Chapter 5 #2
Eleyrie helped me dress for the funeral. A thick black-fur dress so long, I had to hold it up to walk. It had a hood, and she called it the traditional queen’s mourning drape.
Mourning. I wasn’t sure that was the feeling.
I sat while she arrayed my hair into a high knot and pressed a black feather into the center of it. She held a hand mirror in front of my face.
“What’s the feather for?” I asked her.
“Flight.” Her eyes met mine in the mirror. “It encourages the soul to fly to the Gossamer Drifts.”
“Encourages?”
She smoothed the shoulders of my dress. “Powerful souls linger by the body. No one is more powerful than a queen.”
“That’s what you believe, that Rhiannon’s soul even now lingers by her body?”
She took the mirror from me. “All fae believe—”
“Not all fae. You.”
She fingered the mirror’s ornate handle. “My opinion isn’t important, my queen.”
I stood. The dress felt like it weighed three tons. “Says who?”
Her smile was small, and in her dark eyes I thought I could see the child she’d once been. “I believe she lingered a time. Not as long as most.”
It was all superstition, anyway. In the Kingdom of Storms, we believed we ended up where we were meant to be. I had been meant for the outer district; more and more, I had come to believe it was the only reason I’d survived Feyreign.
Eleyrie and I came out of my chamber not long before midnight.
Ten handmaidens waited, all in long-sleeved black shifts that brushed their ankles, their faces veiled in black.
Faun and Haskel stood among them, both in black.
No Dorian. When I appeared, their backs straightened and their hands clasped behind them.
In the days since I’d killed Rhiannon, the two of them had given me instructions for acting royal. And foremost among them was never to show weakness in front of anyone who wasn’t my inner court.
That included handmaidens.
Any one of the fae standing in front of me could want me dead.
Maybe one of them had cherished cleaning the supper dregs from Rhiannon’s plate.
Another might have carefully brushed snarls from her thick hair.
Still another might have slept in bed with her, held the former queen like a mother holding her child.
It was impossible to know. And I wasn’t going to be the queen who killed off a servant because they had been the designated server of Rhiannon’s favorite pomegranate oatmeal each morning.
I nodded at Faun and Haskel, then I hoisted the heavy folds of my skirts and began walking. After five paces, footsteps followed me. Eleyrie, Faun, Haskel, and all ten handmaidens.
We passed through the citadel this way, and every servant we came across stopped in their paces, clasped their hands, and bowed their head. Their gazes found the floor, as though I were not to be looked upon.
A strange, lonely thing. I felt more outcasted than respected. I wore a mask to be a queen; maybe I always would.
We came down the staircase into the throne room, where hundreds of fae had gathered.
Nobles, commoners, all in midnight-black.
Eleyrie said they’d come from around the court’s lands, from the fringes I’d never seen, as was custom for the passing of a monarch.
Some fae lived their whole lives, childhood through adulthood, without a queen’s death.
Many times the four courts gathered for such a funeral, but Sylvanwild was insular. Rhiannon in particular disdained or despised the other courts, so the only autumn fae had gathered. For love? Doubtful. For spectacle? More likely.
Voices died away as I descended, and eyes found me.
Any one of them could hate me. Any one could be hiding a blade meant for my gut.
Yet Rhiannon was little beloved. And Haskel had told me Rhiannon’s family was all gone—her sisters dead by her hand, her parents dead of broken hearts soon after.
Faun’s voice boomed behind me. “Kneel for your queen.” It was not the entrance I wanted; it was the one she had insisted I make.
All those below found a knee. Their heads bowed. And amidst all those bent knees, a sight revealed itself—
There, in the central aisle, a veiled body lay atop a black-cushioned bier.
Rhiannon.
I came to the base of the staircase and approached. Her body looked small, frail. As though when her soul left it, she’d withered like an overripe fruit. Hard to believe this was the arm that had shot an arrow across a meadow, the hand that had nearly killed me.
I set my fingers to the bier’s edge, lifted my gaze and shifted it around the throne room. Still no Dorian. Only faces I didn’t recognize. Lowered brows, hard eyes, tight lips.
Haskel had thought it best I lead the funeral, to show I respected Sylvanwild tradition. How many of these people were here because they had been commanded? A few days ago, they had derided me in this very throne room.
Faun was right. I must never show weakness.
I turned a slow circle, gaze passing over all these fae—my subjects. “Tonight we hold a funeral for Rhiannon, the queen who was. She will be honored in the Sylvanwild tradition, and her body will be offered to the night.”
I stopped, facing her. “Kairen vor thynar. If you are among her friends, then I bid you rise. Rise, and approach, that you may pay last respects and speak her qualities.”
I clasped my hands. I waited—and waited. As a girl in the Kingdom of Storms I’d learned of the king’s tomb, where centuries of monarchs were buried. A terrible, quiet place with only the scratching of rats and maggots to break the silence.
This felt worse. We had not even rats or maggots to break the awful quiet.
No one rose. Not one fae.
Either Rhiannon had not one friend, or none were brave enough to show themselves. Which meant they feared me more than they were willing to honor her.
I felt pity; I felt gratitude. The word of what I had done in that meadow must have spread and settled.
The double doors were open to the night, its chill billowing in. Through those doors, two rows of torchlight led out into Sylvanwild.
I faced the waiting flames. “Follow. Carry her high, walk among the wraiths, and we will usher her to the next life.” Whatever life that might be.
The funeral pyre had been built, stick upon crossed stick, ten minutes’ walk from the citadel. I led the silent procession, and the night—the wraiths—remained at the edges of the torchlight.
Fear of them still gripped me tight. Would that ever change? They respected power above all else, and I had that now. As we walked, I sensed the wraiths tasting the air around us. If we didn’t hold magic to us, then we were weak. Prey.
Maybe that wasn’t a bad thing.
The procession moved unobstructed through the forest, hundreds of fae. It was the first moment I understood the collective strength of Sylvanwild, how every fae present—noble or lowborn—could step into the woods at night and face death without it taking them.
A ruthless court. A bold one.
Someone in the procession played a stringed instrument as we walked, like a violin but low and groaning.
Darker, more mournful than any tune I’d known.
Every stroke of the bow was a dry rasp of horsehair against gutstrings.
Not a clean sound—textured and wild, biting at the silence of the procession.
These rituals occurred around me every day, and I was folded into them.
Hundreds of them, small and large. And I expected to understand, to speak, to know.
I could hear Elisabet’s voice from years ago, chiding me when I complained about a heavy text: “Don’t despair over the size of the spine, Eury. Just read the page in front of you.”
The page in front of me. I could do that, at least.
We came to the forest clearing, where the canopy broke and the clouded moonlight filtered to the grass. The torchlight continued ahead of me, a pathway of light to the pyre.
I walked the lit path, then stepped aside at the pyre’s edge. Rhiannon’s swords lay flat atop it—the very two she had tried to kill me with—their edges gleaming, dancing. A burning torch had been set into the ground, awaiting my hand.
Rhiannon’s body was marched over by four fae servants holding the bier high. They laid her body with her swords flanking her head as hundreds of fae entered the clearing.
When all had congregated, I picked up the waiting torch. Eleyrie had given me the words to say, had put the feather in my hair. And though I might think Rhiannon deserved otherwise, this wasn’t about Eurydice. This was about being a queen.
“May her soul fly far and high.”
I set the torch into the pyre, and it took. The fire burned low, consuming its base. Soon the flames rose, enshrouding Rhiannon’s body in orange and white. Her veil caught and burnt away, and then the rest of her blackened and charred.
Goodbye, sister-killer. Night witch. Queen of thorns.
The fire rose high, higher. As it did, a cry went up from somewhere in the congregation, warbling and echoing back. It was met by another voice, and another. All were invisible to me in the darkness, but the shadows danced on the trees all around.
Haskel had told me this would happen. Sylvanwild funerals brought out Unseelie ferality.
I still shivered, didn’t know what to say or do. No one had given me words for this part. No one had told me how to be a Sylvanwild fae.
Someone appeared from the darkness—Haskel. He approached with crossed arms and came to stand beside me. “It’s a racket, I know.”
“A happy one, seems like.”
“Because it is. And not just because she was a shit queen.” He bumped my shoulder. “It’s an honor to die. Truly die.”
“Truly die?”
“Die as you are—as a fae. And to stay that way.” His eyes glittered in the firelight. “Even us immortals imagine the way we might die. Perhaps more than humans, since it’s not certain.”
The yelling had broken into dancing; the soft moonlight revealed bodies clutched, moving. I swore I glimpsed Faun in the throng, moving with the rest of them.
“I should think you would want to live forever.”
“Gods no.” Haskel shook his head as though brushing the thought away. “What a tremendous burden that would be. Do you know how many fae I’ve watched die?”
I didn’t dare guess.
“More than a thousand,” he said. “Some I loved. Some I despised. But death is death—every bit of it stays with you.”
“You remember every one of them?”
“Every one I had occasion to see or hear.”
Of the deaths I’d witnessed since that night my kingdom was attacked, I could still pick each of them out with terrible feeling. Those I loved, those I only cared a little for, and even her whose body burned before me. Maybe hers most of all.
Haskel nodded toward the throng. “Ah, the young buck approaches. Of course he skips the stodgy part and appears for the celebration.”
Dorian emerged from the crowd, chin low and eyes dark. The firelight revealed mud on his boots; he’d been riding. I felt his approach in my pulse—would I ever not?—yet he only had eyes for Haskel.
He stepped close to the older fae. “I need to speak with you.”
Haskel shrugged one shoulder. “Then speak.”
Dorian stepped closer. “Elsewhere.” As though I wasn’t standing right there, or worth acknowledging.
“Whatever you have to say to my master-at-arms,” I said, “you can say before me.”
Dorian’s gaze snapped to me; I nearly flinched under the weight of it. “Very well.” His attention flicked back to the other man. “I’ve been to the Killing Fields, Haskel.”
“Have you.” The elder fae stroked his beard. “Speaking of death.”
“I saw everything.” Dorian’s throat bobbed as though trying to swallow back the strain of his words. “Everything.” That was an indictment if I’d ever heard one.
“A pity”—Haskel’s gaze drifted beyond Dorian—“for one as young as you.”
“Necessary,” Dorian growled. “You weren’t about to tell me, were you?”
I stepped between the two of them. “Tell him what?”
Dorian’s lip rose, revealing teeth. “You witnessed the death of Queen Carys.”
Witnessed? But Carys had died four hundred years ago, and Haskel—
Haskel was eight hundred years old. He’d just told me.
He’d already been ancient by the time Carys died. He was of the Sylvanwild Court. He had lived under Carys’s reign.
All that history in one fae. The rise and fall of queens. And yet he’d stood next to me in this firelight as though he were chatting with his granddaughter.
Every death. He remembered them all—even hers. The Courtbreaker’s.
“Well.” Haskel’s hand never stopped stroking. “Perhaps elsewhere was the right choice.”