Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
Dorian
The pull toward her was a hook under my rib. I’d felt it the moment the spiritstag cast the spell and every moment after.
As she’d turned, walked up the stairs away from me.
As she’d passed down the hall out of my sight.
As she slipped through the door and closed it.
She was at the other end of that line—a god’s thread between the two of us.
Veyre. The first time I’d read the term in a book, I had spoken it aloud, rolled it over my tongue. It was a binding, a vow—a curse. And yet when the spiritstag had spoken the word into my head today, it had shown me a vision I found terrifying.
An endless darkness waited for her, and in its depths the tiny flame of a blue-smoke dagger. That dagger waited for Eurydice, somewhere in this wide world. And together, we would find it. I would cut down anyone in her way.
If I didn’t stand at her side when she faced the deep dark, no one would. So I had chosen to be her veyre. Not her slayer… her protector. Wherever there was autumn magic to be found, I had rein to use it.
Before its antlers left my chest, the stag had spoken one sentence into my mind: She will give her the key. That was all, and then its light had passed off me and its voice faded with it.
Who would give whom which key?
In the throne room, Haskel set a hand on my shoulder as Eurydice passed up the staircase.
“Don’t,” I said.
“Eh?”
“Whatever ancient adage you’re about to say, I don’t want to hear it.”
His hand remained where it was. “Wasn’t about to say anything.”
Around us, the fae in the throne room had fallen back as though I had stepped in straight from the winter court. The spot on my chest still stung, though the light had dissipated.
My hand still remained there, over the dagger. Her dagger. “I need to talk to her.”
“Wouldn’t recommend that.” Haskel’s hand dropped away. “Choose your moment, young buck. This isn’t it.”
My gaze was still on the landing, though she no longer stood there. “And what would you know about moments?”
“I was married once, you know.”
“Married once in eight hundred years?”
“For two hundred of them. Till she got sick of me.” He cleared his throat. “I did pretty good the first hundred years. Point is, now isn’t the time, veyre.”
“When will be the time?”
“When she’s ready.”
I forced my gaze over to the old fae. “And how will I know when that is?”
He turned away. “You’ll know.”
“Where are you going?”
He didn’t glance back. “To talk to her.”
“Why do you get to talk to her?”
“I’m her master-at-arms.” He got to the first step, set his hand on the bannister. “And she likes me.”
With Haskel’s departure, the throne room seemed to deflate. The other fae dispersed; none spoke to me. What would they have to say, anyway? Nothing good.
I was the first veyre in centuries. The last one had killed the greatest queen to ever live.
I needed Eurydice to know that wouldn’t be her fate. Our fate.
I lasted twenty minutes before I was climbing the stairs, striding down the hallway to her chamber door—the one I knew she’d insist on, no matter that the queen’s chambers were four times as large.
It hadn’t taken me long to feel like I knew her. It had taken even less time to care about her.
With every step toward her, the hookpull eased. Somehow, the longing didn’t.
I knocked, closed my eyes. No answer. When her voice finally sounded through the door, it was wary, uncertain. “Who is it?”
“It’s Dorian.” When she didn’t answer, I said, “I’d like to speak with you. Just for a minute.”
Bare feet padded over the wood and stopped. “Do I have a choice?”
“Of course,” I rasped. “You’re the queen, Eurydice.”
“And yet you wear my dagger on your chest like a brand. Carys’s veyre killed her with that dagger. Now it’s on your chest. Why?”
“I—I was shown a vision.”
“A vision?”
I set my forehead against the door. No doubt Faun and Haskel had told her the history of Carys and her veyre. That door between us was a wall. I knew she wouldn’t believe anything I had to say, even if it was to swear I would never kill her.
“Can we at least have this conversation in the same room?”
After seconds, the door opened. A flaxen-haired vision emerged with arms crossed over her chest and an untied nightgown hanging off one shoulder.
Her hair was still arrayed in an elaborate plait, her slender neck on display.
She’d clearly thrown the gown on, and the backlight from her room illuminated the outline of her form beneath the half-sheer piece of cotton.
I wanted to rip it off her body. I wanted to tuck the fallen shoulder back into place.
“Speak,” she said.
I forced myself to focus on her eyes. “You feel the pull, don’t you?”
Her hand flattened over her sternum. Her brow lowered. “Yes, but I thought it was… something else. What is that?”
“We’re bound, Eurydice. Even if we wanted to be apart…”
She stepped back. Now that she understood the feeling, the pull, she seemed to recoil. “Is this magic?”
“The spiritstag’s. Veyre. The further apart we are—the longer we’re separated—the more we’ll feel it.”
“Why?” She said it like an accusation.
“That, I don’t know. I suppose…”
“So you can keep an eye on me. Keep me from breaking like Carys.”
Maybe. Maybe not. I didn’t want to think about Eury broken. “Or maybe we’re meant to stay close for another reason.”
“Like?”
Haskel hadn’t warned me about this. Nor had Faun. Even the history books hadn’t spoken of a brand. But Eury needed to know why it had taken that shape. “The dagger. I’m meant to help you find it, Eury.”
“But the Killing Fields—”
“Before the Killing Fields.” I stepped closer, as close as she’d let me. “It was the only way Carys bested three queens.” And it’s your only hope, too.
Her chin rose, blue eyes flashing. “So where is this dagger, veyre?”
That word had never sounded more beautiful. Even in her fear, with her chin trembling just a little, her nightgown falling off and her peaked nipples visible at the bottom of my vision, she made me want to drop to my knees and pledge myself to her.
And I felt her fear. She didn’t want to speak her emotion, show her vulnerability. I understood, but I longed to show her she could open herself to me. How? Here in this hallway, where it felt like the whole world watched, I knew that wish was impossible.
“I haven’t got the slightest idea.” The truth tasted like stale pipeweed. “But I’m going to find out.”
She pushed out air through her nose. A glimmer of the old Eury appeared, just for a moment. The one who believed in me, who trusted me to get us out of the Eldermaze, to carry her through the forest at night, to find her at Virellan Falls.
She turned away and stepped to her door, paused with her hand on it, half-turned her face. “You’re wrong about one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Carys didn’t best three queens because she held the dagger. She bested them because she was Carys, and no one else could hold it. Isn’t that so, Historian?”
Already the pull toward her was growing. No doubt she felt it, too. “It’s so.”
That night, sleep was as ephemeral as a wraith.
The pull toward Eury was stronger than ever; I wondered if the aching pain of it would ever ease.
Every time I touched my bedsheets, I remembered with greedy clarity the night we’d been together, her silky skin under my fingers.
The way she’d looked at me like we existed in a world made for us.
Those eyes were intoxicating. Behind them lay depth, power, calculating intelligence.
Eventually I would have to tell her about the darkness I’d been shown in the stag’s vision. She would like that even less. But if I knew her at all, she would submit to what it meant. That hunger for power pulsed through her veins as it did mine.
I left my chambers not long before dawn. Tonight would be Rhiannon’s funeral, a sendoff of the bloody, impulsive queen of the last century. And a chance for me to see Eurydice.
Down in the depths of the tree, the citadel’s larders offered endless foodstores imported from all over our lands and the other courts—fruits, meats, cheeses, preserved jams and pickled vegetables.
I stood in the dark empty space, rooting through an assortment of apples when a voice said, “Poisoning the queen’s fruit?
If you were a better spy, you’d know she hates apples. ”
Faun appeared at my side, a pear clutched in one hand. She brought it to her face and took out a large bite. She chewed, staring at me in the dark.
She reminded me of Liese. She always had. The two of them were always poking, prodding, as sharp as tacks. The sight of Faun always brought on the memory, and a jag of grief.
I plucked a green apple from the bushel and rubbed it on my shirt. “You’ve come a long way from restocking the larders, yet here you are in the gray dawn.”
“Once a servant, always a servant.” She swallowed. “You haven’t slept.”
“Sure I have.”
“Writhing in your bed doesn’t count.”
I bit into my apple. The tang spread over my tongue. “You’re down here rooting in the stores at the wrong hour, same as me.”
“Fair.” She took another bite, and the two of us came out of the larder and leaned against the scullery counter. “The spiritstag’s mark. What does it mean?”
“It means I’m the queen’s veyre.”
She punched me in the shoulder. It actually hurt a little. “Stop being a shit.”
“It means…” I rolled the apple between my fingers. “I don’t know what it means, Faun. The stag showed me a vision.”
Her eyes gleamed in the dark. “Tell me.”
“A darkness. An underground vastness. And in the middle of it…”
“Yes?”
“The dagger.” My voice had gone soft, almost reverent. “Carys’s dagger, gleaming like a jagged blue candle’s flame.”
She stopped chewing. The silence felt holy, maybe even fearful.
“Where?” she finally asked. “Where is it?”
“I don’t know.” No one knew that. Carys’s veyre had hidden the dagger so deep, so well, it was thought lost. When I’d first read about it, I had thought it a myth. “But it’s real, Faun. And I’m meant to help her find it.”