Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Eurydice
Gawain.
Dorian’s ghost. His obsession—
Cyrus was Gawain.
Dorian didn’t hesitate. He didn’t draw a weapon. He just charged, three strides across the dance floor and then he slammed full-body into the other man.
They crashed through the couples nearest us. A woman screamed. Gawain hit the polished floor with Dorian on top of him, and then Dorian was swinging—fist into face, again and again, with a brutality that silenced the music mid-note.
Gawain’s mask cracked, flew, slid across the ground with a streak of blood on it.
The ballroom erupted. Fae scrambled back, forming a ragged circle around the violence. I stood frozen at its edge, my cleavage-knife already in my hand without remembering how it got there.
Faun appeared at my side. Her hand closed around my wrist. “Don’t interfere. Dorian’s liable to put a hole in anyone who gets in his way.”
Gawain managed to get an arm up, deflected a blow, drove a punch into Dorian’s side. The two of them rolled across the floor, smearing blood on marble. Gawain was fast—but Dorian was bigger, stronger, and fighting like a man possessed.
“Tell me what the fuck’s going on,” I said to Faun.
“Dorian is finishing it,” Faun said. “What he should have finished five years ago.”
“Finishing what?”
Gawain landed a punch to Dorian’s face that snapped the bigger fae’s head back. Blood sprayed from Dorian’s nose, splattered across the pale stone. A gasp rippled through the watching crowd. Before Gawain could scramble away, Dorian roared and was back on him.
“Dorian tried to kill him,” Faun said. “For what Gawain did to his family.”
I didn’t take my eyes off the fight. “His family?” I only knew of the cottage, his mother, the tunnel out into the forest. What happened to his mother?
Dorian’s hands found Gawain’s throat. He squeezed, and Gawain’s face went red, then purple, his fingers clawing uselessly at Dorian’s wrists.
“Stop him,” someone shouted. “He’ll kill him—”
The world disappeared in a flash of light.
I squeezed my eyes closed, dropped my knife. I thrust my hands against my face before I realized they were in motion. I tried forcing my lids open, but the fucking sun might as well have risen right here in this ballroom.
“Release him, Unseelie.” Theia’s voice, deep and lethal. “Release him or I’ll whip your hands from your wrists.”
“Do it, Dorian.” Faun’s voice nearly broke on the words.
A beat. Then a noise erupted through the ballroom—a snarl that became a roar. Dorian. That was followed by the thud of bodies separating. A ragged gasp—Gawain, drawing air.
“Get him up,” Theia said. “Bind him.”
I couldn’t open my eyes against the light. My hand went out to Faun, and she gripped it and squeezed. “He’s okay,” her quiet voice said near my ear. “Dorian’s okay.”
It was the softest thing she’d ever said to me.
Footsteps sounded. Rustling, and Dorian’s faint grunt. Murmurs from the crowd—shock, excitement, scandal.
The light began to fade, and finally my eyes opened.
Dorian stood awash in solaire, his form barely a shadow within it.
Two handmaidens flanked his tall frame, golden ropes of magic binding his wrists behind his back.
Gawain knelt on the marble, one hand at his throat, blood dripping from his face onto his golden suit.
The ballroom was a ruin of overturned chairs and scattered masks. Every eye was on us.
“Explain yourself.” Theia’s voice carried through the silent room. “All of Highmark is watching, Unseelie. Make it good.”
“He’s Maeronyx’s spymaster,” Dorian rasped. “He was going to kill Eurydice.”
I stared, heart thudding.
“What’s your proof?” Gawain straightened slowly, his voice a croak. “Oh, right. You have none.”
Dorian lunged against his bindings, and the handmaidens’ light flared brighter. He stilled, but his eyes stayed fixed on Gawain. He’d murder him even now, if he could.
Dorian’s face was covered in blood; it dripped off his chin onto the pristine floor. Around us, the cream of Feyreign’s courts watched in horrified silence. Iseris’s pink curls peeked from the edge of the crowd. Somewhere behind her, I knew Maeronyx watched too.
This would be the talk of every court by morning. Eurydice’s veyre, out of control.
“The mirror wraith was your doing,” Dorian spat.
“You did always jump to conclusions,” Gawain said. “And fists.”
Theia yanked on Dorian’s bindings. “Charming. Both of you.” She jerked him toward the door. “Move.”
“Wait.” I stepped forward. “Where are you taking him?”
Theia seemed to see me for the first time. “The dungeon, Your Grace.” Her tone found some of its former reverence, but not all. “We don’t treat with violence before the Dawnmaker.”
Liora stood only a few paces away, her face unreadable. She’d been there the whole time—watching. She met my eyes, then inclined her head a fraction.
Not to me. To Theia.
Theia tugged Dorian toward a side door. His gaze was still lethal, and it stayed on Gawain until the last moment.
An old vendetta between them, one I didn’t know the true shape of. Only that murder still ran through Dorian like a living thing. I’d never seen him like that. He wore control like a second skin.
“He’s not beholden to you,” I said after her—and turned to Liora. “Nor to you.”
The summer queen regarded me with a glint of humor. “Veyre or no, this is my court, Queen Eurydice. My laws.” Her lilt never dropped away. “If you take issue with them, then perhaps tell me about the changes you’d implement when we meet on the Killing Fields.”
She turned away.
I stepped forward. “He was protecting me—”
“By spilling blood on my dance floor.” She flicked a hand toward Theia. “Let it be handled. We’ll speak later, you and I.”
It wasn’t a refusal. But it wasn’t permission, either.
Gawain had gathered himself and now rose slowly. He strode toward Dorian and grasped his arm. “Ssen ssa.” His voice was thick with the blood no doubt clogging his nose. “Thyr.”
Dorian’s head jerked back—and then he spit on Gawain’s face.
Gawain gestured him off like a child, and Theia pushed Dorian through the side door.
I made to follow, but Theia’s light flared at her fingertips. A warning.
And there it was, the measure of my soft power here in Highmark. Under the right circumstances, even a handmaiden could threaten a queen.
Liora’s voice cut through the silence of the ballroom. “The excitement is over.” She lifted a hand toward the musicians’ balcony. “Play.”
A beat of hesitation—then the strings began again, tentative at first, swelling as the room began to breathe.
Couples drifted back toward the dance floor.
Servants appeared to right the overturned chairs, to sweep away the scattered masks.
Within moments, the ballroom had mostly stitched itself back together, as though nothing had happened.
As though my veyre hadn’t just been dragged away in chains of light.
I strode for the door Dorian had disappeared through, but Faun grabbed my shoulder. “Don’t,” she said.
I jerked around. “I don’t serve you.”
Her eyebrows went up, and her hand lifted off my shoulder, palm out. “You asked me to tell you when you were misstepping. That would have been a misstep.”
“She’s right.” Nearby, Gawain slipped an oxblood kerchief from his breast pocket and wiped at his face. “Highmark’s handmaidens don’t take kindly to interference with their court’s laws.”
I crouched, picked up my dropped knife. “Fuck off, Cyrus.” I didn’t flick it shut.
“I only lied to you about my name.” He wiped at his nose, picked up his mask, and started toward the door Dorian had been taken through. “Nothing else.”
“Who the hell are you, then?”
“A clockmaker’s son.” He pulled the door open. “A changeling, like you.”
“Who are you to Dorian?”
He passed through the door and it closed behind him. Faun and I were left alone with the ridiculous revelry.
I twisted toward the head of the room. I needed to talk to Liora.
“Leave it be, Eury,” Faun said from behind me. “Wait until the morning.”
I didn’t turn back. “Don’t follow me.”
For once, she listened.
I found Liora in one corner of the room, surrounded by a group of men. She laughed with a delicate wineglass in one hand, a purple liquid sparkling under the starlight as though nothing at all had been amiss.
When she saw me, her gaze hardened. She handed her glass to one of the men, excused herself, and threaded through the crowd with marvelous ease, like the fae around her were nothing more than gauzy curtains.
She hooked her arm through mine. “Walk with me.”
I did. The crowd parted just as easily as we wove through the ballroom. “I need to speak to you about Dorian.”
“I know about Dorian.” Her voice was soft, her gaze elsewhere. She wore a cheerful grin. “And if you say another word about it before we’re alone, I can’t promise I’ll be the only set of ears to hear.”
My mouth closed. I became suddenly aware of the close press of bodies.
We walked in silence, arms hooked. She led us through a set of amber velvet curtains hanging from one end of the ballroom and opened a door hidden behind them.
We came into a tiny circular lounge with velvet bench seats set around the edge. A small table sat in the center, and mirrors along the walls. My own reflection stunned me; I hardly recognized the masked girl with her glittering, antlered crown.
Liora shut the door behind us, and a low-light crystal came to life on one wall. Not as bright as usual—just enough to see, to give the space a bit of atmosphere.
“What is this room?”
“A space for talking. Or fucking. Or whatever I desire.” Liora sat down on one end of the seat. She gestured for me to do the same opposite her.
I sat. “I’ve never seen you paranoid like that.”
She tapped her fingernails on the table. “Queens are paranoid. It comes with the job, and you should know that by now.”
“This was different,” I said. “Why should it matter who overhears about Dorian?”