Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Eurydice
The morning after the hollow pool, I sat on a stool in Faun’s chamber while she pestled wraith roots in a shallow mortar. The room smelled of wet wool and upturned grave dirt, a thick, loamy funk that coated the back of my throat.
She had explained the whole business to me—something about a fungal network and my vagus nerve—but the only truth I’d truly absorbed was that I would have to be the one to drink. It was the only way, or perhaps Faun thought I hadn’t suffered enough yesterday.
With hummed approval she sat back and set down the pestle. In one easy motion, she upturned the mortar into a small pot of hot water. Steam rose, and the scent wafted in thick waves through the room. I turned away on the stool.
She snorted. “Surely you smelled worse than this growing up.”
I jerked my head around, breathing through my mouth. “Even in the Dip we had the decency to pour it into the gutter, not serve it in a teacup.”
“‘The Dip.’” Faun lowered a slender glass stirrer into the pot and rotated it until the whole mixture spun like a tiny hellish whirlpool. “No wonder you’ve got such an enormous bone to pick with the world. Best get used to the smell; this will take a few minutes to brew.”
Faun’s chamber was utilitarian and unexpected.
From one angle, totally ordinary: an unadorned bed, an empty nightstand, clean floors.
From another angle, a herbalist’s workshop.
She’d devoted a whole section of her chambers to roots and flowers and alchemy; one wall she’d lined with jars on shelves, herbs hanging upside down from hooks over the long table at which she now sat.
She seemed capable enough, but my skepticism ran hot.
Better to change the subject. Maybe she’d forget about the whole wraith roots business. “Tonight. Rhiannon’s funeral. What should I say?”
“Rhiannon wasn’t much beloved.” Faun’s movement slowed. “And from what I’m told, she didn’t even hold a funeral for the queen before her.”
“Oh?” Yet I already suspected.
Faun paused in her stirring. “Some people believe their power is diminished if they acknowledge anyone else.”
“Is that what you believe?”
“I believe one’s power is enhanced by it.” She blinked away, then back at me. “A queen can say whatever she likes at a prior monarch’s funeral. But we do have a saying here in Sylvanwild.”
My eyebrows rose as I waited.
“Kairen vor thynar.” When she spoke in Faerish, her voice was lower, guttural. “‘Look for her among her friends.’”
Kairen vor thynar. Among her friends. The phrase felt almost knowable, but not. “What does it mean?”
“That’s for you to figure out.” She lifted the stirrer and tapped it on the edge of the pot. “Time to break your fast.”
I gripped the edges of my stool. “Are you certain that’s safe?”
“You’ll live. Is that what you’d consider safe?”
She poured the brew into a cup, and I closed my eyes. I needed to remember why I chose this.
Highmark. The tapestry in my chamber appeared behind my eyelids.
A weaving road ran between Sylvanwild and Highmark, crossing from forest to plains.
The Queen’s Road, Dorian had once called it.
If the festival began in two weeks, then we would leave in a week—that was how long it would take our entourage to travel from citadel to citadel.
This was one step along the road. A necessary protection.
Her stool scraped across the floor, and I opened my eyes to find her looming over me, steam curling between us. She crouched, extended a cup to me with both hands. “The mycelial knot.”
Heat seeped into my palms as I took it. “Have you tasted this before?”
“I was five when my mother made me drink. No, I didn’t cry.”
“But—”
“You’re fae, and it’s just roots. Will you call out to the wildmother and want to die the first time it tugs on your vagus nerve?” She leaned closer. “Depends on whether you believe you’re destined for the underworld or the Gossamer Drifts.”
“The Gossamer…?”
“Where good fae go when they die.” She tapped the bottom of the cup. “Quit stalling.”
I stared into the black hole of liquid. “Can’t it be mixed with honey mead?”
“The efficacy will be diluted. This is much better.”
“Better for who?” But I’d already made my choice. One breath out, and I upturned the whole lot into my mouth. It tasted like licking a stone—cold, mineral, heavy. I forced my throat muscles to work; the brew slid down my esophagus, clinging the whole way like netting unrolled over my insides.
“Is it supposed to feel… alive?”
She rose. “That’s your second instinct.”
“My what?”
“The mycelial knot.” She turned back to her table, unrolled a leather skin to reveal a number of small phials tucked into pouches. “Better if I show you.” She lifted a rose-colored phial. “Ah, sunblush. The death of a hundred queens.”
I straightened. “Sunblush?”
“Highmark’s signature poison. Pretty color.
” She set the phial aside, pulled out two cups, and poured from a skin of water into both of them.
Then she stood between me and the cups, blocking my view.
Water hissed, and faint smoke rose beyond her shoulder.
“Liora prefers old-fashioned poison like this—no magical signature.”
A magical signature. “Like…”
“In an autopsy,” she said, “you can always tell which type of magic did the killing.” She turned to me and extended one of the cups. “Drink.”
“Drink the death of a hundred queens?”
Her lips curled. “Maybe. One of these is just water.”
“Which?”
She set the cup into my hands. “Doesn’t matter. Drink.”
It mattered to me. I stared into the clear liquid. Not a hint of pink. I brought it up to my lips, hesitated, then upturned it. Cool, crystalline water flowed over my tongue. I swallowed it. “Nothing.”
She swiped the cup from me and exchanged it for the other. “Now this one.”
In my hands, this one seemed as clear. Maybe this was a ruse, a way of gaining my trust. Maybe neither cup was poisoned.
I lifted it to my lips—
The liquid touched my tongue—
My stomach lurched, all my insides constricting as though yanked by a stone hand. I gasped, the world pitching, my fingers slipping.
Faun caught the cup before any of it spilled. “Gods, you don’t have the reflexes of a fae, do you?”
I wrapped my hands over my roiling belly, all my consciousness shrunk to one tight grip on my innards. “Vaelen’s bleeding sky—”
“Bleeding’s what would have happened if you’d taken a sip.
” She set the cup down on the table with two hands.
“As is, that’s just the knot tightening.
It only works on what will kill you. If you feel that drop in Highmark…
you smile, you nod, and you find a way to get rid of the food.
If you swallow even a few drops while the knot is tight, the spores will try to purge it.
You’ll retch blood on the table. It saves your life, but it ruins your day. ”
Sweat had broken out on my temples. “My day?”
“More like the next six hours. The first time is always the worst.”
I groaned. “Feels like I’m…”
“Dying? Or just want to die?”
I curled over myself on the stool. “Both.”
“Welcome to being a queen. Not all tit-sucking and toe-washing, I’m afraid.” She leaned against the table. “Best you get to your chamber bed before you drop on my floor.”
I staggered through the citadel like a man fresh from a pub, my insides clenching so hard I thought I’d be pulled inside out. I’d take the Gossamer Drifts over this. I’d even take the underworld.
By some miracle I found my chamber door.
I briefly expected to find Dorian standing in the hall as he had been in the days after I’d defeated Rhiannon.
Somewhere around. And yet he was not; he hadn’t lingered since he’d been declared my veyre.
I didn’t know how to feel about his absence, the lack of his irritating face.
I stumbled into my chamber and dropped into the bed. Spent the afternoon in a feverish half-sleep, the pain of the knot slowly releasing itself. In the third hour I began to wonder if Faun had actually set me on the path toward death.
In the fourth hour, I called out to Caelara, the nightmother.
In the fifth hour, I lapsed into half-consciousness.
And in that unconsciousness, the phrase came back to me. Kairen vor thynar. You can find her among her friends. The meaning was obvious, as some meanings are only when half-awake.
A beautiful phrase. A tragic one.
Who we were rippled out. Our beliefs, our actions, our goodness and badness. I was in some part my mother and my almost-father and Elisabet and Theo and even Isa the nurse. If someone were to seek out Isa, gone now, they might find some part of her in me.
But Rhiannon… she’d had no friends.
The pain carried me on its bier toward unawareness, and all thought left me.
Darkness greeted me when I woke. The pain had ebbed away, and so had the sun.
My bedding was soaked with sweat. Faun had not meant to kill me after all—only to make me hate her for a thousand lifetimes.
I set my hand to my chest. The knot’s tugging had eased, and so had my pull toward Dorian. Not completely, but its tautness wasn’t painful as it had been. Dorian was closer now; the thought gratified me… and made me ache.
The door opened, a panel of light appearing. “Oh, you’re awake.” Eleyrie.
Elbows braced, I pushed upward; my head swam as the crystals above came to soft life. “How much time has passed?” My throat felt raw, stung.
“Ten hours? It’s long past dusk.” She approached with a jug and set it on the bedside table. She poured the water into a cup and handed it to me. “But I’m here as you asked, to wake you before the funeral.”
The cup touched my palm. Would I ever bring a drink to my mouth without pausing? But it was Eleyrie who’d poured it; she was safe. If she wasn’t, the mycelial knot would know.
I drank the water down without so much as a tug on my gut and extended it to her. “More.”
She gave me as much as I wanted. And that made her the best handmaiden ever to serve in this court.