Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I’d never tell Dorian, but he was right.
As soon as I left his chambers, exhaustion weighed on me like a creature with claws extended into my shoulders.
I wandered from his chambers in the direction of my room—or what I thought was the direction.
I must have gotten turned, because I found myself following a staircase up when I thought I remembered my room being a story below his.
That was when I heard the moan.
It came from down a dark-set hall. I hovered at the stairs’ landing, seeing nothing but empty hallway and the purple hue of crystals deeper in. I followed the noise around a corner, found myself approaching a half-ajar door with lavender light spilling through the gap.
I came into the rectangle of light and stopped.
Through the doorway, atop an enormous, four-poster bed, Rhiannon’s hair spilled over her bare shoulders. She faced away from me, but I recognized the exquisite contours of her muscled arms, the taper of her waist, her spread thighs as she ground herself atop a fat cock.
A pair of male hands were clapped around her ass, urging her harder, and at one side a young blond fae woman knelt on all fours suckling on Rhiannon’s breast while her own fingers worked between her legs.
I stood frozen, until the blond fae’s sea-blue eyes opened—and saw me.
A moment passed. Her eyes stayed on me, mouth still working on Rhiannon’s nipple, her gaze half-lidded like she’d fully expected me there. Or wasn’t bothered, at least.
In my kingdom, sex belonged to the dark—quiet, shuttered, furtive—all closed doors and clipped-off cries.
I still remembered my mother walking in on me as a teenager, finding me in the bedroom, inspecting between my legs.
The shame burned. I’d felt so mousy, so small.
And even when I’d imagined what it would be like to be with a man—had been with one, once; a guard—it had always been he atop me in the dark, a quick and quiet thing.
This was something else entirely. This was feral. Shameless. This—this was fucking.
Rhiannon’s hand went up, fingers sliding into the blond fae’s hair, and she pulled her up for a kiss. Their mouths met, lips opening, and the fae’s eyes fluttered shut.
I jolted free. I staggered back the way I’d come, down the hall and the stairs, anywhere away, and finally found the correct path back to my quarters.
The thought came to me, swift and unbeckoned: Does she ever call Dorian to her chambers?
Probably. She struck me as a queen who would drink from every cup offered to her, at least to know its taste.
I hated that I’d asked myself the question. Hated more that I envisioned them together.
When I arrived at my room, I found the door ajar but no sharp-eyed fae scrubbing the floors. She had been in again, though; the bed was made and everything I had displaced was neatly replaced.
Like I was a guest. A prisoner, but a guest.
My journal remained where I’d set it, on the stand beside the bed. I had placed it at a particular angle to see if it would be moved, but its position hadn’t changed.
I climbed onto the bed, that image of Rhiannon still seared into my mind, and slept long and hard. Deeper than I had in years. When I woke, I was surprised to find the clock on the stand read five hours had passed.
It was evening, and Dorian had not told me anything about how I should spend my evenings.
I opened my door and nearly bumped into her. The hawk-eyed fae servant, carrying a tray down the hallway. She neatly dodged.
“Watch yourself,” she said.
I stepped into the hallway after her. “Wait.” She stopped and turned. “I’m Eurydice,” I said.
The tray didn’t so much as wobble as she held it upright. At least four platters of food and a jug of dark liquid sat atop it. “I don’t see why I’d need or care to know.”
“You clean my room. You looked at my journal.”
She hesitated. Then, “Faun.”
Faun. Such a soft name for such a hard-edged creature.
She made to turn, but I called out her name. She paused.
“Can you use magic, Faun?”
She stared at me like I’d changed color. “All fae can.”
All fae. The next question rose in me and surfaced before I could stop it. “Then why are you a servant?”
Silence lapsed between us, during which the liquid in Faun’s jug finally gave the slightest tremble. “You think I’m a servant,” she said, low. “But between the two of us, who will live and who will die?”
With that, she turned away and continued down the hall. She disappeared along with her pretty jug.
She had a point. Even if it was at my expense.
Would I rather be a servant if it meant I wasn’t being sacrificed by the spiritstag to once-in-a-century trials created by some long-ago queen who believed in “equality” amongst courts I wasn’t even a part of?
Faun was gone, but I stared after her. Yes, I would rather scrub floors. That’s what anyone rational would say. And yet…
The deep-of-night thought returned—the one I could hardly acknowledge to myself.
I had been waiting for the world to end for my entire life.
And, for me, it had.
It had been replaced by this. By courts, queens, and a spiritstag offering me a choice.
Night cloaked the Sylvanwild tree, vast and full of mysteries. No one had explicitly told me I could not explore it—only that I must not venture past the citadel’s moat. And now that I was one of the competitors in the trials, I figured that conferred a certain measure of protection.
I wandered curving hallways and past closed doors. And because the citadel was so tall, my natural inclination when I saw a set of stairs was to climb them.
On the way, I passed fae. Some stared and some acknowledged me and some narrowed their eyes. None of them stopped me, so in that gamble I was right.
Some who passed me were servants moving with trays and bundles, and some were nobles sweeping by in silks, and I began to understand that this place was as stark in its divide as I imagined our kingdom’s castle to be.
Only the least and the greatest lived within this tree.
And, of course, the least served the greatest.
Tomorrow I would ask Dorian where the rest of the Sylvanwild fae were: the farmers, the weavers, the hunters.
If this was their palace, then there must be many more—the equivalent of districts to sustain the court.
Otherwise, how would they have access to so many delicacies?
So many fruits and meats, such varied fibers for their clothes and drapes and bedclothes? They couldn’t trade for everything.
I kept a mental map of my path; I would need to retrace it before the night was done. And my fatigue was deepening, which meant I wouldn’t go much further tonight. Not that there was much to see, it seemed—
I stopped in front of a long, winding staircase. This was the longest staircase I’d found. It corkscrewed upward as far as I could see. And, with almost piercing brightness, I could swear the moon shone down from the center. Was this stair open to the sky?
Maybe I’d go just a little further. Theo and child-Eurydice would be ashamed of me if I didn’t climb the highest place I could find.
I had only ascended for a minute when a grunt resounded from above, followed by the high pitch of metal striking metal. I froze; it was a familiar sound—a chilling one.
I had to know. I had to see.
I climbed faster.
The sounds came clearer. They were a man’s grunts, and the metal had a piercing ring.
After minutes, an archway offered an exit from the staircase, leading out onto one of the tree’s boughs, so vast I didn’t even recognize it at first as a branch.
It looked more like an enormous, curving platform.
It was above the canopy, and the moonlight poured over its serrated bark. And him. The man who stood upon it.
He had black hair and a strong but lithe body where the shadows did not cling to him.
He swung a sword in one hand, and it gleamed and shrieked where it struck the curved scythe of a creature the moonlight could not illuminate.
The creature moved around him like a shadow, so fast and smooth it didn’t seem corporeal.
And the scythe… the blade alone was taller than me.
He was fighting one of the wraiths. One of the creatures I’d first encountered that night in the Dip.
The figure moved like he knew the creature’s rhythm—ducking, pivoting with precision, lunging, low to the ground one moment and vaulting high the next—as if he’d fought its kind before.
His blade carved arcs through the dark like liquid silver, sparks flying where metal met something not quite flesh.
A guttural sound tore out of him—not pain, not rage, but something fundamental.
Whoever he was, he didn’t falter. He didn’t retreat. He fought as though the edge of the world waited just behind him.
Their clash ran fast, almost faster than my eyes could track, a blur of shadow and silver. The man was quick, a miracle with his sword, every block and parry exact.
When he turned toward the archway and the moonlight caught his face, I stepped back.
Dorian.
It was Dorian fighting the wraith.
I nearly lost my footing on the stairs. The violence of the misstep threw my heart into a gallop.
I turned, my hand going to the tree’s wall as I descended.
Fast, faster—anything short of tumbling headlong down.
The sounds of that scythe still rang in my head, but not from the fight I’d just witnessed.
No, it was that night in the southern district. Watching my people cut down, hearing their screams and that godforsaken screeching.
And Dorian, he was a part of it all. He sanctioned it.
Somehow, my mind had fractured when it came to him. Maybe it was necessary, a protective measure, but I had somehow lost track of the agony.
He was sparring with one of those things.
These fae, this court—it was fucked. They were in league with hell itself.
“Eurydice,” a voice called from behind me, echoing down the stairs. Dorian.
I kept going. I didn’t know quite where; I only knew I had to get to the bottom of this staircase and away from him.
My eyes blurred, and the staircase swam.
I was trapped here with the murderers of my mother, in this terrible place.
A prisoner. And now they were offering me up in their violent ritual, a sacrifice.
A hand caught my shoulder, stopping me entirely. “Irin’s breath, Eury,” Dorian said from behind me.
He was so fast. So much faster than me.
My lungs scraped, my vision still blurry as my brain caught up. I swallowed, and my voice was a rasp. “Only my mother and Theo can call me that.”
A pause. Then, “Who’s Theo?”
Like a match, that simmering rage I’d been carrying in my gut flared. I turned and found him looming on the step above me. Sweat slicked his tanned brow, and his chest rose and fell quick.
“He was on the wall that night. My best friend. He’s—”
Dorian’s eyebrows raised, his eyes traveling between mine, and a moment of clarity came over him.
“I understand.”
I hadn’t expected that. A barb or sharp word, but not that.
We stared at one another as a cloud drifted across the moon. Silver washed over us, then shadow, our fast breathing marking the moment.
“That thing up there,” I said, finally. “That’s what lurks in the forest.”
He let out a slow breath. “Yes. But it won’t follow us in here.”
My chest uncinched a fraction. “Tell me what this court is. ‘Sylvanwild’—is that another word for the pit you summon those creatures from?”
His lips parted without sound. I wondered if he was thinking of the night of the battle, too. “I can’t begin to explain to you what you saw. There’s so much—”
My jaw hardened. “Do your best.”
“They live alongside us,” he said, his words rapid. “You never have to fear them. Not while you’re here in the citadel.”
But if I step outside the citadel…
“And what were you doing out there?”
“I train by night.”
The cloud thinned, moonlight sketching his face in shades of gray. Even in this light, I saw earnestness there. He had not wanted me to see this, had not wanted me to be reminded of what I’d endured.
Maybe his heart wasn’t entirely black.
My own still hammered. My voice was thin. “Don’t make me train with those things.”
“You’ll only train by day. I mean it.”
“Swear it,” I spat.
He stepped closer, until I could feel his breath on my face. A second passed, then two. “I swear, I’ll never make you train with them.”
It was the first real conversation we’d had—like we were speaking as equals, like the honesty could only have occurred when we could barely make out each other’s faces, half-shadowed on a staircase between one place and another. Like the conversation was accidental or a dream.
I turned away, took one step, then another.
I stopped. “Thank you.”
Behind me, his voice was low. “Sleep. You’ll need it.”