Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Eurydice
Liora stood exactly where she’d promised she would be: in the interior courtyard, slathered in midday sun. She wore brown leathers and stared up into the brightness of day with her back to me, her blond hair tied off in a low bun.
When my boot touched the sandy gravel, only her head turned. “I didn’t think you’d come.”
Around me, the courtyard spread in a wide rectangle. The center of it was nothing but gravel and elegant trees pruned to stay small.
“No?” My voice echoed off the interior walls lining the courtyard.
She turned toward me. “For one thing, I didn’t think you had the memory to find it.”
At breakfast, the queen had told me the exact set of turns that would take me from my guest quarters to this courtyard.
She’d also told me about another secret door off my bedchamber—one none of my inner court had found in their search.
It was so well hidden in my washroom, I hadn’t believed it existed until I’d spoken the Faerish phrase and my bathtub had slid aside to reveal stairs down.
She’d only spoken the instructions once. The way here had taken twelve turns; more than enough for me to get it wrong.
She stepped toward me. “And for another thing, I didn’t think you’d make it unnoticed.”
“Now you know how much I prefer to avoid my tailor’s dance lessons.”
She came closer, a small smile appearing. “It’s not your dancing you’ll be evaluated on at tonight’s ball. Nor your prettiness—though it does work in your favor.”
“Mirek will be very disappointed.”
“You have wit. That will serve you, too.” She stopped in front of me. “But what you’ll need tomorrow night, when the other queens arrive—when the three of us stand together and announce our intent to fight you in the trial—is none of those things.”
“What will I need?”
Her chin lowered. “The power of Carys. That alone saved her from three monarchs.”
She stepped right, and instinct stepped me left. We circled one another, our boots crunching over the gravel. “No one possesses that power. But the stag placed me inside her mind.”
Liora’s eyebrow rose. “A Sylvanwild trial? Clever. The stag birthed the longing in you, even if in memory.”
“Surely you want Carys’s power for yourself.”
Liora laughed. “No, young queen. She was destroyed by that power.”
The gambit was coming clear to me. If I succeeded in finding the dagger, I was as likely to be destroyed by it as I was to die without it. “Why offer it to me?”
“You’re just like her. And I liked Carys far better than I’ve liked any other queen.” One eyebrow rose. “And you’re a summer child where Carys was not.”
Those might be lies. They might also be truths. “I won’t very well be wielding her dagger at the ball.” Not without the sol key.
She tapped her temple. “The dagger is only one part. The other resides up here.”
I cross-stepped, still circling. “That kind of power takes a lifetime to earn.”
“I can give you enough of it. Enough to make them pause.”
Goosebumps rose on my arms, my legs. “My inner court ignores me.”
She paced slowly, methodically. “They don’t respect you.”
“I killed Rhiannon. I was crowned.”
“So was Rhiannon, at one time.”
“They don’t listen because—”
She jerked toward me. “Because you’re not strong.” Under the sunlight, her face took on an otherworldly quality. Brilliant, almost blinding, like a creature of pure, overwhelming radiance. I was left stunned.
She returned to herself in the next moment, all leathers and tight bun. My heart still beat a hard rhythm.
“You wear your lowborn discomfort like a mantle,” she said. “From the moment you stepped out of that carriage to breakfast to the instant you stepped onto this gravel. It makes you weak.”
By which she meant not yet worthy of the key.
“Then why ally with me?”
The corner of her lip twitched. “You tell me.”
“A trick, maybe. To backstab me.”
“If you believed that, you wouldn’t show up here. You’re not that stupid.”
She was right; I didn’t believe it. I closed my eyes against the sunlight. I breathed out. “I’m a changeling who survived. I survived, and I survived. I summoned acid rain in a court whose magic I’m not even supposed to be able to wield. With it, I brought down a queen.”
But that wasn’t all. I opened my eyes. “And there’s a part of me, a thing inside me.”
She stepped closer. “Yes.”
“It craves power.”
She stepped right up to me. Her hands came out, and she took mine in her own. “Not a thing. A queen. One born in my very own court, but the queen of another. Do you know what that means, Eurydice?”
I shook my head. I thought I knew, but I sensed I could only grasp the edges of Liora’s wisdom.
She leaned close, her voice a whisper. “It means you possess Seelie power. Do you want to touch the light, Eurydice?”
“Yes,” I breathed. “But only Carys could wield two magics.”
“Carys wielded two magics at once,” Liora said.
"Feralis and noxveil, braided together, fed through the dagger in the Convergence. That’s not what I’m offering you.
" She squeezed my hands. "You were born Seelie. Raised in a human kingdom, crowned in an Unseelie court. Your body learned feralis, which isn’t unprecedented.”
“It isn’t?”
“It’s rare, but not impossible. Unseelie magic is just the other side of the coin.” Her chin lowered. “But solaire is your birthright.”
"So I’d use one or the other."
"You’d choose one or the other." She went still. "A queen who can wield feralis in the autumn court and solaire on Highmark soil—not at once, but as the moment demands—that’s not a Courtbreaker. That’s something far more useful.”
Useful to who? Not me alone.
But I couldn’t deny the offer I sensed coming. “I would have it.”
“Then ally with me. Let me show you the power of the dawn.” Before me, her Seelie radiance and straight back felt like their own prizes. “The ball will be the start. The Killing Fields will be the end.”
In the courtyard, Liora lifted her sword toward the sun. Its curved edge caught the light, a winding series of runes illuminated as the glow passed from tip to grip. “Unlike your autumn fae”—she stood with the sword raised high, a gleaming beacon—“we coat our weapons in magic.”
I stood in shade, by a rack of steel swords. “How?”
“Light clings. It heats. It dissipates slowly.”
“In my kingdom, we invented something called sunlit iron.”
Liora swept the sword in an arc, and the light trailed after it. “That was a different beast. One we did away with, thank the gods.”
“Why—”
“We’re here to learn of solaire, not antiquity.” Liora turned toward me. “Seelie magic works through growth. We bring light and life. Like your Unseelie magic, too much of it overwhelms us.”
“What happens?”
Her free hand rose, fingers playing under the light.
“We join nature. We sprout with blooms, with branches and leaves. If you ever visit the spring court, you must stand before the Everbloom. A thousand years ago, Queen Thessane sacrificed herself to save her court, and in doing so, her arms became branches, and her legs became the trunk of the greatest tree in Aurelia.”
Beautiful. Terrifying.
“Come forward,” Liora said. “I’ll show you the power of light.”
I did, boots crunching over gravel. I held my sword low, approaching with sidesteps.
“Block my blow,” the summer queen said. “As best you can.”
I set my free hand to the grip of my sword and held it before me.
Liora didn’t move. Her eyes narrowed, and I struggled to keep my eyes on hers and not the glowing miracle in her hand.
Then, a flash. Her boots crunched, her sword arced, and I raised mine to meet it. A clean block. Yet—
My blade whiffed through air. Hers tapped my jerkin over my ribs.
She stepped back, out of range. “And so the changeling queen falls.”
Adrenaline tingled in my veins. “I don’t understand.”
She lifted her sword, set her fingertips underneath the flat of the blade. “Look for the movement.”
Light blazed bright along its length, forcing me to squint, but—at the edges, it didn’t hold steady. It shimmered.
“Solaire superheats the air around the weapon.” Liora’s lip curled. “I’m not striking where you see the glow—I’m striking where the air is still. By the time you see the true blade, you’re bleeding.”
Incredible. So different from feralis.
“Now that you’ve seen it,” Liora said, “look around you. Do your eyes perceive our magic in this room?”
There, limning the stone bench, a line of silver-gold sunlight shimmered almost violently. Along the columns where the sun touched, solaire from top to base. It rose in sinuous waves like steam.
“I see it.”
“Set your finger to it. That’s how summer children begin their training. Set one finger to the pool of light like water. Taste of it. The magic must live inside you in order to control it.”
At the nearest column, I lifted my hand, touched the stone; its warmth made me shut my eyes. Not too hot, just pleasantly warm, the magic vibrating under my fingertip.
I drew my finger over the stone, pulled it away. Solaire like water—solaire like melted golden chocolate.
Behind me, Liora said, “Know your birthright, child of summer.”
My finger found my lips, and I laved my tongue over the tip. Solaire, warm and sweet. Its honey spread through my mouth, down my throat, into my chest. Light clinging, heating, growing—
The warmth curdled, turned sharp, turned to a hiss I felt more than heard. The solaire dissolved on my tongue, replaced by the taste of burnt metal. My stomach lurched. I doubled over, hands on my knees, and spat onto the gravel. The saliva that hit the ground steamed.
“Eurydice?”
My throat burned where the warmth had been. The solaire… it felt like it’d been eaten. Gone—every trace of it, as quickly as it had come.
Liora said nothing, not until I sat back on my thighs and wiped at my mouth. “Is that what happens to the summer children?” I rasped.
“Do it again. Touch, but don’t taste.”
“I don’t think—”
“Do it.”
Solaire climbed the column in slow waves as I drew my finger through it. This time I didn’t bring it to my lips; I held it while the golden light pooled on my fingertip, shimmering and alive. For one second, two, it held. It was warm and it was mine and I wanted it.
Three seconds. The light flickered. Four—it dimmed, thinned, and then it was gone. The tip of my finger was cold where the solaire had been.
“Something in you devours it.” Liora stepped closer, took my hand, turned it over. Studied my fingertip as though she could see what had happened beneath the skin. “It’s…” She paused. “Corrosive.”
I pulled my hand back. The word sat wrong in my chest. "You said I was Seelie."
“You are. I’d stake my crown on it.” Her brow furrowed, and for the first time since I’d arrived at Highmark, Liora looked unsettled. “Something else is at work.”
I stared at my hand. The fingertip that had held the solaire looked no different, but I could still feel the ghost of it—the warmth, and then the nothing. My own body, turning against a magic that should have been my birthright.
This wasn’t the mycelial knot in my belly; it hadn’t so much as twitched.
“It flickered first,” Liora said, almost to herself. “Did you feel that? For a moment, it held.”
I had. That one second when the solaire had tried to take root.
“It’s not immunity, then,” Liora said. “It’s resistance.” Her gaze drifted to the column, to the solaire still shimmering there. Her mind worked behind those bright eyes.
She never finished the thought. She turned back to me, lifted her sword, and said, “Again, from the top. If you can’t wield light, you’ll at least learn to fight it.”
I did as she asked, paid attention, learned, but I carried that word with me for the rest of the day. Resistance. And the memory of how solaire had tasted on my tongue—warm and sweet and mine—before something burned it away.