Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
Dorian
Three days had passed since the meadow. Three days since she’d called on her magic not by accident, but by spite.
I sat in the trees’ shadows, where Eury couldn’t see.
Her sparring sharpened when she thought I wasn’t around; her arm became fluid.
She and Haskel fought with real iron under the shade of the great old tree, both of them nearly spent but neither willing to acknowledge it.
Since the meadow, we’d barely spoken except to pass the salt at the dining table or when we nearly ran into each other coming around a corner in the citadel. Otherwise she wouldn’t even meet eyes. She wouldn’t train her magic with me; she trained with Haskel or Faun or gods knew who.
Haskel swept her foot out from under her, and she hit the bare ground ass-first. She did that a lot. He set the sword’s tip to her chest. “Dead.” Then he reached for her hand. “Lunch?”
She took his hand and let him pull her up. “Again.”
She did that a lot, too.
Haskel groaned. “You’re going to be the death of me, girl.”
She picked up her sword. “That’s the point, isn’t it?”
“Not the real death.”
She took a fighting stance, one leg back and her sword low and ready. “You tired, old man?”
“Fuck yes I am.” He regripped his sword, raised it. “But you do know fighting words.”
She knew fighting words. She knew spite. Even now I could feel the acid rain hitting my forehead, her weight on my chest. Those blue eyes wide with fury and hate and something else that kept me up at night. A twisted passion like she wanted to kiss me or kill me.
And the most insane part: from her, I would have accepted either outcome. So long as it was her lips, her fist.
In some strange way, that moment of madness felt like vulnerability. It felt like Eury showing her truest, barest self—the fighter she contained, controlled, kept down. And unleashing it had worked for her. Just like it had worked for me.
Spite had always been my easiest path to magic, but I hadn’t expected it to be hers, too.
Sharp iron clanged through the air, gleamed silver in bands of sunlight. Hunger didn’t matter; exhaustion didn’t matter—
All that mattered was winning this battle under the old, gnarled tree.
Haskel disarmed her; her sword went spinning to the earth. She seemed defeated, until out came the old guard’s knife, flashing from nowhere. She held it backhand, swiped it to ward him off.
Haskel lowered his sword. “Now you’ve gone and violated the rules of the Fields.”
“No seconds, no outside aid.” She swiped once, wide and hard, stepping forward. “I’ve violated neither.”
“And you’ve conveniently forgotten the oldest law”—he tossed his sword into the dirt and turned toward the shade—“no weapon that isn’t of the land. So leave your human trinkets behind, girl.”
A week until we left for Highmark. Haskel sent me a rare summons to his chambers. I knocked, and his grunt ushered me in. I opened the door and found his bedchamber empty. Familiar old black-bear skin on the bed, his boots set side by side near the door, everything neat and right and spare.
An old soldier’s habits. He didn’t speak much on his eight hundred years of life, but his living space said everything about him.
“In the study,” he said through a doorway.
I came into the doorway and found him with two fists on his desk and an array of objects laid out before him. Half I recognized, half I didn’t.
His gaze lifted. “You haven’t been sleeping.”
“Not well, at least.” I came forward to the desk. “But you didn’t summon me here to be my nurse.”
“Nay.” He picked up a pair of crystals. “Highmark may offer light, but there’s darkness, too.”
I didn’t move to take them. “You didn’t bring me here to give me those, either.”
He shoved them against my chest until my hands came up to take hold. “When’d you get so suspicious?”
“Twelve years ago.” I pocketed the crystals. “Also, you get fidgety when you’re holding something back.”
“Do not.” Both of us glanced down to his hands, which he rubbed over each other. He straightened. “I’ve been given intel.”
“By whom?”
“All you need to know is that Gawain might be at Highmark.”
My heart kicked. My blood surged. My fingers went cold. “When? Where?”
He pointed a thick finger at me. “I should’ve insisted you learn to control that years ago. I can’t have an unmanned cannon firing shots in the middle of the festival.”
“I haven’t done a damned thing, Haskel.”
“It’s in your eyes. Once you’ve seen it, bloodlust is unmistakable.”
He was right, and I didn’t care. “You want me to shake his hand? Give him a hug?”
“I want you to fucking focus, Dor. You’re there to protect the queen at all costs, not chase old vendettas.”
“Old vendettas?” How quickly bone-deep rage could shift its attention. And Haskel’s chin was looking wonderfully punchable.
“If you can’t control yourself—”
I squared my body to his. “What, you’ll make me stay home? I’m her veyre.”
His gaze flicked down my body, back up. “You’ll lose sight of what matters. And you’ll regret it.”
“She’s my first priority.” But the words had an edge of uncertainty. “But you can’t expect me to see him and do nothing.”
“That’s exactly what I expect.” He leaned over the desk, fists once again touching its surface. “Hunt him down on your own time. Nurse your anger in the privacy of your chambers. But don’t compromise your queen over your grief.”
My breathing came fast, hard. He was right, and nothing I longed to say would change that. That was the thing about grief, though: it didn’t obey rightness, didn’t bend into sense.
So I nodded. You didn’t deny Haskel, even if your heart was compromised and tangled.
Five days before Highmark. I came into the stables for my morning ride and found Finch struggling to saddle the prized Andalusian in the aisle. The saddle and girth were too heavy, and he couldn’t lift it onto the horse’s high back.
He glanced my way and worked harder at it. “Almost done, ser.”
A desperate, gangly boy. The worst squire, but perhaps the one I would have been had I lived a different life.
I helped with the saddle. Together, we buckled the girth. I came around the horse’s head and took hold of the bridle strap. He’d stepped back, sweating through his leathers and across his forehead.
“You want to ride?” I asked.
His eyes went round. “This horse?”
“This horse.”
“Oh, well, I—”
“If you want to come to Highmark”—I patted the horse’s shoulder—“you’ll need to be able to ride without complaint.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed. I recognized the adolescent jolt of excitement and fear as it straightened his spine. “Me, to Highmark?”
“It’s a long ride on the Queen’s Road, and we won’t have the luxury of the carriage.”
He nodded fast. His brow lowered with something like determination—or maybe confusion. “What should I bring?”
“Something to read.” I stepped closer to him. “Finch, Highmark isn’t all pastel dresses and dancing.”
“I know that.”
“Do you?”
“My mother told me all about Highmark.”
A pang rippled through my chest. “Did she tell you about the Dawnmaker?”
“Oh, of course. Queen Liora, the shining monarch on the plains. Her hair is said to be like spun gold.”
A smile almost lifted my lips. Not quite. “Anything else?”
“Among all queens, she is the pinnacle of decorum and diplomacy.”
“More like the pinnacle of shrewdness and subtlety.” When Finch stared at me with a blank face, I said, “She’s six hundred years old and not of your court.
Nor is any other flaxen head you’ll see except your own queen’s.
Never forget that, Finch. The Dawnmaker is an ancient force, and you don’t want her pretty head turned in your direction. Understood?”
He nodded again, too fast. Childlike in his fervor to understand, to be the squire I desired.
I patted the horse’s back. “Foot in stirrup.”
When he was up on the horse and looking down at me, Finch said, “Ser, are you worried about the queen’s stay in Highmark?”
To my very core. Instead, I said, “Your only concern is keeping your head down, Finch. If something goes wrong—”
“It won’t.” It was the first time he’d cut me off. The first time he’d spoken with such vigor. His face shone with warmth. “The Festival of the First Light is when all swords are laid down and grievances put aside.”
I let him ride out of the stables with that pure, untested confidence. No boy ever lost his innocence too late.
Three days until Highmark. I came down the stair of the throne room to Mirek’s echoing voice. “Shoulders back, for gods’ sake. No one respects a slouching queen, changeling throat-slitter or no.”
I stopped on the stair, set my hands on the balustrade, fully out of view.
In the empty throne room, Mirek grasped Eury’s shoulders and pressed them back.
She accepted this handling with a resigned face, though her neck—in glorious view, with her hair pulled high into plaits—strained at his handling.
She wore a glittering, thick-spun yellow gown with so many folds to the skirt, you could get lost in them.
She hated this. Anyone would, but Eurydice from the Dip? This must be a strange, terrible punishment for a child of the southern district. Like being slapped over and over with velvet gloves.
Yet she didn’t object. Not when Mirek touched her, not when he snapped his fingers. “Walk it again.”
She picked up her skirts, set her shoulders, and walked the length of the throne room. Her heels clicked in a stately rhythm.
I gripped the balustrade for balance. Who was this queen, and what had she done with Eurydice? She walked with a high chin, imperious eyes, a spine straight as a Sylvanwild arrow.
At the double doors, she turned and began the walk back. Halfway to the throne, her eyes flicked to me. Of course… the veyre bond. Her eyes met mine just for a moment, a flicker, and her expression changed. Not to hate or to icy chill, but something else. Unnameable, uncertain.
For a second, that tug toward her eased.
“Wrists!” Mirek called. “Every part of you must be engaged, Eurydice.”