Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The next morning—and every morning for the next week—I trained. I woke, bathed, and dressed. I waited for Dorian’s knock, and we broke our fast alone together in the dining room. We didn’t speak of that night. We didn’t speak of the wraiths, and I never left the citadel at night.
After breakfast, we walked to the stables where I rode.
After the first few days I could reliably mount my mare.
I learned from Dorian how to sit bareback, which none of the patrol in my kingdom did.
The few glimpses I’d had of the patrol as a child had been men on leather saddles; it was the only way I thought a person could ride.
I’d been wrong.
Bareback riding was wonderful and terrible. Wonderful, because you could feel the horse move beneath you—you were connected in a way a saddle would not allow. Terrible, because you sat dead center on a horse’s spine. My backside ached for days.
I learned how to use reins, how to hold them and sit back and shift them to turn the horse. How to click my tongue as Dorian had done and use my voice to speak to her in tandem.
Near the end of the week we progressed to a trot, which I hated, an endless, sharp jostling like your organs were being scrambled until you pulled the horse to a stop. Cantering was better, smoother, an easy seat, almost like riding a rocking horse.
We had yet to try a gallop. We’d have to take the horse out of the paddock, and I had only just begun to canter. Galloping would come next week.
After that it was bows with Haskel, who was convinced I couldn’t shoot an arrow properly without the right arm strength. I needed to be able to pull the gutstring taut, and I couldn’t do what he could, even with the small bow I’d been given.
But he was candid and patient with me—and equally impatient with Dorian, which pleased me—and my arrows came closer and closer to the target’s center each day, even as Haskel moved me farther and farther from it.
Twenty paces, then twenty-five by week’s end.
At noon there was lunch in Dorian’s study, and learning.
During these sessions he seemed in a rush, agitated, and the more questions I asked, the more his agitation grew.
He had insisted I learn all this, yet he seemed irritated by having to explain it.
I didn’t care; I interrupted him constantly.
It was in my nature—to ask, yes, and also to prod.
He already disdained me. What difference did a scowl make?
We started with the history of Feyreign and the politics of the courts.
The fae kingdom was a three-day ride from the Kingdom of Storms, and entirely inaccessible to humans. Even if they made it past the Sylvanwild scouts’ arrows, they would never be able to see the gate to open it.
That was magic.
Then there were the four courts:
Sylvanwild of the autumn forest.
Noctere of the winter marsh.
Aurelia of the spring mountains and lakes.
Highmark of the summer plains.
Each court’s geography and season was eternal, distinct. When I asked Dorian why, he said it had always been so. There were storybook tales taught to children and thousands of years of history even he wasn’t privy to.
“And where do the lowborn live?” I asked. “In these courts.”
“Villages. Some closer, some further from the citadel.” His finger traced through the air in a growing circle.
“The closer to the grove, the closer to nature, they say. But there are those who live solitary lives on the court’s outskirts.
In this court, some fae straddle autumn and winter and have forgotten whether they are of Sylvanwild or Noctere. ”
My eyebrows rose. “Are there no walls between the courts?”
“Only those we build with our animosity and waggling tongues.”
What a thing, to live without walls. To pass through the forest and arrive in another court.
“And the war that killed Queen Carys?” I asked. “Was it fought between the courts?”
“All four.” While we spoke, he liked to roll a perfectly round amethyst crystal on his desk, back and forth between his hands. “The only time the four courts warred. Every other war occurred between just two courts, when the reigning queen was weak and a usurper thought to try her hand.”
“Why did the four courts go to war during Carys’s rule?”
The crystal’s roll slowed. Then, his voice low, “Decades after she created the trials, she wanted to undo them, and the courts. She wanted to break the wheel.”
The wheel. That seemed familiar.
The Kingdom of Storms had its own wheel. The castle, the inner districts, the outer districts. But when you spent your whole life in the Dip, you didn’t think of it that way. You just lived.
“Why break it?”
He caught the crystal in one hand and lifted it between us. “She became obsessed with power. She believed she was something called the Courtbreaker.”
“The Courtbreaker?”
He waved a hand. “It’s irrelevant to our work.”
“Tell me. Please.”
“There’s a rhyme I was taught as a boy.” His eyes unfocused, as if he was pulling something from the corner of his mind. When he drew in a breath, he recited in a strange, haunting voice:
Four courts keep the world in line—
One for blood, and one for shine,
One for thorn, and one for sky…
But if the Courtbreaker wakes—
one must kneel, and one must die.
“I love children’s rhymes that involve death,” I said. “What does it mean?”
His hazel eyes lowered to the crystal. “Long ago, it was said there lived a fae who could harness the magic of two courts. That fae longed for power and was said to have brought Feyreign to the verge of ruin.” He rolled the crystal to the other hand. “She had to be destroyed.”
“The magic of two courts—did Carys harness it?”
His eyes met mine, lit by the lantern on his desk. “Just once. And she was killed for it.”
At the end of that first week, Haskel told me to meet him in a certain room of the citadel in the afternoon. That was all. He gave me directions—up a staircase, down a hall, left and right—and I managed to find the room only after a few misses.
I knocked on the door. Haskel opened it and was flanked by a narrow-eyed, slender man who immediately scrutinized me. He was brown-haired, beige-skinned, but shorter and more slender than most of the men in the court.
Haskel’s hand went to my shoulder and guided me in. “These are the tailor’s quarters. And that’s the court tailor.”
“Mirek,” said the man, his eyes drifting over me from my face down to my boots. “Those leathers don’t suit you at all.”
Behind him, I realized, stood not a bed but a dais, tall mirrors on three sides.
“That’s what I’ve been thinking.” Haskel passed over to a chair and dropped into it like these were his quarters. He procured an apple from somewhere in his leathers and bit into it. “Doesn’t move well in them. The jerkin’s too heavy for a proper shot.”
And here I thought these were the finest leathers I’d ever worn. “They suit me well enough.”
Haskel lifted a hand. “You want to win these trials, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
“Don’t put an arrow in your boot, then.” He indicated the dais. “It’s a matter of standing. The least work you’ll do all day.”
Of everyone here, I found Haskel the most like people in the Dip. He was blunt, funny, humble. I had a hard time refusing anything he asked of me.
So I stepped onto the dais. And Mirek commenced with measuring me with a length of twine, muttering, his quill scratching notes each time he pulled the cord tight. Every hum of disdain made me want to square my shoulders harder.
Getting fitted for leathers felt wrong. Not for Eurydice Waters. So I distracted myself from Mirek’s assiduous attention to my calf length by saying to Haskel, “What does it mean to harness the magic of two courts?”
Haskel had just taken a bite of apple. He cleared his throat. “Come again?”
“Queen Carys. Four hundred years ago—”
“Ahh,” said Mirek. “That old chestnut.” I glanced down at the fae kneeling by my leg with the twine held long. “Every fae child dreams of being the Courtbreaker once they hear the rhyme.”
Haskel turned his apple in one hand as he studied me. “You hear about that from Dorian?”
I gave him a nod.
“It means problems,” Haskel said. “Four hundred years since Carys, and no one complains. We’ve prospered—the wines, meats, cheeses flowing—with the courts in harmony.”
Even Haskel was talking around the question.
“At present, Queen Maeronyx of Noctere reigns,” Mirek said.
“Because her champions defeated the others’ in the last trial,” I said.
“Quick learning for a human,” Haskel said. “Even if you and Dorian were to win the Sylvanwild trials, you would face Noctere, Aurelia, and Highmark’s champions.”
Mirek rose to measure my waist. I leaned around him to see Haskel. “How would we face them?”
“In one fight, before all four courts and all four queens, in the Killing Fields.”
One fight. The Killing Fields. Boots on fucking necks. All because of Carys’s precedent, because she wanted Feyreign strong, its mettle always tested through blood.
Why?
The Kingdom of Storms was certainly no threat.
I glanced between the two men. “Why don’t the champions take the crown for themselves?”
“It’s been tried,” Mirek said darkly. “Once, while Carys still lived. The first Noctere champion declared herself queen after a victory. Carys banded the courts together, and the gods turned against the champion. The throne refused her. Her name was erased from memory.” He glanced up at me as he moved the twine to my ribcage.
“You don’t want to know what happened to the body. ”
I sucked in a breath. “And Maeronyx. What of her?”
“Maeronyx is hard-fisted but fair.” Haskel bit into his apple. “Trade flows between the courts, borders are respected. A hard queen of tradition is better than one who seeks to bring change. Worst of all is one who possesses a weak will.”
“And Rhiannon?” I asked.
Mirek let out a chuff. “This girl is a bold one.”
Haskel ran a hand over his jaw as he chewed. “She’s hard. Like all of Carys’s line, she rules all four courts in her heart.” Haskel tossed the apple’s core into a bin, then wiped his hands. “That’s what happens when you’re the forgotten daughter.”
I glanced over at him. “The forgotten daughter?”
“The youngest of five. A hundred years ago she killed all her siblings to take the crown,” Mirek said quietly. “Four girls in line ahead of her.”
A hundred years. Rhiannon was old.
“All of them with more power.” Haskel’s voice was the quietest I’d heard it now. “She took them all out in one night while they were sleeping.”
I stared between the two of them. “She killed four older sisters?” That seemed impossible. Inhuman. Monstrous beyond even these fae.
“Only way to do it.” Mirek placed a needle between his lips as he worked.
“And her parents?” I asked.
Haskel grunted. “Fae are known to die of withered hearts from time to time. They passed not long after Rhiannon was crowned.”
A strange silence fell over us. Now I understood why Rhiannon stood alone. Why she’d gotten rid of the former queen’s advisors. Why she didn’t trust. Why she was ruthless and hedonistic.
To her, life was short, brutal, and grasping.
And she had lived a hundred years with what she’d done.
Haskel stood. “Enough of history and the blasted courts. I’d much rather talk weapons." He crossed the room and hefted a small quiver. When he approached me on the dais, he extended it to me. “Yours.”
I accepted it, holding it above Mirek’s arms circling my chest with the twine. “It’s smaller than the one I wear now.”
“A hip quiver. Shorter arrows.” He crossed the room again, this time returning with an almost white-bark bow. “Short bow. Lighter than the feather fletching.”
I took the bow in my other hand. It was that light.
“You’re not a long shot,” Haskel said. “Short’s your best chance for a hit. Thin leathers and a good, light cloak will keep you agile. You’ve got no magic, so your armor and your weapons and your mind”—he tapped his temple—“are it.”
Past Mirek, Haskel’s blue eyes had taken on a softness. He reminded me of my almost-father on days when he’d decided he loved me and my mother. When the world felt gentler, even with the acid rain.
“I’m pretty good with a short sword, too,” I said.
A faint smile touched his lips. “We’ll get you that for the other hip.”