Chapter 16 #2
He shook his head, his hand rising and touching one of the fatter books. He murmured to himself and his fingers danced over to another. I soon lost interest.
I poured myself a goblet of the red liquid and parceled out a portion of pink meat with warm bread. I intended to be slow, dignified—but that first bite of the meat undid me. Hunger drove me on, and I ate and drank in single-minded, efficient movements.
The crash of books hitting his desk snapped me out of my fugue state. He’d sat down and was watching me over the pile. I had never even unfolded my napkin.
I fumbled for it, brought the cloth to my mouth, wiped belatedly as he began sorting through the books. I hadn’t read a book in years. “Is all this really necessary?”
His eyes flicked up, flinty and dark. “Is beauty necessary for the sun to rise?”
I took another sip of the tart, intoxicating drink. “If we’re on a clock, I would imagine my ability to shoot an arrow is more important than… this.”
“Nothing is more important than this.” He steepled his fingers on the desk, leaning forward. “The history of this kingdom, the politics—the reason you’re fighting for your life. Don’t you want to know it?”
That insistence on knowledge. Just like Elisabet.
I dropped the napkin and rose, crossing to his desk and taking the seat opposite his. “Of course I want to know it. But I’d rather know how to kill a man than why he was born with six fingers.”
“Why not learn about both?” He lifted a book almost as wide as my palm. “We’ll start here. The four courts of Feyreign.”
The cover thudded as he set it down, and something in my chest answered with a thud of its own.
For the next hour we sat in the two facing armchairs while I learned of Feyreign, a kingdom divided into four courts: Sylvanwild, Noctere, Aurelia, and Highmark.
Each had a queen, and only one court ruled all of Feyreign at any time.
Once a century the trials would determine their champions to fight for each queen, and those champions would fight to secure their court’s rule.
The queens themselves did not fight. A court losing its queen represented a terrible loss. The fae who became queen were the strongest, the most capable of their court. So only the young were chosen, fae just grown. The young were always easier to cull for a kingdom.
Dorian’s words came back to me then, with more clarity: Fucking pomp and dominance. Queens and diadems and whose boot rests on whose neck.
Now I understood. And I agreed with him.
A ruler should fight their own battles.
“But why place women in the trials, then?” I asked. “If women have the greater connection to magic, then why not just have the young men fight amongst themselves?”
“The trials aren’t just a proving ground for queens,” Dorian said. “Victorious champions are assets to their courts. If you were queen, wouldn’t you want such a champion serving you for life?”
“Not this way,” I said, and meant it.
Dorian chuckled. “Very well. Let’s move on to magic, shall we?”
Magic. The great equalizer. I knew now that fae women had the greatest connection to nature—to magic. They were physically smaller than the men, yes, but nothing was more deadly, more powerful than the harnessing of magic.
The moment I learned of it, I yearned for it.
I sat forward, the thrill of this conversation bright in my chest. “I have yet to see magic.”
“It’s this.” Dorian raised one hand and snapped his fingers. A wash of air blew through my hair, and then blue-white sparks like a flint on stone shot from his middle finger and thumb.
I stared, eyes round. That was what I had seen in the forest—what I had felt the first time I’d entered this kingdom. “That’s…”
He lowered his hand. “A court trick.”
“Can you do more?”
“Yes.”
“Do it, then.”
He shook his head. “What matters is that what you just saw is a pale imitation of what Rhiannon is capable of.”
I leaned forward, fingers touching the table. “What is she capable of?”
His eyes glazed, seeing past me for a flash. Then they sharpened on me. “I should hope you’ll never know. But when she gives an order, you obey.”
He’d said that last part once before. It sounded like deep history packed into one sharp-tongued sentence.
My eyes narrowed, unwilling realization dawning. “When you attacked my kingdom—those green flashes in the sky…”
He stared back, face a mask.
“Was that Rhiannon leading the attack?”
“The queen would never involve herself in such affairs.”
My chest inflamed, fingers pressing into the edges of the table. “Such affairs?”
Dorian’s eyebrows pulled together, but his face remained otherwise impassive. “We have warriors. Men and women we sent out.”
“Then the fae women supplied the magic,” I said. “When my kingdom was attacked.”
He shifted in the armchair like I had made him uncomfortable. He slid a book off the table between us and opened it. His eyes lowered. “Most of it, yes.”
So I sat inside a kingdom where women ruled, where men must step aside and bow. Where a woman’s magic could bring a man to his knees. Where you didn’t question your monarch’s orders.
But one thing didn’t make sense.
“You aren’t a warrior.” I stared at Dorian—at his face, his form. “Yes, you can fight. But you did a shit job of killing me. You hesitated.” I stayed leaning forward, fingers pressing harder into the wood. “What were you really doing in the Dip?”
As if I had said nothing, Dorian raised the book, turning it around to present an illustration of a woman on a bramble throne with a gnarled scepter in hand. Her hair flowed long and wild from her head to her feet.
“This is Queen Carys, the greatest ruler of the Sylvanwild Court. She was the fae who set the precedent for one court’s rule.”
I stared at him overtop the book, wondering if I should press him. No; already I knew Dorian couldn’t be pressed. I sat back. “Why did she set this precedent?”
He turned the book back toward him, gaze resting on the illustration. “She didn’t set the precedent because she was chosen,” he said. “She set it because no one could stop her.”
His eyes lifted, his voice stayed even, but there was something flint-edged beneath it. “The other courts loved to argue. Hesitate. Wait for consensus. Carys walked into the throne rooms of the courts one by one and made them bend the knee.”
I didn’t know whether to be impressed or alarmed. Maybe both.
“And did they?” I asked.
“All but one. Highmark.”
“What happened?”
“A queen’s beheading. One stroke.” My chest tightened, an image flashing to mind of a head dropping from a neck. “Rhiannon is of Carys’s line. The same blood that carved a crown out of thorns.”
A chill ran up my arms. Rhiannon Blackbriar. “And how long ago did Carys rule?”
“Four hundred years ago. Her bloodline has an unmatched connection to magic.”
“Even among the other courts?”
“Exactly. Which is another reason for the trials and picking of champions.”
“How did she die?”
“That’s a story we haven’t time for today.” He let out a breath. “It was an entire fucking war.”
A war to take down one super-powerful queen. Now I was beginning to understand. “The other courts would never ascend to rule if they didn’t implement the trials.”
He tapped the picture. “It was Carys herself who chose them.”
My gaze sharpened on him. “But you said she was killed in a war.”
“Yes, decades after the trials were created. Though Carys was vicious, she was also wise,” he said. “She didn’t believe it was beneficial to a kingdom for one bloodline to rule for thousands of years.”
Instinct told me Carys was right. I thought of the regiment commander’s ruddy nose, his weariness after only thirty years of leading the guard in the southern district. He’d probably done a far better job as a younger, less proven man.
“Even wild things rot if they go unchallenged. Power without interruption breeds arrogance. And arrogance makes a court weak.”
“So she implemented the trials to keep the courts strong.” I paused. “But is it really beneficial for a court to sacrifice dozens of their strongest?”
“It’s a sacrifice.” Dorian closed the book. “A necessary one to keep us sharp.”
“Is that history speaking,” I asked, “or you?”
He breathed out. “I don’t suppose the difference matters.”
Pomp and dominance.
And he had no power to change it.
“So you’re fine with dying?”
“I didn’t say that.” He rose and stepped past me, toward a far bookshelf. Always turning elsewhere when I prodded at him. “That’s all for today.”
I stood, turning after him. “Teach me to use magic.”
It was the sentence that had thrummed through me since the moment I’d seen his fingers spark.
His step faltered. Not by much—just an increment—before he recovered. He didn’t look back at me when he stopped in front of the bookcase. “Why would you ask me that?”
“Why wouldn’t I ask you that?”
He stayed unmoving, face turned away. “You’re human, Eurydice.”
So that was it? A human couldn’t use magic? “But you can’t know unless you try. Have you ever tried to teach a human magic?”
His shoulders dropped, and he reached up and slid a book out. “No human has ever been able to use magic. Not once in history.” When he turned back toward me, those shadows had returned under his eyes. “And now you should leave.”
I didn’t move, the cold truth sliding through me. “So that’s why we’re fucked.”
He flipped open the book, paging through it. “Among other reasons.”
And yet… I stepped toward him. “I saw it, you know.”
His gaze flicked up, dark eyes intense. “Saw what?”
“Yesterday, in the forest. I saw it on you, around you. Like hard rain.” I ran a hand over my own shoulder. “Where does it come from?”
He paused. A beat, two. “Our dead.”
“Your dead?”
“All who have died flow into the earth, and all magic we draw flows out of it.” His fingers rubbed together. “That’s enough. There’s much more to teach you on the morrow.”
I hated waiting. Had always hated waiting. Maybe that was why I’d started climbing the wall before the age of eight. “Teach me now. I’m not tired.”
His mouth twisted. “Your eyes are two holes in your face.”
“Doesn’t stop them from working.”
He crossed behind his desk and dropped the book onto it with a clap. That mask had come back down. “It’s time for you to leave. I’ll come for you in the morning.”