Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
Dorian
We departed the solar after an hour. Eury walked two paces ahead of me, her silk dress trailing, her back straight, the golden clasp in her hair catching bands of light. She’d spent most of that hour in banter, laughing where appropriate and making noises of concern or disdain as a queen should.
After that fucking toast, she’d transformed.
Eurydice was a survivor down to her marrow.
A talker. Of course she was—in the southern district, their greatest currency was their ability to read a room.
I’d sat in enough pubs, observing on my trips back to the Kingdom of Storms, to understand that poverty brought social savvy.
I had expected that. But I hadn’t expected that after she’d saved her own life.
I had known the tea was poisoned the moment Maeronyx poured.
The Architect of the Endless Night did not pour.
The Black Frost wasn’t that brazen—except today, she was.
But Eury wasn’t to know that. And I couldn’t stop myself from speaking up; the words were out of my mouth the moment they’d entered my head.
I was her veyre. If I did nothing else…
But she didn’t need me. Maybe she never had.
When she poured the tea over the fire lilies, I’d bitten back a laugh. It was the perfect undoing of a scheme—unassailable, quiet and loud at the same time.
The act made my chest rise. It lit me up with pride… and fear. For Eury’s life, yes. But also for who she needed to be to fight off the fucking wolves of this kingdom. Saving her own life with her pinkie out. And now she walked with the exacting grace of a queen, as though nothing were amiss.
She turned a corner into a quiet hallway. When I came around, I stopped hard. There she stood, hand braced against the stone wall, her face visible only in profile. Her free hand shook until she clenched her fingers tight.
The mycelial knot. The old Sylvanwild defense had rejected the tea, but when the knot untied itself, the pain was immense. I closed the distance, set my hand under hers and one on her back. Around her, I was all instinct.
She flinched—“Don’t”—and turned bodily away from me. She leaned against the wall, lifting her shaking hand up to her chest. “I don’t need a crutch, Crowmere.”
Movement caught my eye. An ornate mirror hung on the far wall, and a face reflected in it. Theia, Liora’s favorite handmaiden and our constant guard, met eyes with me from around the corner. Then she disappeared back down the hall toward the solar with tapping steps.
She’d seen, which meant Liora had seen. Which meant Maeronyx and Iseris had seen.
I stepped closer to Eury, kept my voice confidential. “You need to stand up, or they will eat you alive.”
Her shoulders hunched a degree, then settled. Her face turned an inch toward me before she straightened off the wall. She pressed out the skirt of her dress, flicked her hair off her shoulder, and lowered her hands to her sides.
One breath in. One out.
Then she walked.
Her fingers stayed in fists the whole way back. But she walked with a firm, confident step. She didn’t falter.
When we passed into the guest chambers and I’d shut the door behind us, she dropped into the first chair she found.
Finch burst from his seat next to Haskel, nearly dropping his book. Haskel glanced up overtop his spectacles.
Mirek opened his door. “The queen’s back.” His face fell. “Eugh, she’s gone green.”
“Faun.” Eury pressed her eyes shut. “Get me Faun.”
Inside Eury’s chamber, the door to Faun’s smaller room was shut. I knocked on it hard, fast.
“Wildmother.” Footsteps, then the door opened to her hair in disarray as she tied a robe. The smell of sex wafted out, the bed mussed but empty. “What?”
I eyed her.
“Like you never touch yourself, especially since Eury won’t look twice at you.”
Urgency flooded back in. “Maeronyx tried to poison her.”
“At the welcome tea?” She pushed past me and into the main room, out of view. “You, come. Yes, you can stand. Arm around me, that’s right.”
The two of them reappeared in the doorway, Faun helping Eury walk with an arm draped over her. I helped Faun set her in bed with a groan. Faun passed around the bed and into her chamber, then returned with a leather roll. “Did you drink?”
“No.” I sat on the edge of the bed. “Not a drop.”
Faun unrolled her leather on the nightstand. A neat series of phials appeared. “Noxveil?”
“No time for anything else.”
Faun plucked a phial with pink liquid and paused. “That’s not like the Black Frost.”
“I know.” It wasn’t Maeronyx’s way at all. Which probably made it a test.
A shadow fell over us. Finch and Haskel and Mirek and Eleyrie crowded the doorway.
“Ser?” Finch said.
“She’ll be fine.” Faun strode to the door, pulled Eleyrie in, and shut it in the others’ faces. “Men,” she said to the handmaiden.
Eleyrie went straight to the washroom, no doubt to prepare a cool cloth.
“So she was testing Eury’s defenses.” Faun sat beside Eury and uncorked the phial. “Recon.”
“Maybe.” I wanted to run my hand over her brow, to ease away the pain on Eury’s face. “But if so, she’d have someone else do it. Why Maeronyx herself?”
Faun didn’t answer. Instead, she opened Eury’s mouth and upturned the phial until she’d drunk down the liquid. She patted her cheek. “You’ll be up and dancing in no time.”
Dancing. The ball. Fuck.
Eury had already survived two attempts on her life, and that was when she wasn’t surrounded by a hundred fae.
“Go for now.” Faun pushed Eury’s hair back from her face. “She needs sleep.”
Eleyrie emerged with a wet cloth and laid it over Eury’s forehead. The two women sat over her, tending, and I had no reason to stay except that I desperately wanted to.
Back in the common space, Haskel and Finch pretended not to have been listening at the door. They backed up to the fountain when I opened the door and shut it behind me.
Haskel twiddled his fingers in the water. “These koi are lovely.”
“Eury’s fine,” I said.
“Oh thank the gods.” Mirek rolled his eyes up toward the stained glass. “You have no idea how long her ballgown took me.”
“Tell me it’s made out of plate armor,” I said, “and I’ll be happy.”
Mirek’s gaze shifted back down; his face contorted. “I’ve never heard anything more ghastly.” He pointed. “Stay there.”
A minute later, he returned with dark clothing on a hanger. “You.” He gestured. “Up on the dais.”
“But—”
“Don’t make me say it twice, veyre.”
Haskel chuckled and muffled it with a cough. His words floated back: Never upset those who dress you and those who feed you.
While Eury recovered, Mirek did a blind fitting of my costume. He wouldn’t let me look at myself in the mirror until the outfit was complete. After that, I couldn’t—wouldn’t—leave until I knew she would be all right. Another night of half-sleep.
I didn’t see her again until the next morning, when she emerged from her chambers with that sharp, observant gaze. As though she hadn’t been almost poisoned, as though the mycelial knot hadn’t made her want to die.
Mirek leapt up from where he sat at the table popping dates and wiped his hands. “I’ve been waiting ages for you. We must prepare, my little bramble.”
Eury barely met my eyes before she was swept up in ball preparations. All twelve handmaidens were brought in, and the whole place felt more like a busy set of hallways than guest chambers.
I ended up sitting with Haskel and Finch. Haskel instructed Finch on the proper way to pour wine; he drank every glass my squire set before him.
When Mirek pointed at me and gestured me into his chamber with one finger, I took a long swig of the wine set before me and went.
Half an hour of pulling, prodding, and poking later, Mirek stepped back. “It’s miraculous. Better than the original.” Beside him, Eleyrie clasped her hands beneath her chin.
I turned toward Mirek’s mirror for the first time since he’d dressed me.
A cape hung from my shoulder in a clean line, black velvet that drank the light, the obsidian clasp gleaming like a single watchful eye.
The jacket was fitted close, black brocade stitched with a thorn pattern that shifted when I moved.
My boots shone, my gloves were tight, every edge tailored into restraint.
And then the mask—matte black, severe, cutting across half my face, its etched scar running down the jaw.
I had asked, and Mirek had delivered.
“Don’t puff up his ego.” A red-cheeked Haskel appeared in the doorway of Mirek’s chamber. “Off you go, boy, and let your elders have a turn.”
I stepped back from the mirror. “Is Eurydice ready?”
Mirek scoffed and thrust me toward the main door. “The queen must make a late entrance, and you must go ahead.”
“Have your squire scout the ballroom for widows,” Haskel called out through the doorway, “and find me the spiciest one.”
I turned as Faun stepped out from Eurydice’s chamber. She hadn’t dressed up one iota.
She closed the door behind her as though she was trying to keep me from seeing inside and eyed me up and down as she approached. “Dashing. Very unlike you.”
“Says the fae in her traveling leathers.”
She reached behind her back and lifted a black lace mask. She fitted it onto her head and flicked me off.
I couldn’t help smiling. “And what are you meant to be?”
She hooked her arm with mine. “A Sylvanwild fae at a Highmark ball.”
My smile grew. Faun reminded me of the sister I’d once had.
“Finch!” she called out.
The boy appeared from our shared chamber in a hurry, smoothing out his dark-velvet doublet.
“Don’t you look handsome,” Faun said, and his gaze dropped so fast, his cheeks reddened so brightly, I wondered if he’d faint there beside the fountain.
The three of us passed out into the hallway, where one of Liora’s handmaidens stood. A new one, probably so Theia could sleep. She turned toward us, her wide blue eyes taking us in. “May I escort you to the ballroom?”
“No,” Faun said, and walked us past the fae. When we were around the corner, she said, “It’s only been a few days and I’m ready to cut every one of their blond tresses off.”
Behind us, Finch either gasped or snickered.
I gestured ahead of us. “Do you even know the way to the ballroom?”
“More or less.” That meant no. Fortunately, I did. Beside me, her eyes lingered on my mask. “I see you’re not just planning to drink and dance.”
I leaned close. “I need your help, Faun.”
“This ball isn’t about your foaming desire for revenge,” she murmured. “Do you know the other queens will be announcing their intent? Hell, all the changelings will be there.”
I raised a brow at her, and she said, “Most of the changelings will be there. The living ones.”
“Gawain sent the mirror wraith after Eury. I’m certain of it.”
She kept her face forward. “You’re haunted by ghosts, Dor.”
We arrived at the ballroom after a long, winding walk, at the end of which we followed the sounds of violins and chatter. We came through filigreed double doors with servants standing at either side and into a room so large, so extravagant, obscene didn’t suffice.
Highmark fae milled in a broad circle, and servants passed through with gleaming silver trays and tiny bites of food.
Handmaidens stood along the walls at intervals in their soft yellow dresses, hands behind their backs.
In the center, couples danced to a bright song.
Above them, the glass ceiling reflected a starry night sky stretching from where Faun and I stood to the other end of the cavernous room.
At the far end, Liora sat at a gilded table wearing a sunlit-yellow dress with so many layers, she almost seemed more dress than fae.
On her left and right sat Maeronyx and Iseris in their customary black and pink.
The three of them surveyed the room through lace masks.
Liora’s gaze seemed to find me, linger, then move on.
At the right moment in the song, the dancing fae in the room clapped and spun. So much cheer. So many pastels. A beautiful nightmare in yellow.
Faun gripped my arm tighter. “Let’s start with a drink.”
“How about two?”
“Even better.”
The three of us started toward the long, abundant table with a whole season’s harvest of food and drinks.
Finch poured us two goblets of red wine, and he handed one to Faun and one to me without spilling.
He only poured himself a goblet after I insisted.
Together we three stood off to the side of the room, observing.
Mostly Highmark fae. But Maeronyx and Iseris had been sure to bring their victorious changelings; they stood out on the fringes in simple dresses.
None danced, and all looked uncertain, out of place.
Almost all were lowborn, and none had ever been to a ball—some hadn’t been in Feyreign for more than a handful of fortnights.
After fifteen minutes and two songs, Faun leaned toward me. “See any suspicious-looking Unseelie with jawline scars?”
Her voice barely penetrated. My attention was captured by the figure in the doorway.
The Sylvanwild queen.
Eurydice stepped into the ballroom, and the world stilled.
Highmark’s pastel courtiers floated like moths around a flame, and she—she was the fire.
Her gown clung dark to her body at the bodice, black-green silk cutting close, then spilling down in shifting layers of shadow and shimmer, like a forest floor glinting with starlight.
Threads of silver and pale gold curled through the fabric in the shapes of vines and antlers; each breath of light caught on her and held.
Her mask was luminous, green-gold edged with mirrored shards that made her eyes seem brighter, more untouchable, while above it her circlet rose in branching silver, antlers tipped with pale stones that gleamed like dew.
She didn’t look like Highmark. She didn’t look like Sylvanwild, either. She looked like something in between—born of both, owned by neither.
Everything in me tightened. Desire for her, fear for her—the two were entwined in equal measure. I felt drunk on her. I wanted to rip out the eyes of every man in this room.
Eurydice Waters, who’d been mine for one night and never again. My heart wasn’t cut out for this.
“Wildmother,” Faun breathed. “That’s one way to make an entrance.”
Eurydice started forward, her mask glinting. Fae parted for her, became aware of her and in awe of her in the same breath.
This would be a long, agonizing night.