Chapter 45
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Dorian
She slept like she’d died, with her head in my lap. Only the subtle movement of her breast under her uniform told me she lived, and the sometimes-twitch of her fingers on my thigh.
Outside, the rains continued. On the ground, the dagger watched me from where she’d dropped it. The blood had long ago evaporated, leaving only the clean blue blade.
Cursed thing. It had saved my life.
Well, Eurydice had saved my life. The dagger was impossible to wield unless the right hand held it.
More and more, she was becoming inexplicable to me.
I didn’t know how she’d done it, even after she’d told me.
Her head lay on my leg, and still she seemed to me almost like the queens of old in children’s stories.
They were said to have a mystical connection to magic, something the average fae could never understand. Certainly not the average man.
I’d always thought everything was explicable. Until I met her.
She wasn’t just brave—not just smart—not just powerful. She was unreal, as though touched by divinity. I’d been truthful when I said it was impossible not to love her, but there was another piece to it. A smaller, sharper piece. One I couldn’t yet name.
Day lapsed into night. I didn’t move, didn’t dare wake her. Morning would come soon enough, and then we would ride without stopping until we reached Sylvanwild. She needed energy, every bit of it.
Her final—most important—trial waited.
At some point sleep had claimed me as well, my head resting against the wall when her voice penetrated the darkness.
“Rain’s stopped.”
I opened my eyes. She sat cross-legged, facing the cave’s mouth. Not-quite-morning light slanted in. The dagger still lay where she’d dropped it yesterday. “Feeling better?” I asked.
“Better than better.” Her head turned until her face came into profile. “You?”
Stiff. Aching. Still tired. “Just great.” I pushed myself off the wall and to my feet. The horse had slept standing; it roused at my movement. “We’ll need to ride today without stopping.”
She stood and turned toward me. “Are you able?”
I nearly scoffed. “Have you eaten?”
Her lips curled. “I can eat on the way.”
We gathered what little we had and mounted. She rode in front while I held the reins; I didn’t trust her to stay on behind me with only one good hand. We cantered through the morning fog, toward Sylvanwild’s gates.
On the way, she drank from the canteen and ate dried meat while leaning against my chest. Every shift of her weight sent heat through the uniform and into my ribs, and I had to keep my breathing level so she wouldn’t feel what she was doing to me.
To hold onto my head, I told her the story of the four gods of Feyreign: the spiritstag, the black maw, the dawn hawk, and the brightcolt.
The four gods had been created by the land itself, and since their inception they’d always been frustrated by the bounds of their magic.
Each of them wanted to reign, but the land’s covenant kept them locked.
Inside their court, they had total power; outside it, they had none.
They couldn’t even leave their own lands—though in rare moments, at the borders, a god’s power could reach beyond its edges like a hand through a cracked door.
Brief, costly, and never without consequence.
With Carys’s rise, the spiritstag had hoped to make Sylvanwild the better court—maybe the only court. But she’d become corrupted by power and lost her life for it, and so the covenant went on as it had since the dawn of Feyreign.
That was where my story ended. What I didn’t say, but thought: the stag wanted Eurydice to become what Carys had not. It saw the potential in her, the same potential I’d seen from that first night.
Here she was, living it. Rising to it.
Eury listened without interrupting. When I’d finished, she asked, “But why four courts?”
“The land birthed four gods, not one—and it won’t allow any single one to consume the others. The covenant isn’t a contract—it’s a cage the world built around them.”
“So men and gods alike vie for power. Of course they do.”
“Why of course?”
She shrugged against me. “It’s the only thing that makes you free.”
She was right. The way of our world made her right.
She half-turned in her seat and set her good hand on my arm as though to speak to me confidentially. “Dorian, has any champion ever survived three on one in the Killing Fields?”
By which she meant, How can I possibly survive this?
I breathed out. I had to be careful. “It hasn’t happened except once.”
“Once?”
“When Carys wielded the blade.”
She considered this with her hand still on my arm. “And otherwise?”
“The victory always comes through an alliance. In past trials, the Noctere champions allied with Sylvanwild against the Seelie.”
Eury scoffed. “Yes, I’m sure Maeronyx longs for an alliance with me.”
“She would have offered one by now if she did.”
“And Liora sent me here to die.”
She wasn’t exactly wrong. “It’s never possible to know where Liora truly stands. That’s how she’s reigned as long as she has. We shouldn’t count on her, but she’s not known for viciousness.”
“I’m of her court. Does that count for nothing?”
“So were Rhiannon’s four sisters.”
“You think Liora is another night-bitch?”
“A night-bitch?” I smirked; it was an apt title for the previous autumn queen. “Maybe.”
In front of me, Eury was silent. “So I’m without allies.”
“You have me. Haskel. Faun. Finch. Eleyrie.”
“And none of you can step onto the Killing Fields.”
If I could, I would. But could and would were meaningless when it came to battles for power.
Around us, the trees had gradually become taller, fatter. The lands had become lusher, heavier with green as we neared Sylvanwild. I pressed my heels tighter into the horse’s side.
“Dorian, I know I’m no match for them as I am.” Eury’s voice was tight, hard. “What’s my best bet?”
Her best bet was underhanded. It followed no rules of nobility. When I didn’t speak, she said, “Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”
The weight of those words lay heavy on my shoulders. “Each champion can choose one weapon. Yours must be the dragon’s tooth.”
She stiffened against me. Then, “You told me Carys was killed for that.”
“Not for holding the dagger. She wielded feralis and noxveil—she broke the courts.” The sight of her appeared again in my mind’s eye, her body wreathed in shadow and water. “When I saw her die on the Fields, it was her veyre who struck her down. The gods just watched.”
“So it’s allowed.”
“Or they let her win and punished her through him.” I didn’t know. That was the truth of it—I’d seen a veyre drive a blade through his queen, and I couldn’t tell whether it was duty or divine will wearing a man’s hands.
“Either way, it’s the only chance I have.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
“The dagger quickens your power,” I said with gritted teeth. “So you make them kneel under your acid rain. Quick, easy, done.”
I said the words like their simplicity made the act so. Like making Iseris—Maeronyx—Liora—kneel would be that easy.
Eury didn’t answer. Even she, new to the courts, knew nothing was so simple in Feyreign.
We arrived at the iron gates before nightfall.
At my birdcall whistle, two whistles answered from somewhere high up; for as far back as history went, Sylvanwild fae had always, always guarded our gates.
I dismounted the horse, directed a tiny flow of air magic into the lock, and it unlatched for me.
I opened the gate with a creak, then led the horse through.
Feyreign washed over me like a salve. Any aches, any pains—all were pressed away by the stag’s magic. Up on the horse, Eury’s eyes fluttered shut as she clung to its mane.
The spiritstag wanted us fit. Hale. Ready.
“We’ll need a new horse,” she said as the gate creaked shut behind her. “This one’s ready to drop.”
I stepped up to it, set my hand to its chin. Yes, this one was at its limit. But now we were in Sylvanwild, we didn’t have to rely on one poor animal any longer.
Tilting my face, I let out the three-note call. It resonated through the trees in the almost-dusk. One second passed, two, three—
Someone appeared from behind a tree. A border guard with a quiver at her back, a bow in hand. Her brown eyes assessed us as she approached, but fixed on Eury. She didn’t recognize her without hair, in a guard’s uniform.
“Your queen needs two horses,” I said. “Right away.”
The woman’s eyebrows lowered. “The queen is away, in Highmark—”
Eury swept aside her cloak. The blue dagger glowed eerily amongst all of Sylvanwild’s greenery. She gripped it tight against her leg. “I was there, and now I’m here. Get me two horses, and don’t bother with apologies or bowing.”
The guard stiffened when the dagger came out. A certain fear entered her eyes, one I’d never seen from a Sylvanwild fae in Eury’s presence. A queen, indeed.
She dipped her head once, no bow, no flourish, and pivoted away, disappearing amongst the trees.
Eury sheathed the dagger and dismounted. Her hand came along the horse’s side. “We’ll keep this horse here in court. He rides well, does what he must.” She scratched at his jaw. “He’s a first-degree steed of scorn.”
I half-smiled. The vaguest memory of humor hung like gossamer thread in the air between us. Now it felt like time ran short for us to say anything to each other.
“Dorian,” she said as she scratched the horse’s wobbling chin, eyes off me, “what happened to you in Noctere?”
I’d never told anyone about my time in the winter court. The closest I’d come to the truth was when Rhiannon had tried to force it out of me with her magic. But some truths are so painful, so felt, they can’t be forced.
Now, after everything, the woman I loved had asked. We were short on time, and she wanted to know.
“Why do you ask?”
Her eyes flashed on me. “Maeronyx. I need to know her mind.”
Yes, of course she did. I had hoped I would have Haskel and Faun to help guide this part. But in the end, it was only me. I would have to be enough.
The truth found words. “Rhiannon was ruthless, but Maeronyx is cruel and patient. The Black Frost. The Architect of the Endless Night. The names only get more gruesome from there.”
Her hand dropped from the horse’s chin. “Once, you told me a saying about Noctere.”
The ones who never left the dark. “You want to know if I lived it.”
She nodded.
“Torture is their favorite method of instruction.” My throat tightened. “It’s effective.” How could I put years of my life into so few words? I closed my eyes. “I became everything she wanted me to be by the time I was sixteen.”
But cold, punishing, a husk of the boy I’d been. As a child, you learn quickly what will keep you safe. But in Noctere, nothing prevented the pain; the pain was its own point.
When you’re forced to stand barefoot on the icy border between Noctere and Sylvanwild until you can touch your magic, you figure it out.
When you’re given a lashing every time you swing wide with your sword, and every time you swing perfectly, you learn the lesson was never about the sword.
She moved through the grass. When her hand came up to my face, it felt like a gift. “After all this—when the others have knelt to me on the bloody fields—on a dark, cold night, we’ll go together to kill Gawain.”
My eyes opened, the intensity of the memories receding. My lips curled. “We’re going to infiltrate Noctere’s citadel?”
“No.” Her blue eyes glittered. “We’re going to ride up to the doors and demand she send Gawain naked into the night.”
Now I smiled. “And what then?”
“Then you’ll give him twice as many lashings as you received as a boy, until he pisses in the snow and begs for mercy.”
She pulled in a breath, let it out audibly. Her face went serious again. “Maeronyx won’t kneel for me, will she?”
Now wasn’t the time for lies. “No, she won’t.”
“Not unless she thinks I’ll kill her.”
“Even then,” I said, “you’ll be hard pressed to make her knee touch the grass.”
She took this in with darting eyes, as though watching a scene play out before her. “And the other two?”
“Liora’s a survivor, a strategist. She’ll kneel if it means another six hundred years to scheme. Iseris will fall in line with Liora.”
The thud of horses’ hooves on the leaves made us turn. In the almost-darkness, the guard Eury had sent cantered one horse through the trees while holding the reins of a second one.
“I can’t let her live,” Eury murmured.
I glanced at her, eyes narrowing. Let who live?
All Eury’s focus went to mounting—two quick steps, and then she was seated up high. She gazed down at me as the guard dismounted and offered the second horse’s reins to me.
“Lead on.”