Chapter 41
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Dorian
Eury hadn’t been the same since the dragon’s lair. Then again, neither had I.
I woke to her sitting wrapped in her cloak in the chair, gazing down at me, face unreadable. The dagger lay in her lap, smoke rising from it. Random cracks of almost-dawn played over her body from the boarded-up window, turned the smoke gray where they illuminated her.
I had never seen her like this. Her hairless head, perfectly round. Her ears, small and almost pointed at the top. Her cheekbones, two hard edges, probably from lack of food. Her eyes were almost bluer, her lips still soft and pink.
She’d always been beautiful, but now—
Now she carried a majesty. I wanted to taste her tongue; I wanted to drop to my knees and touch my lips to her bare feet.
“I’d ask how you slept, but clearly you didn’t,” I murmured, rubbing at my eyes.
She sat forward. “Where are the barracks, Dorian?”
“The barracks?”
“Where do the guard stay in this district?”
“Four streets over.” I felt self-conscious, naked under the blanket, and sat up with it over my legs. “We need to get food in you.”
“No time. The scouts will be leaving in an hour.”
The scouts? What the hell did the scouts matter?
She pointed toward the window and the world beyond. “Count the days, Dorian. It’s been a fortnight since the half-moon.”
A fortnight. Which meant a full moon.
I understood her plan at once. It was genius, but… “We have no uniforms.”
“It’s just after dawn. If they’re anything like our guard, they’re still asleep.”
“So you want to steal their uniforms.”
“I want you to steal their uniforms, seeing as you still have boots that fit.”
I stood, bringing the blanket with me around my waist. “I suppose you want me to steal a couple of horses, too.”
Her blue eyes lifted. Her shoulder rose. “Once you’re in uniform, no one sees a thief.”
She was right. The scouts weren’t questioned in the districts; they were held in a kind of reverent regard for the sacrifices they made.
It was our best chance of getting back to Feyreign before the trial. Past the gates, we could ride hard. We could make the Killing Fields in a few days.
“Fine.” I grabbed my pants and started dressing in the chill air. My family’s home sat like its own catacomb around me; I couldn’t wait to leave. “But first, put that dress on. I’m taking you to a pub to break your fast.”
“There’s no time, Dorian.”
I paused with my pants half on. “Less time because of your objections. You’re eating, godsdamnit.”
She stared at me long and hard—a challenge I met with an unerring gaze. Then an almost impish smile curled her lips. “Yes, ser.”
The words sent a surge of heat through me. There she was, the Eurydice I’d fallen for in the trials.
She had soon gotten dressed and slid on a pair of silk slippers I got for her from my sister’s room. She hid the dagger in the inner pocket of her cloak, raised her hood to hide her hairless scalp, and nodded at me.
We left the abandoned house in the quiet of dawn. Two streets down, not far from the barracks, The Iron Mare had just hung its shingle for the morning.
I pushed open the door. Every table sat clean and empty. A middle-aged woman straightened with a wet rag in hand, gaze flicking from me to Eury and back. I didn’t recognize her face, thank the gods. “Breakfast?”
“A room for me and my sister.” I lifted my coin pouch out and set two pieces on the table nearest me. “And breakfast brought up.”
Her gaze lit on the pieces. “I can do that.”
She brought us to a room, didn’t ask questions or make small talk. When Eury and I were alone, I began stripping a pillow of its case. Eury stood near the door. “What’s that for?”
“Can’t parade the uniforms through the streets before we’ve got them on.”
She sat on the edge of the bed beside me. “In the southern district barracks, there’s a store room. Always spare uniforms in there.”
“I’ll check there first.”
She caught my wrist. “If someone sees you, you’re an authoritarian bastard. Be the Dorian I met that night in the Dip.”
I paused. “I’ve always been him.” Even if I’m built around the shape of you, now.
Her eyes flashed. “You sure? I haven’t wanted to stab you in weeks.”
She’s still Eury. You’re still you.
I tucked the pillowcase into my jerkin and pointed at her as I neared the door. “Eat.”
She didn’t answer except with her willful eyes.
I strode down the hall and into the quiet bar room. Outside the pub, the inner district was just waking—voices murmuring, machines coming to clanking life. I had to be quick.
As a child, I’d never been inside the barracks.
I had passed it so many times with the curiosity of any boy who dreams of swords and battle.
And we all did for a time, every one of us sons of scorn, even if we would later realize we were destined to spend our days surrounded by books.
When I’d asked my father if I could join the scouts, he’d laughed.
He was a jeweler, and so had his father been, and his father.
“You’re meant to shape metal, boy. Not to swing it.”
My father had been a very good jeweler, and not very smart. He hadn’t ever suspected his true baby had been replaced, and he’d treated me like the prized heir because he disdained women.
He hadn’t known his line had died off one quiet night in the prime of his life. Now he was gone, and I was swinging metal. The irony was, I’d rather be shaping it.
I stopped in front of the barracks entrance and the empty yard. The doors were wide open in preparation for the scouts’ departure. The buildings formed a horseshoe—several dorms, a food hall, stables, and a small building my eye nearly missed before I remembered.
The store room.
It wasn’t even locked. The door swung open to reveal shelves of supplies, neatly stacked jackets and pants and boots.
The clothing was no doubt tailored after the fact, so I grabbed two of the jackets, pants, and two pins from a lineup.
One of them bore three interlocking circles—a regiment commander’s pin.
I eyed the boots and took the smallest and largest I could find.
When I turned around, someone stood at the entrance to the store room. A young man, his face shadowed by the light streaming through the open door.
“What are you doing?”
I squinted; a brown-haired man of maybe twenty-one with freckles and green eyes came into relief. Shorter than me. Not a new recruit, but not a regiment commander, either.
Not easy, but not insurmountable.
I turned toward him with the load in my arms and found the bottom of my register. “What the fuck does it look like?”
He scrutinized me with an unapologetic up-and-down. When his gaze reached my face, he straightened. I knew what he recognized there: years and years of discipline.
Gawain had given me that foundation. That, and more. All unasked for, but I couldn’t deny it when it served me.
Humans and fae weren’t so far removed from lesser animals. Men, especially. We sized each other up in ways most of us weren’t even conscious of—the cant of the chin, the straightness of the shoulders, the cauliflower ears, the height and weight difference. It all happened in a second or two.
He had challenged me. I had come out on top.
“Sorry, sir.” His hands clasped behind him. “It’s just that the regiment commander said no one’s supposed to be in the store room. And I saw the door open—”
“Does the regiment commander tell you about every order that comes from the king?”
His eyebrows jerked up. “Well…”
“Perhaps you should talk to him. Or the king himself.” I stepped forward. “In the meantime, I’d advise you to get the fuck out of my way.”
He did.
I could have said anything, as long as it involved the words “king” and “fuck”—in no particular order. I’d already defeated him in voice, bearing, and the unspoken promise that I could beat his face in before he touched me.
I crossed the empty yard with the load in my arms. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. When I came to the first alley, I yanked out the pillowcase and stuffed everything in as the walls around me turned from gray to a softer yellow.
We were running out of time.
Five minutes later, I opened the door to our room at The Iron Mare and found Eury seated on the bed with a tray of empty dishes before her and the dragon’s tooth in her lap.
She eyed me up and down like that guard. “Thought you got caught.”
I pushed the door shut. “I nearly did.” I tossed the pillowcase onto the end of the bed. “Picked the smallest boots I could find.”
She pushed aside the tray and pulled the pillowcase toward her. “Nothing in the guard ever fit me right. My mother tailored my uniform.”
“Then—”
She pulled out one of the jackets and held it up. “Focus on dressing yourself. I’ve got my methods.”
I had no doubt of that.
We dressed in silence. The larger uniform and boots fit me well enough, if not tight across the chest and shoulders. My toes pushed up against the boots’ front. Meanwhile, Eury’s clothes hung off her. She rolled the sleeves and tucked the legs into her boots.
Then she did something I hadn’t expected. She pulled the extra uniform tight at her low back and pressed the dagger through it like a clothespin. When she swept on her cloak, she turned to me and said, “We only need to get through the gates.”
She actually looked passable, like the shirt had been tailored for her. Everything about her suggested the scouts I had seen riding through the inner district during my childhood. Of course it would—she’d been a guard before she became a queen.
Everything worked, except for her lack of hair.
She must have noticed my gaze on her scalp, because she lifted her hood. “I’ve seen them ride like this when it’s cold.”
“We only need to get through the gates.”
A faint smile appeared. She turned toward the mirror. “You know, I wanted to be a scout more than anything.”
“Why?” I already knew, but I craved the sound of her voice.
“When you live behind a wall, you imagine the world. Your imagination becomes the world. But when you see the world…”
“The truth replaces imagination.”
She met eyes in the mirror. “But the scouts wouldn’t take a woman.”
“Their loss.”
“My best friend’s parents died when she was a girl. Both of them were scouts. After that, no more women scouts in the southern district.” She turned back toward me. “Bet you didn’t think we poors have scouts, too.”
“I’m sure I thought a lot of things.” I pulled on my cloak. “But I can hardly remember what those thoughts were.”
So much had happened. The boy I’d been felt obliterated.
“We need to leave.”
She nodded. “Don’t slow your pace for me.”
My lips kicked up. “I would never.”
We left the inn to a colorful early winter sky, the sun unobstructed. The barracks’ yard was still mostly empty, and the few guard who were up were too groggy to pay us any attention.
When we arrived at the stables, several horses hung their heads over their half-doors in greeting. It was better to get to know horses, their temperaments, to form a bond—but today I had to choose by instinct for both of us.
I pointed at the smallest one, a chestnut. “That’s yours.”
Eury struck toward the tack room without question. Meanwhile, I took a big black gelding that nickered at me as I approached. Friendly enough.
The rest of the scouts would be here any moment now. We had to be quick.
Eury came out with a saddle and girth and bridle all bundled together, and she made quick work of getting the horse ready. I did the same with the black horse, the two of us moving in silent communion.
Except when Eury opened the stall door, the chestnut had a limp. It came clattering out into the aisle on only three legs, one of its forelegs held up.
“Fuck,” she said. “No shoe.”
Voices sounded in the yard. No time.
I climbed onto the black horse. “Get on.”
She backed the chestnut into its stall and closed the latch. “They won’t let us through the gates this way.”
I reached out for her. “Yes, they will.”
Her eyes narrowed. Then, with two steps, she grabbed my hand and set her foot into the empty stirrup. I pulled her onto the horse’s back, and her hands went around my waist.
“I hope you know something I don’t,” she murmured against my spine.