Chapter 40
CHAPTER FORTY
Eurydice
I opened my eyes to blue flame—to a dragon staring at me with slitted pupils and one shorn-off incisor visible between its lips.
Caustrix.
His eyes widened. “Little queen. You are a surprise.”
I stepped toward him, out of the flames. The world cooled. Dizziness hit in a wave; I stumbled, dropped to a knee, palm striking cold stone. My clothes were gone. My braid didn’t fall over my shoulder.
I was naked, hairless.
But I was out. I was back.
I stared at the ground until my body stopped feeling like it wanted to tilt sidelong.
“Eury,” Dorian’s voice warbled through the flames.
He stood on the other side of the fire. How long had he waited? My stomach felt wrenched empty, my arms shaking like they’d been immobile for… days. It must have been days.
A door, Eury. A door.
How had Dorian known exactly what I needed? And would I have ever escaped without that?
“The child of dirt returns,” Caustrix said above me. “’Twas a most elucidating moment inside that dim little cage of bone.”
Anger surged in me, nauseating. How many times had I relived the same memory inside those flames, spiraled toward the same truth? I could have gone my whole life without cracking open that terrible nut, and I would have been fine.
But now I would never know for sure. I’d never fully believe.
“You are a motherfucker.” The words were a rasp from my dry-as-sand throat.
“Did she truly love you? Her little changeling.” Caustrix let out a thoughtful noise. “Alas, it’s impossible to know the heart of another creature.”
I thrust my foot under me and rose, brought my arms around my body in the chill of the cave. The dragon’s long black neck wove sinuously toward the ceiling. The eyes gleamed crystalline in the dwindling flames.
“I know what’s in your heart,” I said. “You long to escape. Even if it’s not inside your own body.”
“Curious. Do say more.”
“The options were the same—a moment inside my mind or a piece of my soul.” A guttering laugh broke out from the dragon, and I said, “Now you have both.”
The moment I’d opened my eyes inside those flames, I’d felt him in there. Swirling in my veins, curled in my head. He’d seen the deepest part of me, my greatest fears—hopes—dreams.
I didn’t know what our joining meant, or how long it lasted. Only that a piece of him would go with me, and a piece of me would stay with him… indefinitely.
The laugh ended with a snort, two circular plumes of smoke appearing. “Very good, my mud queen. When did you know?”
“We’re not stupid in the Dip, just poor. An offer that lopsided is as obvious as a piece of glass sold as a gem.”
More laughter. This dragon’s laugh was like sandpaper over wood. “Gods, you’re far more fun than Carys or that veyre of yours. And you took the offer anyway.”
My fear had gone. Now that I was joined with Caustrix, I knew he would not kill me. Any future he had outside this cave depended on me leaving it.
“You gave me one choice. I want the dagger.” I shivered, but held my jaw steady. “I’m willing to take a piece of you with me.”
“Did you hear that, veyre?” Caustrix flicked his tail. “Next time you’re in bed with her, you’ll be fucking a dragon.”
Dorian said nothing. What was there to say?
Down at the creature’s feet, near its flicking tail, a small blue shimmer beckoned me. “Give me the tooth,” I said.
“If you want to wield it, you must approach. Walk toward death, you bitter little thing, and earn the blade.”
“Don’t, Eury,” Dorian said.
I had to. Nothing would ever be easy. Nothing ever given over. By now, I knew that truth.
I took one step on the icy stone, then another.
The distance between me and the dragon seemed small, but that was a mirage.
The closer I came, the larger it loomed.
The black scales danced in the soft firelight, each one bigger than me.
One curving claw was as long as my body.
Everywhere smelled like burning shit until I forced myself only to breathe through my mouth. The enormous tail flicked, flicked.
All the while, the great frosty eyes watched.
Closer, closer, until the whole world around me was his long, spiny ridge sloping down toward the tail, his beating heart inside that great chest, his webbed wings tight against his sides. The blue shimmer called, waited.
I came to it, two paces from his hind leg. The five claws rose, lowered with a tick-tick-tick-tick-tick that made my hairs rise, my body freeze.
I was afraid. I had never not been afraid. It was impossible not to be afraid of a dragon.
“Sit if you like.” Caustrix’s whisper curled into my ears, almost inaudible. But I heard every word. “Hide your face. Cry. But then who would you be?”
He’d really gotten deep into my fucking head.
“Sit, sit, sit. Your mother’s last piece of wisdom, ignored. All because you’re afraid.”
Never sit. Never sit.
My feet had gone numb on the cave floor. I didn’t feel when I took one step, then the next. The blue shimmer became smoke. The light became an outline of a curved blade.
Only now did I understand why Carys called it a dagger of ice and spite.
Ice, for the deep-dark place where she’d acquired it.
Spite, for the dragon who lived now inside me. And because whoever wielded this god-cursed thing was consenting to an unholy union.
His spite had seeped a little bit into me. Or maybe it had always been there, raining down on my head every day of my life. Sinking like flour into my skin, forever there in the creases. Scentable by a strong enough nose.
I knelt before the dagger. A slender grip, a thorn-sharp curving blade. There on its surface sat my reflection, hued blue in the dragon’s fire.
All my hair was gone. My eyebrows. I was two blue eyes staring back from inside the globe of my skull.
My fingers curled into my palms.
Once I touched it, I sensed everything would change. A future would appear in the distance, and I would start down a path toward it. My hand longed to hold; my heart shrank away.
Beyond those flames, I knew Dorian watched. I knew he would never leave my side again. And that was its own weight to carry.
Am I making the right choice, Mama?
No answer. Maybe the answers in my head had only ever just been me.
I reached out. My fingers closed around the grip. Ice, ice, ice, so cold I wanted to jerk my hand away. But that was only instinct, only the shock.
Willpower wrapped my fingers tight around the grip. Tighter, until the numbness seeped into my palm and I lifted it from the cave floor.
The lightest weapon I’d ever held—and also the heaviest.
I rose, turned… and found Caustrix’s head a foot in front of me, the neck curving around and down. The dragon exhaled, and smoke blew over me.
“The tooth does not only cut, child. It drinks. Every magic it touches, it swallows. Every power it meets, it makes its own. You may use it three times, and then—” The dragon’s nostrils blew hot, astringent air. “Well. You’ll see.”
Three times. Then, before I could even process the rest, the maw came close enough to touch. His voice was so quiet, I wondered if I only heard it inside my head.
“Your veyre will betray you, just like Carys’s did. He already has.”
I stared. Didn’t breathe, didn’t speak.
“He wants what you have, and if you aren’t careful, little queen, he will take it from you.”
Then, slowly, the head moved backward. The blue eyes stared as the head rose, revealing Dorian standing on the other side of the cave. Even from here, his dark eyes were soft. Just like my mother’s when I’d stepped in through the old door with the sun on its face.
Dorian held my cloak, open and waiting. He was waiting for me.
“Go.” Caustrix thumped his tail on the floor; a vibration thrummed up through my numb feet. “I tire of looking at your pretty ephemeral faces.”
Dorian pushed the sewer grate up, and pure moonlight spilled over us in the frigid night.
He climbed out and reached back, gripping my hand.
He pulled me up onto the icy inner district street in nothing but my cloak, clasped at my neck.
I swayed, and without asking he slid his arm under my legs and picked me up.
“You’re frozen.” His throat sounded so dry, I wondered how he had a voice. “It’s that fucking dagger.”
I’d clutched the dagger since the moment we’d left Caustrix’s tomb. Had carried it through the tunnels, up the catacombs, into the sewers. Even now I held it to my chest like an infant; where it touched my breast, the skin went slowly numb.
If I let it go, I might never hold it again.
He’ll betray you. He’s betrayed you already.
The cloak’s side dropped away, revealing my nakedness to the night. Dorian replaced it over my body and carried me through the inner district. “Naked, hairless. Can’t even bring you to the worst pub like this.”
I laid my head against his breast, listening to his heart. Slow, steady. That couldn’t be the heart of a betrayer. Couldn’t be.
Fatigue pulled at me with icy fingers. I didn’t know how he had so much energy.
He walked, turned a corner, walked. We passed under the shadow of a building, and then he pushed us through a door. A smell I recognized. Musty, ancient. Familiar creaking floorboards.
His family’s old home. The site of their sudden deaths.
“Not here.” My words sounded like straw over stone. “Anywhere but here.”
“I need to get you warm. And you need sleep.”
I could barely stand this place, and I didn’t even believe in ghosts. I didn’t know how Dorian could come back to it.
Except I did: he was practical. If our roles were reversed, I would have brought him here, too. But it still must tear at him like knives.
He shut the front door with his hip, enclosing us. Crossed the room, set me down in a chair. When he walked into another room, I wanted to ask him to stay—I didn’t want to be alone here—but I didn’t have the energy.
He returned holding clothes. Lace, frill. A girl’s clothing. “These should fit you.”
I shook my head.
He dropped them on the floor. “She didn’t die in them, Eury.”
He left again, and a dragging sounded across the floor. Soon blankets appeared, Dorian tugging them out into the sitting room. “These were in the closet.”
I stared at the fluffy blankets without seeing them. “You had a closet?”
“Three, actually.” He appeared in front of me, crouching. His hand moved over the orb of my bare head. “Eury, will you put the dagger down?”
I gripped it tighter to my chest.
“Please. Let me help you.”
In his eyes, I saw unbroken softness. Could I call it love? I wasn’t sure I knew the meaning of the word anymore. But something sharded in me when Dorian’s hazel eyes met mine, and bit by bit, my grip loosened.
It took a full minute to set the dagger on the side table next to my chair. Uncurling my fingers was like magicking stone into muscle and skin. I’d held it for at least a day while we followed the crosshatches out of the catacombs.
The dagger was numbing, but it was also enlivening. Even here, so far from Feyreign, I’d felt magic all around me. Inside Caustrix’s great chest and veins; flowing through Dorian’s body; ambient in the dank catacomb air as well as the world above.
This was what had allowed Carys’s archers to siege the Kingdom of the Plains. Rhiannon had needed the spiritstag’s boon on the night of the attack, but Carys had only needed the dagger.
Without it, my body felt even colder. I shivered; my teeth chattered.
Dorian picked up the old, pretty clothes and dressed me one sleeve at a time. He muttered, “You’ll never make it back over the wall this way.”
“I’ll make it.” My breath was visible as I spoke. The house was frigid.
“You’re dehydrated, emaciated.” He pulled the shirt over my head and stared at me. “There’s no way.”
There had to be a way. I needed to get back.
“T-t-t—”
“Wildmother.” He slid his hands up and down my arms. “Come on.” He helped me out of the chair and onto the blankets. In the darkness, he moved above me, stripping our clothes off until we were naked. It didn’t feel remotely intimate; it felt necessary. Until…
He lay down behind me and wrapped his body around me, then threw half the blanket over the two of us. Warm—almost unbearably hot—skin touched mine from neck to ankle, and I gasped.
I had forgotten how good he felt against me.
His warmth seeped into me quick. His arm came around me in a tight hold, his soft voice warm over my ear. “We’re going to get back to Feyreign, Eury. You just need a few days.”
No—I didn’t have a few days. The trial would begin in a few days.
And there was something else. Caustrix, that fucker—his words still snaked through my mind. He’ll betray you. He already has.
Queenslayer.
Maybe Caustrix was wrong. But maybe he was right. I trusted Dorian… but what if Caustrix spoke true?
Dorian hated changelings. Hated us. Had killed us. He would have killed me that first night if I hadn’t turned toward his sword.
Something had happened while I was trapped in my own mind down under the earth. Dorian had spent days with that dragon, and even if I asked him now what had happened, I didn’t fully believe he’d tell me true.
The longer I stayed here alone with him, the more vulnerable I became. I needed to get back to the rest of my court.
Before me, faint smoke rose from the dagger where I’d laid it on the side table. My shivering had already stopped, and fatigue sent threads through me. I wanted to stay awake, but sleep pulled at my eyes. “What happens if I miss the trial?”
“Eury, not now.”
“Tell me.”
“It’s considered forfeiture.”
“What does that mean?”
“A champion who doesn’t present herself by the time the sun sits atop the white pillar in the Killing Fields essentially forfeits her queen’s crown. It’s considered weakness.”
And nothing was more disdained in Feyreign than weakness. Then, too, there was motive. “So that was why Liora sent me.”
Dorian sighed. “Yes.”
I half-glanced back. “You knew?”
“She wins either way. You come back with the dagger and game fucking on, or you forfeit your crown.”
I laid my head back down. Across from me, the blue smoke was drugging. “Do you think she ever meant to ally?”
“I think it’s one possibility. A good queen always has more than one winning card in hand.”
A truth I was just now beginning to truly understand. Either way… we had to leave tomorrow. We had to get past those gates.
There had to be a way. Had to.
I turned the problem over as I lapsed into sleep. Thinking, thinking, even in my tortured, feverish dreams. This was my kingdom—my home. I knew its pulse, its rhythm, the veins and arteries and how they flowed.
And most of all, I knew its hierarchies. Who knelt, who bowed, who lowered their eyes, and who raised them.
By the time I woke in the morning, I knew. I knew how to get us through the gates.