39. Chapter 39
Chapter 39
I joined my usual hunt when the rest of the humans rose and began milling around the main chamber of the warrens. They all cast me sideways glances. Talked behind their palms and speculated as to where I had been all this time. The last they saw me, I had been with them. Then the rumors of the King’s attempted assassination began filtering through the court and then Ard Tiarna Brittle Spear’s capture. It was, of course, a given that I had also been there.
It was no secret that I was not allowed to leave the King’s quarters during the day. No one had ever seen me leave it without the rest of the hunt collecting me. They all knew that, unlike the rest of them, who were free to move around the palace at their leisure when their duties were complete, I was not allowed to leave the room I had been assigned. None of them knew exactly why. None of them knew exactly what occurred in that room. Most of them speculated that the King wiled his time away all day fucking me raw.
And I let them think that. I let them think whatever they wanted to. Unless they had the courage to ask me themselves, they could speculate about anything they wanted. It was not in my best interest to correct the murmurings and allegations of the whispering rabble when all they were doing, with their hushed speculation, was trying to find some scrap of power to feel better about their miserable lives. It would be cruel of me to disillusion them, to take that smallest bit of dopamine away from them. Especially since it did nothing to serve my ultimate goal.
I didn’t hate them for their whispers. I felt bad for them. They had nothing but an empty eternity of dreary days ahead, with nothing to break the monotony of one day to the next. If tittering behind their palms, speculating, and making stories up about me got them through the day, did it really hurt me to let them have that?
If any of them had the courage to come to speak to me about it, I’d tell them the truth. I was not Fae enough just yet to spin lies and weave falsehoods. I was human enough to abhor that part of it all. But none of them would ever be courageous enough to do so. It made them feel too powerful to think that I was being raped every day. And for that, I pitied them.
When I crested the stairs with my hunt, one of the guards stopped me, tapping my elbow politely and with all the courtesy afforded to one of the courtiers.
“Excuse me, Miss Cricket. The Captain has advised us that you are to be reassigned. As the Ard Rí has not yet been in his quarters since the incident, you are not needed there.”
I looked down to where his gauntleted hand touched delicately to my elbow and then up into the turbulent grey skies of his gaze. “Would I not just sit around in the King’s chambers as he’s ordered in the past?”
The soldier squirmed under my regard, as if I might slice him down where he stood. “Sorry, miss, the Captain’s orders were very clear. You were to be sent to the salons to dust.”
“Is a hunt not already assigned to that sector?”
“Yes, miss, a rather diligent hunt. You’ll find very little in need of your touch. Even less with the entire court out.”
“The entire court?”
The slightest pressure at my elbow, and we were moving away from the chirping swallows of my own hunt in the opposite direction. I let him guide me. The way was much easier to memorize now that I could find the marks that were as clear as neon signs .
“Aye, miss. It’s the solstice. The Bandrui has taken the court down to the well spring to observe the rituals.” I noted the rank etched into his ear guards and smiled. The Raven had sent his right-hand man, the second-in-command, to escort me. “While there are no courtiers in the salons, the Captain wanted me to remind you that the rules remain the same. You are to stay in this sector. You’ll know the boundaries by the carpet. Stay in the rooms with the green carpets. I will be stationed at the entrance to the salons. If you need anything.”
“And why are you not down at the well with the rest of the court? I assume the Captain is down there, too?”
“Yes, miss. He and his betrothed lead the ritual in her brother’s stead.”
A crack ran down the center of my face and burrowed into my heart.
His betrothed.
The casualness the soldier had said it was worse than had he been trying to be malicious. Those two words were a searing hot knife that sliced me in two, and this soldier had wielded them like they were but simple daisies he laid at my feet.
He forged on, as if he had not carved the soft tender center of me out and fed it to the wolves.
“I do not join them because the Captain asked me to guard you. As you are the King’s prized Pearl and cannot be assigned to just any guard that might allow you to be harmed and the King is still abed, the Captain was needed and could not do so. My wife is with them to represent our household. It will be enough for the gods to look favorably on our family this coming year.”
“Does . . . does he do this often?”
I could barely hear anything over the thundering agony pounding in my ears. I could barely focus on anything the soldier was saying beyond the sheer willpower it was taking not to collapse.
He had told me that the engagement was called off. He had told me he didn’t care for her. He had told me he chose me .
I had believed him. Fool that I was had believed him. I let him work his way into my heart and take roots there in the space where I had left a void.
What did I expect? What did I really and truly believe would happen if I trusted a Fae? Had he not shown me that he was not above the same trickery and duplicity that all the rest of them were capable of? What had made me think I was so different? What had made me believe that, for once, just for once in my miserable life, someone would treat me with kindness and honesty?
“Not really, miss. But it is rare that the Ard Rí is poorly or shirks his duties to The Lady Oaken Rose.”
I wished he would stop talking. I wished he would just shut the fuck up and stop saying her name. Stop reminding me that either of them still existed, still drew breath in the wake of the utter destruction that The Raven left me in.
I gave the soldier a wan smile. Rule #10: No one sees it. No one is owed it. No one is allowed to reach me like that again.
Never again.
We fell into a companionable silence as we meandered the corridors. He, whistling a soft tune, and me, leaving shattered shards of my heart in my wake like some perverted flower girl in a funerary procession for my own soul.
I felt the numbness crawling in. I felt it lurking at the edges of my pain, nibbling at it and eager to devour it up and take its place with the blessing of nothingness. It was always a gamble to give in to it. If I let it take the pain from me, I would lose a small piece of myself to it. Nothing was free, not even the bargains we made with our own emotions. If I let the numbness eat away at my pain and leave me in peace, I would lose a small piece of myself that allowed me to feel anything.
Sometimes, that bargain was worth it.
Like when a man you had started to allow in betrayed you and didn’t even have the decency to do it to your face. As far as he knew, I still didn’t know about his lies. He had no way of knowing that this soldier had shattered all the soft promises he had whispered in the dark.
And I would have it remain that way.
I smiled up to the soldier as the green carpet he spoke of came into view and the length of carved dark wood hallway that would lead into rooms that they called the salons. “Do you mind showing me around a little, sir . . . ?”
“Silvertree. Sorry, miss, I should have introduced myself. I am Sir Silvertree of Dúluachair.”
A soft smile was given to me and the way the corners of his eyes crinkled forced me to smile back at him.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sir Silvertree. I’m Cricket.”
He gave me a dandy bow at the waist and took my hand to place a chaste kiss at my knuckles. “The rumors of your charm and beauty are not exaggerated, Miss Cricket. And it would be a pleasure to show you around the salons, but unfortunately, I do not have the status to enter them and would be a poor guide. It is my understanding that, within the salons, there are just a series of rooms connected to the main hallway. There is no fear of you or any of the other daora getting lost within them.”
The fact he had called us daora and not humans should have been a record scratch on the edges of our conversation, but it barely registered beyond the ache within me.
I nodded to him and looked down the arched hallway that led along the side of the palace, massive floor-to-ceiling windows letting the light stream in without interruption. “Thank you, Sir Silvertree.”
“It is my pleasure, Miss Cricket. Should you need me, I will be here at my post.”
“And if I need you? Since you do not have the status to enter the salons, would you even be able to help?”
He smirked and leaned in like it was some great conspiracy. “If my lady charge calls for me and has need of me, I could go into the sacred chambers of the Bandrui herself to attend to her. There are no boundaries that hold a knight sworn to protect his lady if she should have true need. ”
I smirked at the irony of the chivalrous loophole but couldn’t help but notice that, even though Silvertree presented himself as a gentleman and upright knight, he was staring at my tits. I noted it but did not prevent him from leering. I could potentially use his lust to my advantage, and I would not cut myself off at the heels again for the sake of The Raven’s sick games.
“I’ll keep that in mind, Sir Silvertree. Should I find . . . a need for you.”
I let the coquettish way I twisted the word need hang between us for a short while before turning and venturing into the salons.
I could feel his gaze stripping the layers of my gown and piercing straight through to my ass. I let him look. I didn’t lean into the sway of my hips nor linger over long. The game of seduction was not something I was proficient at, but I knew it well enough to not ruin the magic of a simple flirt by exaggerating it.
There was nothing special about the salons. Only a simple collection of rooms connected by the main vein of the hallway. Each room had a fireplace at the back and artwork on the walls. As I meandered, I noted that each was decorated with a cohesive color palette, but each had a different coat of arms hanging above the fireplace and a different portrait above the fire.
The very last room in the series was the one that stopped me in my tracks. It was cold, the fireplace abandoned, and in the mouth of it, a series of candles flowed out onto the green carpets. Hundreds of them crowded together like little waxen soldiers. Each burned to a different height. Interspersed with the candles were gifts of flowers gone dry with age. Glass ornaments collecting a small patina of dust. Jewels and precious metals worked into fine treasures of all types, set into the wax. Small beads weighed down pieces of paper.
As my eye drew up the river of sentry candles, it fell on the shelf above the fireplace, where two crowns lay on purple and silver pillows, forgotten and unworn gathering dust in the ages since they had been moved. My heart twisted at the matching diadems adorned with stars and amethyst jewels .
Above that was a grand portrait of a couple. I floated toward it, stepping between the candles, until I could stand directly beneath the pair.
My mother’s turquoise eyes, dulled to a pallid pale mint by the discoloration of the resin that covered the image, twinkled down at me. She wore a fine silk gown of pale blue that reminded me of moonlight. The crown that lay on the pillow, its delicate silver work and amethyst stars, rested atop her brilliant golden-blonde head. Her hand was tucked into the pale palm of a man in dark blue-black, his midnight hair long and adorned with tiny braids cuffed in and studded with gems. The austere crown that rested on the pillow next to my mother’s rested atop his head. His stormy grey eyes bore down on me, and while he wore a stern scowl, there was something warm in the crinkle at the edges of his eyes, like he was laughing at himself for being so serious. Behind them a great manor house rose on a hill that overlooked flourishing farmlands and a dense thicket of forests that I could almost smell.
“They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”
I didn’t jump at the sound of the strange woman’s voice.
But I did turn to see a woman in a dark, almost black, purple silk gown, with black hair and pale jade eyes, coming into the room. A sash of silver stars adorned her waist, a large amethyst dripping from the end of the belt near her knees. She was beautiful in her own way, but something seemed off about her. A strange sense of something being out of place hung about her and itched at the back of my throat.
I turned my gaze back up to the pair in the portrait, ignoring the woman, even when she drew herself up parallel to me and stared up at the couple.
“I come here often to look at them. Especially when the salon is empty.”
Her voice curled around my head like perfume and left sugary notes lingering in the air between us.
I cast her a sideways glance and noticed that the delicate gold filigree cuffs that covered her ears were replicas of the ones my mother wore in the portrait. Neither matched the gold cuff that I had taken from her room, though.
“I miss them dearly.”
The sadness in her voice was rich and layered.
“Did you know them well?”
I didn’t want to speak with this woman. I didn’t want her here, invading my quiet reverie, as I looked upon my father’s face for the first time in my life and probably the last.
“They were my parents. The Lady Airgetlám and her beloved husband Lord Túathal of the House of Magic. Behind them is Canai eter Duthracht, the House of Magic itself. Long gone and crumbled into ashes.”
“I didn’t know they had children.”
Confusion played across my face as plain as could be as I stared at the side of the face of the woman claiming to be my sister.
“They didn’t. I am their only child, but, no, I didn’t know them well. I was born the day of the siege. My father had already passed into magic by then, and my mother followed him soon after.”
Her jade eyes, the exact same shade as the ones in the painting, which were a tad too dull to properly capture the shimmering oceanic depths of my mother, slid to me.
“What happened to him?” I kept my eyes on the painting, trying to fit the pieces together in my head.
“My anam cara says that the Lady Airgetlám killed him when he returned from his journey into the heart of the Well of Magic to retrieve the name of the new Ard Banríon. He says that the long line of succession of Queens had come to an end and that my Lord father had sent a messenger announcing to the heads of the royal courts as much. My Lady mother did not know that he had informed the rest of the heads of courts but didn’t wish for the crown to pass to a male heir. So, she killed him and claimed that his last act as the God of Magic was to declare the Banfhlaith Aíbinn, a duchess of the House of Magic, was the rightful heir to the throne.” She paused and let her gaze find me again. I could feel it beating into my cheek. “She was killed for her crimes against magic. So, I never knew either of them. I grew up here at court with my anam cara.”
The longer she spoke, the more that perfume flowed into me and made itself at home in my head. I felt dizzy, drawn into the sound of her voice and held there by the crook of her finger. I wanted her to speak forever, wanted her to tell me bedtime stories about whatever she wanted to. I wanted to fall into those eyes that were the slightest bit of the wrong shade.
The Raven’s forest-green eyes flashed in my mind and drew me back from the precipice of her soft song. I reeled myself back in. In my mind, I felt a fist close around the perfume and crush it in the armor of its gauntlet. My head cleared like the popping of a bubble on the blades of a grassy field. I wanted to narrow my eyes at her, wanted to vent my wrath at her for her attempt to lull me into whatever game she was trying to play, but I decided better of it. It was better to let her think that whatever she was playing at was working.
“You’re lucky to have found your anam cara so soon,” I whispered in my best interpretation of a drugged mumble.
“Yes, I am. The Ard Rí is everything I have ever hoped for and more.” She turned back to the painting, a secret smile playing on her lips. “He has promised as a wedding gift to me that he will rebuild Canai eter Duthracht from his memory so that we can spend holidays there in the house of my ancestors.”
So, this was The Lady Sapphire Speaker that The Raven had told me of, the baby betrothed to that beast. It was good to have a face to the name upon which my enemy was building their fortress.
Daróg had hoped to marry the supposed heir to the House of Magic to consolidate his power. Just as my mother had feared would happen to me. He had done the very thing that she had sought to avoid by sending me into Human. Only, in the absence of the daughter she had promised Magh Meall, he had created one.
And his creation was a cold, poor amalgamation of the features present in the painting before us. I could see it in the way her eyes did not match the color of my mother’s, the way her nose did not match the regal line of hers nor even the cheek bones that were a little too high and a little too sharp. But they matched the painting. Everything about her was a near carbon copy of the features present in the painting. An artist’s representation of another artist’s representation of two great people.
I watched the Fae woman with a new regard. Did she know? Was she complicit in his plot? Was she oath-sworn not to tell? Or was she a hapless player in his charade? What would happen to her when I tore the seams from his coat of lies and lit it ablaze? Would she get singed, too? Was she worthy of that punishment?
She was Fae. Who fucking cared if she was as guilty as he was? She was Fae, and that’s all that mattered. I would bleed them from the jugular, and if she happened to be innocent of this sin against my family and against me, then she was probably guilty of some other sin against humanity. They all were.
My blood ran icy in my veins, chilling the aching pain of The Raven’s lies and the bittersweet sight of my father’s face.
“The Ard Rí is a magnanimous Fae,” I murmured in my practiced deference. I had no interest in bowing or saying a nice word about the man, but keeping my cover was the best idea as my plans started to tie together. “It was lovely meeting you, lady . . .”
She turned fully to me and smiled a summer’s day lit smile that mirrored the enigmatic one of the painting of my mother but held none of the warmth and cleverness that hers held. This woman was merely a collection of gestures and features that mimicked the artist’s rendition of my parents but could never capture their true essence. I could see it now, with the painting at her back. The edges of her mien were a polished replica and held no true depth or understanding of who the two were. I didn’t even need to know my father to know that the black shade of hair in the painting and its exact match on the head of the woman before me had no true relation to the depth of the raven tresses he’d have worn in life.
“I’m so sorry. It’s poor manners for me not to introduce myself, even to a daoire of my anam cara . I am The Lady Sapphire Speaker, heir to the House of Magic and sole living Cailleach.” She gave me a cursory glance as if to ask if I expected her to curtsy as was custom when introducing oneself. I didn’t care. She could break her knees in a curtsy or not. Neither mattered to me. “It was a pleasure speaking with you, Golden Pearl.”
She paused, tilting her head to see if the blow of her knowing who and what I was to her betrothed would land. It did not. I didn’t give a fuck about her nor her pig of a fiancé. When she was unsatisfied by the strike against me, she reached out and slid her finger down my jawline to tip my head up to her examining eye. “I can see why he favors you. You are a beautiful little gilded dove, aren’t you? When we are married, I will ask him to share you. I look forward to hearing your screams of delight and agony, sweet little dove.”
Disgust roiled in my belly. I would rather plunge myself off the edge of my mother’s prison than be shared between this imposter and that beast of a man.
I let a saccharine smile play out across my face as she watched me. She wanted to strike at me. She wanted to hurt me, and the sad reality was, she could claw out my eyes, and she’d never hurt me as deep as she wanted to. Someone else had already gotten to that nerve and killed it with their brutality before she ever got there.
“I would like that very much, My Lady Sapphire Speaker. I look forward to the day I can entertain you and our Ard Rí to your deepest delights and pleasure,” I purred up to her in a breathy tone.
Satisfied, she leaned down and pressed her lips to mine. Her hand roamed the line of my curves teasing the skin beneath it. She was a skilled lover. I could tell by the way she seemed to caress every part of me without even veering into an awkward hand position. My flesh was cold and uninterested beneath her touch.
I could lie to myself all I wanted to, but even a woman as beautiful and alluring as The Sapphire Speaker, whose touch was skilled and delicate, whose tongue danced with mine in such perfect unison, could not raise my passions the way The Raven so easily did.
I wanted to hate him for that. I wanted to revile and loathe him for the stirring of my lust being as simple as a heated look from him where it had always been an icy plain that needed tending to. I needed to hold on to that bitter hatred and let it sit in my stomach and grow bountiful because, as much as I wanted to grow soft and wanton in The Sapphire Speaker’s arms, it was but a pantomime of what The Raven drew out of me.
She broke off the kiss, breathless and her eyes glazed with yearning. “I can see why you captivate him so thoroughly, my dearest Pearl. If you kiss him with half as much skill as you have kissed me, you will be a welcome addition to our marital chamber. Would you like that, sweet girl? To be the cherished pet of the Ard Banríon and the Ard Rí? To serve their pleasures and be pleasured by them?”
I smiled up to her and simply nodded. She would have no oath from my lips nor promise of future desires. I had learned my lesson when it came to the manipulations of the Fae, and I would not fall prey to them again. Not now that I knew what lay behind the curtains.
She purred against the seam of my lips and flicked her tongue along them. “Come to our chambers when the King returns from his sickbed. I would put you through your paces before we accept you as both of our pet. Delight me, and I will ensure you a thousand lifetimes of pleasure so pure and sharp that you will never wish to leave our chamber.”
Her teeth bit into the plump petal of my bottom lip and then she was gone.
I waited the span of ten heartbeats before turning and spitting in the doorway. Vile creature. Vile imposter.
Whether she knew she was in my place or not was irrelevant. She had grown complacent in the arms of this palace and saw nothing before her but humans she could bend and twist to her whims . . . like the rest of them.
I looked up to the portrait of my parents and turned the hatred in my heart over and over in the fertile soil of my mind.
“I will get free of this place,” I whispered up to my parents.
My father’s laughing eyes on his stern face seemed to wink at me, blessing my promise with his attention.
I wish I had known him. What secrets could he have imparted on me? His stormy silver eyes seemed to hide tomes and tomes of hidden knowledge I would have spent a lifetime hearing him whisper as I grew under his tutelage.
As I swept my way back through the various salons, I wondered if the ghosts of Canai eter Duthracht were restless or if they slumbered in the old stones of the once palatial manor home. I hoped they were just as active as the ones that haunted my soul.