Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Eurydice
The solar doors rose before me, gilded and sun-warmed.
I had let Eleyrie braid my hair that morning, a single plait coiled at the base of my skull and pinned with a gold clasp no larger than my thumbnail.
The pale yellow dress Mirek had chosen fell straight from a fitted bodice, high-necked and modest, the silk so fine it moved like water when I walked.
No hoops, no layers—just a thin gold belt at my waist that could, if needed, hide the knife currently pressed against my hip.
I looked like a Highmark lady. I felt like a mud princess playing dress-up.
Dorian stood behind me. I didn’t turn, but I felt him there—the pull of him, the weight of his silence. He would stand in that room and watch me drink tea with three sharp-toothed queens, and he would be able to do nothing.
I set my hand to the door—just as it opened inward. A handmaiden’s face appeared. Theia, our chamber guard—and apparently our morning-tea guard, too. She gestured me in.
In the private solar, the spring, summer, and winter queens sat under stark sunlight, their backs as straight as the high walls of my kingdom.
Iseris and Maeronyx were as different as sun and moon, both of them with eyes on me as I stepped in.
As Mirek had told me, I would have no trouble sussing out which was which.
The room bore only enough space for a round table with gold edges and gleaming hard chairs.
A three-tiered tower of pastries and sandwiches stood as the centerpiece, flanked by golden teapots with pert spouts.
Fire lilies grew at the fringes of the room, a brilliant half-circle of red under the domed glass.
Three chairs, two queens, an elaborate tea tower, and Theia, Liora’s most trusted handmaiden, standing with hands behind her back beside the entry.
Dorian stepped in behind me. He’d insisted, even if now he had to stand for an hour while four women drank tea and another watched on.
A strange jitteriness had come over his step as we neared the solar, and I put it down to his protectiveness of me.
But he’d been protective since the beginning; this felt different, but I couldn’t read it.
For now, I had more pressing questions. Like how to hold a butter knife like a queen and a killer.
Maeronyx’s face captured the eye like a perfect marble. Hair as black as night, pale skin, her eyes two drops of oil against white sclera. Her dress seemed crafted of raven’s feathers, a low cut at the neck and long sleeves. No yellow for her.
She didn’t move. She only gazed.
Iseris rose the moment I entered. Pink, wavy hair twice as large as her head, tall and slender, with rosy cheeks and green eyes.
I hadn’t known hair could be that color, nor a monarch so full of wide-eyed life.
The skirt of her dress definitely had a hoop under it; the cream frill swayed as she stood.
She came forward with long carnation-colored nails, set her hands in mine. “Darling girl Eurydice.” She leaned forward, and I only just turned my cheek before her lips brushed it, then the other cheek. “Just lovely. More flaxen than I was told. Definitely a summer babe, aren’t you?”
She had the feel of a child in a woman’s body. Effusive, as though she had no secrets. Warm, as though we were friends already. Touchy, as though she had no fear.
In the Dip, we didn’t have first impressions. We had known each other our entire lives, all of us, and we always knew something was amiss when one of us was too friendly, smiled too often, laughed too hard.
Liora stood in a column of buttery silk, her shoulders bare, her collarbone catching the light from the domed glass above.
Her hair had been braided back from her temples and left to fall otherwise loose.
A soft, approachable queen, with the kind of warmth that made you forget she’d outlived everyone in this room by centuries.
"Welcome to our small circle.” Her hands spread. “This is the first occasion for the Queen’s Welcome in a hundred years.”
Since Rhiannon, who now lay in ashes.
“Come, come.” Iseris kept hold of my hand and led me toward the table. “Sit, my love. You’ve kept three queens waiting, and one of them is even patient."
I paused at the chair. Theia came forward, pulled it out for me. But I couldn’t sit yet. Mirek’s training kept me standing.
I spread the skirt of my dress as he had taught me, set the toe of one foot behind the other, and curtseyed with an inclined head. I’d never felt more like a guard in silk. “It’s my pleasure to meet you, Queen Maeronyx.”
When I lifted my gaze, she nodded a degree. Her face wasn’t any less severe; if I looked ungainly, it didn’t reflect in her midnight eyes. “And mine.” Her hand went out. “Please, be seated.”
Perfect, restrained politeness. She gave nothing away.
I sat, completed the triad of queens. On my right, Iseris. On my left, Maeronyx. All three of us knew we would face one another on the bloody grass, but right now we would eat tiny sandwiches with two fingers and sip at too-sweet tea without slurping.
I had thought Sylvanwild customs strange. This was stranger.
“We’re pleased you accepted our invitation.” Iseris sat forward with hands in lap, as enveloping as the unbroken sun. “I’ve been trying for weeks to picture the face of the changeling who opened Rhiannon’s throat up.”
Maeronyx let out a hard breath. “Iseris—”
“I know, Mae. Don’t scare her off before we’ve broken bread.” She touched my shoulder with light fingers. “Surely by now she knows death is spoken of like birth in this kingdom.”
I was beginning to understand that, but—
Maeronyx shifted toward me. "The Queen’s Welcome is an ancient rite. A new queen joins our circle, and we drink as one." Her lips did not smile. "So few survive long enough to attend a second."
On my other side, Iseris half-snorted and set the back of her hand to her mouth.
“Gallows humor,” Liora said lightly from opposite me. “It’s the only kind we have. You’ll find death is our favorite topic at tea—it pairs well with honey cakes.”
Maeronyx leaned forward, black-gloved hands rising. Such long, delicate fingers. “This is custom, too.” She lifted one of the teapots with two hands and began pouring first into my cup, then Liora’s, then Iseris’s, then her own.
The tea came out faintly pink, steam curling upward in pale ribbons and smelling floral. And though I watched Maeronyx’s hands and her pour, I didn’t see any change between my cup and theirs. Then again, I couldn’t see her magic. Noxveil was invisible to me.
“Most kind, Mae.” Iseris picked up tongs, dropped a perfectly square cube of sugar into her cup. Then she inserted a finger into the handle of a tiny golden carafe of cream, which she poured a dollop from.
On my left, Maeronyx took two sugars and no cream.
Across the table, Liora’s gaze met mine as she reached for her cup. The contact lasted barely a breath. Then she looked away and drank.
Iseris lifted her tea with two delicate hands and took a silent sip. She brought it away with curled lips. “Liora, dear, would you be terribly mad if I poached your kitchen staff?”
Maeronyx sipped hers next. “I expect she might be piqued for the next fifty years. That’s about her limit.”
Iseris laughed. “You speak from experience?”
Liora lowered her cup. “I’ve only just forgiven you for the harpist.”
The summer queen no longer met my eyes, but that one look—it had been enough.
Maeronyx had done something to my tea.
I gazed down into my cup. The tea bore no reflection from the domed ceiling, though maybe it was the angle. Not likely.
I slid my finger through the handle of my teacup and tilted it toward me. Still no reflection, just a straight view to the imprint of an open-winged hawk at the cup’s bottom.
Still, I couldn’t be certain.
Never bring a root system to life.
I raised the rim to my lips. The other queens stayed in animated conversation, eyes off me—even though Iseris had gushed about wanting to meet me. Even though I was objectively far more interesting than Liora’s kitchen staff.
“My queen.” Dorian. It was the first time he’d spoken since we’d entered this room. In two words, he conveyed everything he needed to. Trepidation, fear, a thread of rage.
I raised a hand to stay him without turning. If I could not handle this on my own, I didn’t deserve to be a queen.
The lip of the cup touched my mouth, and my stomach lurched like someone had yanked me from the inside.
The mycelial knot. Faun’s brew. Her hard eyes flashed before me, that knowing face—
Poison. Poison. Poison.
Never bring a root system to light. Never speak to schemes. But Liora had never advised me on what to do when you were caught inside one.
I remained with the cup at my lips. I didn’t know how long I stayed that way—until Iseris’s fingers strayed across the table toward me and appeared in my periphery. “You look a statue, dear.”
Maeronyx lifted her cup. “Oh, we’ve forgotten to toast.”
Iseris gasped. “The negligence.” She lifted her own cup, and the three of them clinked in the center of the table.
“To Queen Eurydice,” Maeronyx said. “Long may she reign.”
Iseris and Liora echoed the words. The three of them extended their cups toward me, waiting.
A whelp from the Dip knew toasts. You clinked, you drank. No two ways around it.
I thought of yelling their deceit, of jerking to my feet and upending the table with all its pretty glassware.
I thought of beckoning Dorian to intervene. He would cleave the table in two in one stroke of iron.
The best answer came last. Sudden, piercing, perfect.
I half-rose from my seat, leaned toward the fire lilies, and upturned my teacup over them until the delicate bottom faced the glass ceiling.
“The first taste,” I said with reverence, “must always go to nature which bore us.”
The tea steamed, hissed. The lilies wilted and curled into ash, as if alight with invisible fire. The silence at the table was deafening. If Faun were here, she’d laugh in their pretty, coiffed faces.
Maeronyx’s twin onyx marbles. Iseris’s pink eyebrows almost to her hairline. Liora’s curled lips.
I replaced my cup on its tiny saucer. “Quite strong, that brew. I should like to know the strain of tea leaves you grow here in the summer court.”