A Promise of Ice and Spite (Crown of Feyreign #2)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Eurydice

In the throne room, Faun’s grip on my hand was my only tether.

Queenslayer.

Dorian’s fingers touched the brand on his chest; his eyes met mine. A room full of fae separated us, yet it felt like none at all. He stood too close.

“What does it mean?” I whispered without moving my head.

“It’s no good for you,” Faun said, “or for him.”

The ceremony had ended. The spiritstag’s hooves clopped; its light followed it out of the citadel, the doors shut behind it, leaving us in amethyst semidarkness. Me—all my subjects—and Dorian, queenslayer.

The crown pressed like a skullcap. A helm of thorns.

The throne room erupted into chatter, jeers. The space around Dorian cleared out as though he were twice his size. He hadn’t moved since the spiritstag had ordained him veyre.

For once, I wished he would stop staring at me like two celestial bodies had converged where I stood.

Faun spoke Faerish to the handmaiden standing closest. Then, to me, “That’s enough coronating. Unless you’d like to stay?”

Gods no. I turned toward the stairs.

“I thought not.” She snapped her fingers, and two handmaidens came to my sides. “Escort the queen to her chambers.”

One of the handmaidens I recognized—Eleyrie.

She curtseyed, said soft words, urged me to follow.

I did, gladly, up the staircase I’d come by.

Chin up, but eyes unfocused, feet still bare.

The greater the distance between me and Dorian, the tighter my chest became, as though turning my back to him was a worse fate than keeping him in sight.

Words followed me. I didn’t recognize half of them, only the tone of voice. Other fae had lowered their heads to me, as if meeting eyes was a disrespect—or maybe a curse.

When Eleyrie led me past my chamber door, I stopped.

She turned. “My queen?”

Me. She meant me. “You’ve passed it by.”

“Those are guest chambers, my queen.” Her face and voice bore no evidence of feeling or judgment; she must be good at hiding herself. “Your chambers are two flights up.”

I didn’t move. “This is my room.”

“But—”

Faun’s footsteps were unmistakable—sharp exclamation points down the hall behind us. “Did you not hear your queen?” She slipped behind me, pressed the door to my room open. “She’s told you what she wants.”

Eleyrie lowered her head. “I apologize, Your Grace.”

I didn’t know what to do with Eleyrie’s deference. She saw an illusion in me; she saw power. So I said nothing, only stepped into the room. My room—the only one I felt safe in. I knew its shape in the dark, its patterns in the light.

Faun shut the door behind us, closing us away from the handmaidens and Dorian and the rest of the court. She stood against it, observing me. “Holy fuck.”

I turned toward her. “You didn’t mention any queenslayers, Faun.” Anger—accusation—curled around my words.

“I didn’t expect—”

A knock came on the door, three hard raps. “Open up,” a voice boomed. Haskel.

Faun groaned and opened the door, stuck her face into the crack. “Excuse you.”

“Excuse you. I’m her master-at-arms.” Haskel shouldered his way in. His face lit on me like he’d spotted his own child. “Bloody queen of old. Brilliant.”

Faun shut the door again, enclosing the three of us. “I thought veyre was just a story.”

Haskel dropped into the chair near my dresser. “Most stories have a hard seed of truth.”

The crown snagged in my hair as I dragged it off. Speaking of blood; I was sure those thorns had pierced skin. I set it on my bed, where it rested on the animal skin with grotesque grandeur. “Will one of my inner court please tell me what’s just happened?”

Faun and Haskel met eyes. The two of them had a conversation without speaking, because Haskel nodded and crossed his large arms. “You know about how Carys died?”

“Queen Carys?” I said.

“The one and only.”

I knew how she’d lived—I had been inside her head—but died? “In war.”

Haskel’s mouth twitched. “Yes, a war. But death in war happens in a thousand different ways. And Carys wasn’t the type to be dropped in the battlefield by any old soldier’s blade.”

I sat on the edge of the bed. My corset felt like a cage; I couldn’t get a real breath. “How, then?”

“Her veyre.” His tone had gone from boastful to sober. “Killed her with her own dagger. A terrible day.”

My gaze had unfocused. Now it sharpened on him. “Where?”

“Right in the Killing Fields,” Haskel said, “under sunlight.”

The Killing Fields. Where the queens’ champions faced off. “But why was Carys there?”

Faun crossed to the tapestry on my wall and pointed at the center, where the white spire rose. “Where the four courts converge. It’s the only place she could have become the Courtbreaker.”

“Cursed is what it is,” Haskel said. “The blood never dries on the grass.”

Faun’s finger circled the spire. “The convergence at the center is said to be a terrible soup of four magics.”

I glanced between them. Questions piled up in my throat, but only one seemed truly important tonight. “What does this mean for me?” I raised a hand before Haskel could speak. “Be blunt.”

He let out a noise like a hum or a chuckle. “Blunt’s all I can be. Means the stag thinks you’re a danger.”

I let out a bitter laugh. “To who?”

“Everyone,” Faun said. “Sylvanwild, Feyreign—yourself.”

That was ridiculous. It was inconceivable. It was…

I stood. “Dorian told me Carys tapped into two forms of magic just once.”

Haskel inclined his head toward the tapestry. “At the convergence, with that bloody dagger only she could hold without coming apart.”

My gaze darted to the hanging, where red spread around the central spire. I had always taken it for autumn leaves, but that felt na?ve now. Blood. It was blood.

“Why?” I whispered. “Why did her veyre kill her?” But I already suspected. Maybe I already knew.

“Carys was a good queen,” Haskel said. “She was a good queen, if not a power-hungry one. But she kept the balance for a long time.”

“The balance?” I asked.

“There’s always a balance must be kept.” Haskel gestured to the crown on my bed. “Between empathy and love of power.”

Faun’s arms wrapped around herself like she’d gotten a chill. “When I was a girl, my mother told me the dagger corrupted her.”

“Perhaps,” Haskel said. “Perhaps it was the dagger, or perhaps it was in her all along.”

The answer was clear now. I raised my fingers to my scalp, touched one of the spots where a thorn had pierced. My fingers came away red.

“Dorian will kill me,” I said, “if I become like her. Like Carys.”

Silence like a drape. Silence like mourning.

“He must,” Haskel said. “He’ll have no choice.”

Dorian, veyre. Dorian, queenslayer.

My death.

Why him? Why him of all fae?

I stepped to the edge of my bed and reached behind me. “Get me out of this corset.” I felt like a fly in a jar. “Please.”

“That’s my cue.” Haskel pressed himself out of the chair. “Just know this. Dorian’s not your inferior, but he’s not your superior, either. Don’t let him shove you around.”

When Haskel had left and the door shut behind him, Faun turned to me. “Breathe.”

I placed one hand over my sternum. “I can’t have him as my veyre. He hates me.”

“He doesn’t hate you, even if he hates your kind.” Faun came around the bed and gestured for me to turn. “He’s as lost on you as you are on him.”

I turned away from her. “Why would you think that?”

“I have eyes. It was obvious—is obvious.” Faun tugged at the first tie. “He’d rather gnaw his own hand off than kill you. Just push your cleavage up when he’s around.”

“Easy to jibe when I’m the one with a sword over my head.” I set my hands against the poster of the bed and leaned my forehead on them as she worked. “He’s not driven by his cock.”

“If you think he cares more for his morals than his tip, then you’re not the queen I thought you were.”

I jerked my head around with a weak glare.

She paused with the sash between her fingers. “What? Tell me you haven’t fucked him.”

“It’s not about that. He’s branded by a god, Faun.”

“So you have fucked him.” Her next tug on my corset was sharper. “Explains why he stood outside your door like a starving mongrel for three days.”

“You’re merciless.”

“I’m fae, and so are you.” She pulled the last sash, and the corset dropped away. She sat on the bed beside me. “You’ve faced death a dozen times since you’ve been here. What are you truly afraid of?”

For the first time since I’d been shoved into that chest-cage, I could breathe. I pressed it down over my hips, stepped out, kicked it away. The impulse rose in me to chase after it, tear it to shreds with my fingers and teeth. I’d always been strange and too much and full of heat like that.

Maybe the spiritstag saw in me what I’d always suspected in myself. A god thought I was a threat. A monster. Just like Dorian had. Just like…

My old guard’s knife lay where I’d left it. I crossed to my bedside and picked it up. “In the third trial, when we were placed inside Queen Carys—”

“Yes?”

I thumbed the knife, flicked it open. “What was it like for you, Faun?”

“Like being inside Carys’s body.”

“Not her mind?”

“I was me.” The bedding rustled, and Faun’s voice projected more clearly. “But everyone thought I was her.”

I turned toward her. “But were you her, also?”

Her brow drew together. “What are you getting at?” She wasn’t. She didn’t even need to explain.

I pressed the knife shut. “Nothing.”

“Nothing never means nothing. Especially not when you’ve just mangled your own clothing and then studied a blade like you want to memorize its edge.”

Curse her perceptiveness. That was exactly why I’d appointed her my second, but not so she’d turn it on me. Or maybe it was.

I couldn’t meet eyes. If I did, she’d see all.

“That third trial,” she said. “Were you in Carys’s mind?” I said nothing. She scooted toward me on the bed. “Eury?”

Now I did meet eyes. She had that hawk’s gaze, her green eyes searching. She must have found what she was looking for, because she punched the bed. “That’s how you did it.”

I gripped the knife harder. “I didn’t—”

“You were in Carys’s mind. Somehow you merged with her.”

“I wasn’t—”

“And now you fear you’re like her. This isn’t about Dorian—it’s about you. You fear yourself.”

The metal bit into my palm. I raised my chin at last, but not to meet her gaze. What point was there in hiding from this woman? She was like a weevil in wheat.

Faun reached over, swiped the knife from me. I resisted, but she yanked it away. When she flicked it out, the dull blade seemed duller in her hand. “You’re not Carys. You won’t become Carys.”

“How could you possibly know that?”

She studied the blade, ran a finger over the edge; it came away uncut. “In that cave, you asked the Wild Hunt to spare me.”

The cave. The second trial. It felt like a different life.

“You had no good reason to do that,” Faun went on. “And every reason to let me die.”

Right now, I couldn’t remember any of the reasons I had wanted to save Faun’s life. She was the embodiment of Theo’s wiggling finger in my ear when I was six. And I didn’t want to dwell on my character. I never had.

“Dorian,” I said. “He’ll always be watching me, won’t he?”

She closed the blade. “That’s his role now. But he’s your protector, too.”

Protector. The fae who’d killed changelings with relish. “And I have no choice in that.”

“Few of us have choices in anything.” She tossed the knife back to me. “Be grateful for how many you possess.”

I drew in a full breath and nodded at the crumpled corset. “I choose never to wear one of those again.”

“Until Queen Liora sends her regards.”

“Queen Liora?”

“The Dawnmaker, ruler of the summer court. The Festival of the First Light is a celebration of all the champions who will die in the Killing Fields. They do love their bloodshed there, and their dresses.”

“Gods, Faun. Highmark?” Right now, I could barely remember my own name.

“And we’re short on time to make you halfway a queen.”

“What does that even mean?”

Her lip curled. “Dresses. Decorum. Cunning.”

I closed my eyes tight. “Three of my favorite things.”

She scoffed. “Don’t pretend about the last one. You’re a wily bitch who sleeps with that knife under her pillow.”

I opened my eyes. Now she felt more than ever like someone from the Dip. “You always knew I was a changeling. Right from the start.”

She didn’t shrink, didn’t look away. “Of course I did. What’s the point of putting a human in the trials?”

“You hated me, to start.”

“No.” Her head tilted left. “I distrusted you.”

“Why?”

“Why not? I had no idea who you were.”

Every conversation with Faun proved to me why she was one of two fae I would keep close. Her, and Haskel. “Who else can I trust in this court?”

“Precious few. Haskel. Mirek. Dorian’s one, much as you aren’t inclined to believe that.”

My throat tightened. “Dorian’s a changeling-killer.”

She shrugged. “Hate runs thick in Feyreign. But he’s not your enemy, Eurydice. Perhaps someday you two will dredge up your skeletons.”

“Dredge up?”

“Not my story to tell.” Not the first time I’ve heard that. She started toward the door. “I’ll come for you before sunrise.”

“So early?”

She pointed two fingers between her eyes and mine. “Your night vision is shit, for one thing. So are your skills with bow and blade.”

I waggled the knife. “I did defeat a queen.”

“Not with bow. Not with that blade.” She opened the door, glanced back at me as she passed through it, and winked. “Sleep well, my queen.”

Faun hadn’t been gone five minutes before another knock came. I had stripped out of the rest of my dress and stood in my underthings. I straightened. “Who is it?”

“It’s Dorian.”