Chapter Seventeen
Seventeen
It’s just Giles, Shaye, and me for dinner that night.
When I emerge from my room, they’re already sitting at the table, food half gone.
I indulged in a midday nap after returning from Hol’s to try and clear my mind, but I found it was just as murky when I woke.
My thoughts and dreams all revolve around Davien and this strange new world… even if I don’t want them to.
“Where’s Oren?” I ask as I swing my legs over the bench at one of the tables in the meeting hall.
“He had some house business to attend to,” Shaye says.
“Oh, I see.” Don’t ask about Davien. Don’t ask about Davien, I repeat in my mind. Yet: “And Davien?” Damn it, Katria.
“Vena wanted him. Likely something to do with the ritual to get the magic out of you.” Giles rips off a drumstick from a large roasted bird and begins viciously chomping with his sharp teeth. “Knowing the two of them, they’ll have something figured out by morning. Smart ones, they are.”
“Anyone is smart compared to you, Giles.” Shaye grins.
“Good thing I keep you around to make up for what I lack.” Giles chuckles.
Shaye quickly turns her attention to me, shifting in her seat. “I heard you went out for an adventure in town today.”
“Hol tell you?” I carve off a hunk of breast meat for myself, then grab a slice of bread and a spoonful of vegetables from a serving dish.
“Among others.”
“Others?”
“People are talking about the new singer and lute player on the scene in the Screaming Goat.” She grins, picks up tiny hunks of bread, and pops them in her mouth. “You’ve got more fire in you than I thought. I didn’t take you for the type to go rogue.”
I shrug. “I like music and I wanted to hear it.”
“Good thing she’s got a bit of roguish tendency in her,” Giles says. “This is a whole city of rogues. Vigilantes. Ne’er-do-wells. Treasonous scoundrels who don’t fit in anywhere else and would slit our current king’s throat if they had the chance.”
“Everyone has seemed lovely to me,” I counter, digging into the food.
“Everyone? Even our dear king-to-be when he was throwing a tantrum in the woods?”
“Well…” I knew the anger wasn’t directed at me. Though it was annoying, to put it mildly.
“How about the ten-year-old who was ready to make you dance like a puppet for his amusement?” Shaye raises her eyebrows.
“He wasn’t going to hurt me.” I come to Raph’s defense yet again. Even if the situation might’ve ended badly, it didn’t. And I truly believe he didn’t mean me harm.
“He might have all the same.”
“I don’t believe he would have.”
“Stop sticking up for people when you shouldn’t. If someone treats you badly, call them out on it.” She shakes her head and glances at me from the corner of her eye. “Never thought I’d hear a human defending a fae or saying they’re ‘lovely.’ What has the world come to?”
The notion of someone pointing out when someone else treats me badly is strange. I look for a place to settle it in my psyche. I like the idea enough to try and implement it. “Maybe I’m not your average human?”
“Not as long as you have the king’s magic within you,” Shaye agrees.
“I hope Davien can get it soon and bring order to this mad world,” Giles murmurs.
I remember what Davien said in the streets today about Hol. “Did you both live in the Bleeding Woods once?”
They exchange a look that’s a whole conversation. Giles is the first one to speak, starting with a shake of his head. “I lived in the Court of Pillars originally.”
“Court of Pillars?”
“Boltov’s men came through and demanded our axes and rituals.
We weren’t much in the way of warriors and couldn’t put up much of a resistance.
Though we tried. Those ancient crafting tools were all we had…
” His eyes and voice become distant. Shaye reaches across the table and rests a hand on his.
Their eyes lock and there’s another moment of understanding between them that makes me feel like an outsider.
The connection between these two is deeper than I originally believed.
Shaye speaks. I can almost sense that she does it so Giles doesn’t have to. “I lived in the High Court originally.”
“The High Court?” I repeat softly. “The place with the castle? Where the—”
“King Boltov lives. Yes.” Shaye returns her hands to her lap, staring at her plate a moment before taking a swig of her mead with purpose. “I was born there…and I think after I drew my first breath, I exhaled the promise that I would not let myself die there.”
“Shaye…” Giles says softly.
She meets my eyes with an intensity that I can’t turn away from. “Soon after my birth, Boltov’s loyalists assessed me and determined I was worthy, and I began training to be a Butcher.”
I think of that man in the woods who was so intent on killing Davien. I imagine him living a life of blood and battle from birth. Knowing no scrap of kindness in a way far, far worse than I can comprehend. “How did you escape?”
“They turned me into a weapon,” Shaye muses over the edge of her glass. “The thing about the Boltovs is they don’t realize weapons aren’t loyal to kings by default. A sword knows no ruler other than the hand that holds it.”
“So you found a better ruler?”
“I found a mind, thought for myself, and became my own ruler,” Shaye insists firmly.
“I realized I was not a tool to be used by others but a soldier—a knight, a person—that any king should delight in having on his retainer. That I was not as dependent as my first king thought me. So I found my own mission, and that happened to align with a better king.”
I pick at my food and shift in my seat, trying to get more comfortable. Suddenly, I can’t find a position where my skin feels right. Something she said has jarred me, tilted my world beyond easy repair.
“How did you find that mind of yours? The one that defined your own worth?” I ask softly.
I dare to bring my eyes to hers, thought I’m afraid she’ll chastise or mock me.
To my surprise, she doesn’t. She stares at me, intent and expectant.
“How were you able to break away from the king who controlled you? How were you able to tell yourself that he no longer mattered?”
“It started with a thought,” she says softly.
As she speaks, my innermost insecurities are dredged up from the murky depths I try and drown them in.
“A thought that maybe he tried to keep me down because I was better than he could ever be. He was afraid of me—afraid of what I could become if he didn’t control me.
So he spent every bit of his energy making me feel less.
Making me feel worthless. Making me feel like I was nothing without him. ”
Wretched girl, do as I say and maybe someday you’ll find someone who loves you. Joyce’s words echo from a history I’ve tried to blot out.
“I made him feel strong. Ruling over me, telling me what to do, thinking my every breath was dependent on him…that was what gave him power. Which meant I had power. He needed me. And I wanted to take that power from him. So I did. I found a mind of my own and I kept it. I harbored it in secret until the moment I could get away. And then I vowed to do everything I could to destroy him.” Shaye stabs her knife into the table at her side.
“I will die happy if I am the one to slit his throat when this is all over. But even if I’m not, knowing I helped the person who dealt the final blow shall be my life’s greatest work. ”
I stare in awe at the woman. I should be afraid, I think.
But…but I admire her fiercely. She’s everything I wish I could’ve been.
Everything I hope I can still yet be. But my villains aren’t kings and their loyalists.
Mine are dressed in layers of silk. They powder their noses and then turn them up at me.
I can dine with fae, but the thought of my stepmother still makes me cower.
“I think you’ve stunned her into silence.” Giles nudges me as he speaks to Shaye. “You have to go easy on the poor human. She’s not used to our viciousness.”
“Don’t change your ways on my account.” I pick up my fork and knife and tear into my meat. “I’m finding things very comfortable here. So act normal.”
Shaye arches her eyebrows at Giles, who snickers. The two are silenced when the doors to Vena’s hall opens. Davien and the leader of Dreamsong stride out, engaged in an intense discussion—at least until Davien sees me.
“Good, you’re eating,” he says.
“What else should I be doing?”
“Nothing else. It’s just good you are…because you’ll need all your strength for the ritual come morning.”
I barely get a wink of sleep that night.
The entire time I toss and turn. If it’s not the thoughts of what the ritual might entail, it’s the sight of Davien grinning like a fool and casting those bright green eyes toward me.
I even get out of bed at one point, and I’m halfway to the door, ready to hunt him down and demand to know what will happen, before I think better of it.
I’m going to see him in a few short hours, I reminded myself.
There’s absolutely no need to go sneaking to his room, wherever it might be, in the middle of the night.
As soon as dawn breaks, I’m out of bed and running down the stairs to the main hall. The tables are still being set, candles being lit by taper and magic alike. A familiar voice calls to me.
“Oi, miss! Human!” Raph scurries over. He has a basket half the size of himself filled with fresh loaves of bread. “You need to go anywhere today?” He gives me that snaggletoothed grin.
“No…but I could use your help in getting something.” I crouch down, eyeing the bread in his basket. First I will seize the opportunity to use Raph’s nimble little fingers with a new—more careful—deal. Then I’ll nimbly snatch some bread of my own.
“You know I can deliver anything you need. What can I do for you?”
“I need a lute. Any lute. Doesn’t have to be a particularly nice one.” Last night would’ve been far more bearable if I’d had something to play to pass the time. “What will that cost me?”