Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Dorian
Eurydice had been gone since midday. She hadn’t told anyone where to, and she’d left her chamber door open to a view of an unmade bed and a disassembled trunk. Mirek’s dresses lay strewn on the floor.
Haskel, Finch, and I sat in the three armchairs beside the bookcases, all of us pretending to be absorbed by what we read. We’d long ago lapsed into silence, until—
“She is a queen, after all.” Haskel had a book open in his lap, his finger placed under a line like he ever read. “She doesn’t answer to you.”
He resumed our conversation from earlier as though we’d just paused. Only half my attention had been on Highmark: A Gilded History, anyway. “What good is having a veyre, then?”
He glanced up at me. “You look intimidating when you’re sleep-deprived. That’s a perk.”
“You do, ser,” Finch said from my other side.
Faun shot up from her perch on the fountain’s edge. She struck into Eury’s bedchamber. “Where have you been?” Her voice echoed.
I jerked out of my seat, nearly toppling the book in my lap. When I came to the doorframe, I found Eurydice standing beside her bed in her sweaty leathers; she stripped them off piece by piece.
“I need Eleyrie to draw me a bath,” she said, looking at neither of us.
“Eury,” I said.
“And tell Mirek I’m not to be dressed again today. I’d prefer to stay in.”
Faun stood in front of her with palms out. “That’s all you have to say for your absence.”
She turned to Faun, eyes flashing. Keep your eyes up, Dorian. “We’re allying with Liora.” Then she strode naked toward the washing chamber. “Follow me. We have things to discuss.”
The two of them disappeared into Eury’s washroom and closed the door. Their voices echoed faintly.
Not two weeks ago, Eurydice and I had been alone in my washroom. That night still seared through me.
I had wanted to explain everything to Eury, but we’d never gotten past pleasantries except that day in the meadow. And that day had been its own beast. I felt like a shade—barely real, acknowledged out of the corner of her eye.
I turned back to Haskel. The elder fae glanced up at me overtop his glasses and shrugged one shoulder.
“Since when do you wear spectacles?” I asked.
“How else am I supposed to win the heart of a Highmark lady at the ball?”
“Spectacles won’t hide the redness of your nose.”
Finch’s eyes went wide on his book, but didn’t veer up. Haskel returned his attention to his tome with a rumble. “For what it’s worth, I think you’re wrong about Gawain.”
“I’m not.” I passed around the fountain toward Mirek’s chamber. When I knocked, the tailor groaned from inside.
“What is it, Crowmere?”
Somehow, he knew my knock.
“My mask,” I said. “I need—”
“No changes to the masks!”
“This matters, Mirek.”
A muffled huff sounded through the door. “Nothing in life truly matters except velvet and the perfect fit.”
“This is about fit.”
A pause. I thought he was ignoring me until footsteps sounded and the door opened. He wore some kind of white goop on his face and a silk robe.
I stepped back.
Mirek seemed to become aware of himself, because he snapped, “Have you never hydrated your face? Young fae and their arrogance…”
“The mask. I need you to add a scar,” I said. “Can you do it?”
“That depends. Where do you want the scar?” When I drew a line along my jaw, he threw his hand up. “The mask doesn’t even extend down that far!”
“I’m sure you can find a way.”
“Within a day? Absolutely not.”
Now I stepped forward. My voice lowered. “I don’t want to have to give you a command in front of Haskel.”
Mirek’s gaze rose to me, thick eyebrows lifting. He let out a low hum, then turned away. “Fine. Tell Eleyrie I need her.”
“The handmaiden?”
“My apprentice tailor.”
I nodded. “Thank you, Mirek.”
He grumbled non-words as he sorted through the outfits hanging on various fixtures around his room. When I’d retrieved Eleyrie, the two of them holed up in Mirek’s chamber with the door shut.
Haskel didn’t raise his face when I paced back toward him and Finch. “Best not to upset those who dress you and those who feed you,” he murmured. “Learned that from experience.”
“I’ll take that risk.” I dropped into the seat next to him. “What are you pretending to read?”
Haskel turned the book over for me to read the cover. The Courtbreaker. One of many books about Carys Raines.
“Liora.” I leaned close, voice dropping. “You think she truly means to ally?”
He flipped the book back to the page he’d been reading. “Liora may be many things, but she’s not one to offer an alliance on a bluff.”
There’s a first time for all things.
When I didn’t speak, he said, “First rule of royalty, Crowmere.”
Whenever Haskel said my last name, I became a boy again. I closed my eyes, the rules surfacing with surprising ease. “‘A monarch who reigns more than a hundred years in Feyreign only does so by having true allies.’”
“And this one has reigned six times that.”
I opened my eyes. “Which is why you doubt she’d give Gawain free rein in her citadel.”
“Among other reasons.”
“Those being?”
He hummed. “You killed him, for one thing.”
“I didn’t check his pulse.”
His finger followed the line he was on. “Says here Drystan had a handsome squire. This historian knows his business.”
He’d always had a terrible habit of changing the subject. But by now I knew he’d never change. “Is that a history or a fantasy?”
“Don’t ask the squire himself if you want truth.” He replaced the book on the shelf and started toward his chamber. “Best bathe yourselves, gentlemen,” he said to me and Finch. “Lest I woo all the young ladies before you have a chance to get on their dance cards.”
I stared after him. Beside me, Finch said, “What’s a dance card, ser?”
One thing I knew to be true of Haskel: even if he was wrong about Gawain, he tended to be correct about most things.
I needed air, fresh and real and unobstructed.
Not far from our guest chambers, a servant’s narrow stair curved around and around. It took me to the highest point of the citadel, where the winds blew hardest and the dawn hawk’s flags smacked against themselves and all of Highmark felt like a painting.
Up here felt closest to Sylvanwild. Like I stood on the highest bough of the highest tree instead of this painted stone monstrosity.
Far down the Dawn Road, a black dot approached. Slow, sure, unerring. The midnight carriage—Maeronyx’s royal coach, pulled by two black destriers. I stood with hands on the stone battlement as the carriage gained detail, first wheels and then the horses and the soldiers who rode behind.
Six soldiers. She didn’t believe in a cadre of twelve handmaidens like Rhiannon; Maeronyx only ever brought a few women, her most trusted, who no doubt rode in the carriage with her.
The Black Frost treated her most cherished possessions with special care.
Everything else could bleed out in the snow.
High above, the dawn hawk circled. Its wings caught the sunlight, and I had to shield my eyes. Lore spoke of the hawk’s ever-presence; it always watched, though rarely did it land long enough to speak.
A horn blew over the battlements. Then a clanking as the northern trellis gate began notch by notch to rise.
Maeronyx’s destriers cantered around and ahead of the carriage, and they were first into the courtyard.
Their shoes clattered on the cobblestones and the foremost soldier hoisted a flapping banner of the black maw.
The four queens always gathered the day before the dance.
The newly crowned monarch would be invited to tea the morning of the ball, an ancient ritual of sisterhood.
Did Feyreign ever offer sisterhood among its queens, or was that another fanciful idea offered to children still unburdened by the darkness of living?
Eury’s invitation would come soon, if it hadn’t already. And I could do nothing except wait and watch. She would accept because Faun would tell her she must, and I would insist on being present because she didn’t have the power to command me otherwise.
The carriage pulled to a stop in the center of the courtyard. Maeronyx’s soldier climbed from the high seat and came down to her door. He opened it and bowed.
Her foot appeared, clad in a high traveling boot. Then her black-lace-gloved hand, to take hold of the soldier’s.
One thing I knew about Maeronyx: she didn’t serve. Didn’t open doors, didn’t pour, didn’t kneel. She was a consummate queen, and reserved herself for necessity or intrigue.
She stepped out of the carriage in a black veil to her chin, holding her bow and quiver in hand like another queen might carry a clutch. Liora’s voice rang through the courtyard, Faerish words of greeting. A queen must always meet another queen upon their arrival.
Maeronyx started forward—and paused.
Her face lifted, the black veil shifting. High, higher, until her chin nearly faced the sky. And she seemed to see me through the lace.
My grip tightened on the stone. Every fae who’d ever held a bow knew the stories about Maeronyx.
Haskel had once told me the tale of when he’d accompanied Rhiannon to Noctere not long after Rhiannon’s crowning, and Maeronyx had treated the autumn queen to an execution.
Haskel couldn’t tell me why the man had to die, but in the winter court the reason never mattered much.
Maeronyx preferred to do the executing when she could.
She’d given this man a head start, the way the winter court did.
A sporting chance. He made it three hundred paces into the snowfield before she’d drawn.
One arrow. She hadn’t rushed it, hadn’t even seemed to aim.
Not the way Haskel had taught me, with breath and focus and the careful architecture of stance.
She’d just lifted the bow and released, the way you’d brush hair from your face.
The deserter dropped and the snow around his head turned black.
Rhiannon’s hunger had never shone clearer on her face. “Teach me.”
The winter queen had lowered the bow without looking at the body. “You’ll never shoot like me. But I can teach you to shoot like someone worth killing.”
She stood in the courtyard now, and I on the highest battlement. Four hundred paces, maybe more. It didn’t matter. If she’d had a bow in her hands, I wouldn’t have trusted the distance. Some archers you could outrange… Maeronyx you could only outwall.
I stepped back, heart thudding. I retreated toward the stair and the citadel’s tight walls.
I felt small as I descended the steps. The world so large, riddled with malice, and the Black Frost always, always there.
I came into the guest chambers to Mirek arranging jewelry atop the vanity. Small pieces, large, all of them glittering decadence.
He glanced back. “Oh, it’s you.”
“Where’s Eury?”
Eury’s door opened and she came out wiping her hair with a towel. Her cheeks were pink, her body still faintly damp under her loose shirt and pants, nipples peaked, and I was arrested. I couldn’t move if I’d wanted to.
She lowered the towel. Her wide-open eyes shuttered. “What is it, Dorian?”
“Maeronyx.” I found my voice again. “She’s arrived.”
Mirek clapped his hands. “She always dons a statement piece.” He lifted an emerald-drop necklace. “This one, or—”
“Too gaudy.” Faun’s sharp footsteps preceded her face appearing in Eury’s doorway. She held up the invitation between two fingers. “Hope you like tea.”
We could never say everything we wanted to in these chambers. Not without Liora knowing. The fact ground at me, especially now.
I came forward and plucked the invitation from Faun’s hand. Half the reason I’d come to stand this close was to lessen the ache of the string between Eury and me—to feel the relief of being near her.
The invitation was simple, unadorned. Tomorrow morning, an hour past the sun’s rise.
I passed the invitation to Eury. “I look forward to accompanying the queen to this celebrated event.”
Her eyebrow rose, eyes flashing. “What an honor it will be to have my veyre in attendance.”