.
Which meant she was paranoid. Deeply, viciously.
Now I understood Dorian’s position.
Back in the Dip, when our neighborhood’s pub changed hands the last time, the new owner had gotten rid of all the old employees. Not because they were bad, but because they weren’t his.
Dorian didn’t belong to the last monarch. He belonged to Rhiannon. And she wasn’t a backward-looking queen.
I let out a breath. “How long has Rhiannon ruled?”
He tossed the towel aside. “Guess.”
“Ten years.”
A faint smile curled his lips. “That’s quaint.”
Longer, then. But how long could a woman as young as her have ruled? Then again, these were fae. Their lives might be long.
I turned back, fingers on the doorframe.
The study smelled sweet and savory and book-musty all at once.
And a scent filled these chambers which I knew by now to be unique in all of Sylvanwild.
Dorian. Resin, smoke, and a faint trace of something that was his alone.
It hit me low in the gut, unsettling. That scent would linger on my clothing.
Dorian appeared beside me. “Overwhelming, isn’t it?”
I half-startled, pulling in a breath. “Why would you say that?”
“You couldn’t begin to read even one of these books, and there are thousands.”
I raised my chin to him, heat rising up my neck. “Could you read one sentence in a book from my kingdom?”
“Yes.” His eyes were steady on me. “And many more.”
That pricked.
I approached the table. “The books aren’t overwhelming.” Even if you are. I set my fingertips to it, touched a vine of small red berries set amidst the plate of fruit. “But this is.”
“Eat your fill.” Dorian crossed to one wall, his eyes on a high bookshelf. “Eat, then we’ll begin.”
I sat into a chair at the table. “Aren’t you eating?”