Chapter 46
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Eurydice
We rode for the Killing Fields. Dusk became night, and we rode. The night deepened, and we rode. The night waned, and we rode.
We didn’t stop. We couldn’t, or I would forfeit the trial, my crown, probably my life.
As we rode, a plan took form in my head. Crude, but less so the longer I thought on it. When you were barely a queen, your resources limited, you only had blunt objects to work with.
I didn’t have their experience. Didn’t have their training with magic or with bows or swords. I hadn’t even had a proper night’s sleep.
Who knew if I even had Dorian.
When he stood before me, I felt nothing could pull us apart. When he turned his back to me—as he did now, riding ahead—Caustrix’s words slithered through my head. He’ll betray you. He already has.
But I had the dagger. And I had me.
I had begun to understand—to trust—that I, Eurydice Waters, was a greater asset to myself than any weapon, any man, any god. I would always be with me. Through life, through death.
I could trust myself.
Dawn forecast its arrival with gray bands peeking through the canopy. Still, we rode hard with no end to the forest in sight. If we didn’t make it in time—
I felt it then. The tailwind.
Dorian was using his magic again. Fuck. If he overdid it…
“Dorian,” I called.
He didn’t look back. “Don’t talk. Ride.” And then, as though to punctuate the command, the wind kicked up even higher.
It’s his choice, Eury.
So I rode. I sat low over the horse as the wind blew over me, because I had no other choice. It was either arrive at the fields in time or fail trying.
The light shifted as we passed through the forest. Dark gray soon became light gray, and light gray became gold.
Dawn had arrived.
Then I saw it: the forest’s edge. Empty plains like a promise.
I spurred the horse on. We thundered toward the tree line. Dorian burst into the light first, his horse’s chestnut coat sparkling. Then I followed, and the light poured over me so brightly I had to squint.
Ahead of us, the white pillar cut the sky in half. The Killing Fields were real.
The closer we came, the more the trial became a truth. Horses came into relief, massed at the point where Sylvanwild met the fields. Figures stood under the light. They shielded their eyes and turned toward us.
I recognized them. Haskel, Faun, Finch, even Mirek. All my handmaidens, Eleyrie among them.
After so much riding, I didn’t have to stop the horse; it staggered to a halt the moment I eased my thighs. It coughed and coughed into the morning light, and I rubbed my hand against its mane.
Before me sat a small camp, with a rack of armor and another of weapons set out beside a wagon and tent. Bows, swords, shields.
Haskel stood with crossed arms beside the armor rack. “Well I’ll fucking be.” Beside him, Finch regarded me with an open mouth, all formality forgotten.
“You brought the boy?” Dorian’s voice had a rare edge.
As I rode fully into view, Mirek set his hands to his head and pulled at his tufts. “But where’s your hair gone?”
Faun approached my horse as it came to a stop; she took hold of the bridle. “You never fail to surprise me.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.” A league to my left, another cluster of horses and figures had massed. Same to my right. I couldn’t see what lay on the other side of the pillar, but I assumed the Aurelian queen’s camp mirrored ours over the plain. “Seems I’m not late.”
“You’re barely on time.” Haskel lifted a set of leathers from one rack. “What in the stag’s name have you got on?”
The scout’s uniform. It wore me more than I wore it.
Hoofbeats sounded from my right. Three pale horses approaching, three riders. One held the Highmark banner, the dawn hawk’s golden image flapping in the wind. At the fore rode Liora, gleaming in plate.
Above us, scouts’ hawks circled; they’d been watching, waiting for our arrival.
Dorian and I turned our horses toward them. Liora’s glittering armor came into relief under the sun, some kind of plate- and chain mail hybrid. She wore a sleek helmet with a crest. A longsword rode on her hip in its gold-filigreed sheath. The edges of a round shield peeked over her shoulders.
Clearly for show, but also… that fae knew how to wield a sword. Queen Liora the Dawnmaker. Six centuries of light.
The three horses dropped from a canter to a trot, then to a stop twenty paces from us. Her helmet caught the sunlight perfectly, directing the glare into my eyes.
I squinted, couldn’t help but raise a shielding hand.
“The forest queen lives.” Her voice was as musical as the first morning I’d met her. She only had eyes for me. “May I have a word before the trial begins?”
I couldn’t read her, couldn’t predict her. But she had gotten me to the dagger, even if she hadn’t expected me to live through the taking of it.
Dorian’s horse stomped its hoof as he swung himself alongside. “Careful, Eury,” he murmured.
“We keep to our courts’ lands,” I said to her.
She inclined her crested head.
I turned my horse away from the fields, pressed it into a trot down the dividing line between Sylvanwild and Highmark. Liora’s horse followed. Where the two magics met, the land changed. Lush Sylvanwild grass turned pale, shorter. The sun seemed to shine more brightly on her side.
She came alongside me, and we trotted until the two of us were far enough from our parties not to be overheard.
When I pulled my horse to a stop and pivoted it toward her, she did the same.
Her horse stood with a high head. She sat upright, fresh. “You haven’t slept.”
Of course she’d call it out. My tiredness was her edge; naming it made it sharper. “I fail to see how that’s relevant.”
Her lips twitched. “And the dagger?”
I flicked the edge of my cloak aside. The dragon’s tooth came revealed—tight in my grip against my thigh.
Her blue eyes flashed on it. Emotions passed across her face so quickly, I could barely pick them out. Shock, wonder, something that made her brows draw together. Of all the faces I’d seen Liora wear, I’d never seen her taken so off guard.
She released a sharp breath. “I didn’t fully believe it was real.
After Carys killed the last Highmark queen on the Killing Fields and I was crowned, Drystan bade me craft a lock no one could open.
He wouldn’t say why, only that the dagger had to go back, and it could never be allowed to surface again.
” Her eyes studied the blade in my hand. “Yet here it is.”
My fingers tightened on the reins. “I don’t want to use it on you, Liora.”
Her gaze lifted to me, as though realizing a real person was attached to the hand holding the tooth. “You needn’t. You’re a daughter of my court—and the Sylvanwild queen.”
“What does that—”
“Highmark is with you.” A cloud passed over the sun, briefly casting us both in shadow. “Here, and in the Killing Fields. I shall blind Mae and Iseris, and you call upon your famed rain.”
“I can only make it rain in my court’s land. You know that.”
She eyed me from head to boot. “Do I? I think you underestimate the dagger, Eurydice.”
“Maybe. But if I can’t make the rain spread?”
“Then we drive them onto Sylvanwild ground. Blinded, disoriented—they’ll stumble where I push them. And you’ll be waiting.”
The plan was too pat. Or maybe it truly was as simple as that; I had no precedent for any of this. “And they’ll kneel.”
“They shall.” Liora’s face lifted toward the cloud-obscured sun. “We haven’t much time.” All her attention shifted to me, the full weight of an ancient fae’s gaze. “You’re not stupid. You know Maeronyx and Iseris will try to kill you out there. Kneeling is child’s play.”
I nodded.
“You’re Carys’s inheritor. A changeling. Nothing presents a greater threat to the courts.”
“Then why are you with me?”
She stepped her horse closer to the dividing line. “The courts are broken. The trials are cruel. I’ve lived six hundred years, seen change. We were weak before Carys, but we weren’t ruthless.”
I rubbed my thumb down the dagger’s grip. My fingers tingled; I almost felt the dragon coiled in my mind. “Ruthless is better than weak.”
“It doesn’t have to be one or the other, Eurydice.”
A strange concept. Not one I’d encountered, even as a child. You were either trodden on or the one doing the trodding. “Then, what?”
“Bring the dagger into the trial. It’s the only way. I’ll signal you when the trial begins, and together we’ll force Maeronyx and Iseris to their knees. We’ll abolish the trials entirely.”
Abolish the trials. I had made a promise to the spiritstag. It felt so long ago now, but distance didn’t change its truth.
I had sworn to break the wheel. To end all of this.
I became suddenly aware of the magic around me, of the spiritstag’s ever-presence. Even if it weren’t standing behind me, no doubt it could hear me, feel me, see me.
Right now, Liora looked so much more a queen than me. I clung to my crown with my fingertips; she’d worn hers for centuries. “And you’ll reign?”
“No queen shall reign over another. Each queen will rule her court, the trials will end, and Feyreign will have no more bloodshed.”
No more trials. No more bloodshed. No reigning queen. No boots on necks.
The concept washed over me, foreign and almost incomprehensible. And I almost laughed. In vowing to end the trials, I had made a promise to give the stag something I didn’t even understand.
Amongst humans and fae, bloodshed felt inevitable.
Violence was its own language, the first one I’d learned.
My earliest memory was of walking through the street in the Dip with my mother and seeing a brawl spill from a pub.
I’d gotten into my first fight when I was four.
Theo and I practiced punching each other just to make the other scream.
I’d joined the guard hoping to wield a sword, to fight monsters.
Peace had led to Feyreign’s weakness and subjugation.
Carys had brought magic back to the world.
I had survived three trials to become a queen.
I had stood in dragon’s flames to hold this dagger.
And now Liora was asking me to set it aside after all this, to set aside blood and power and take up sweet rolls and wine, to lounge bent-backed in a throne.
Strange. Almost ridiculous.
And yet another part of me warmed to the idea. Eury who craved only her mother’s smile. Eury who longed to sit at the kitchen table and taste her mother’s wheaten bread. Eury, who lay in her mother’s arms and fell asleep to fingers stroking her hair.
That Eury still lived in me, in the softest, deepest-down part of my mind. She didn’t want to fight the monsters—she wanted never again to think of them. To live with her mother forever in the light.
Liora was offering forever.
Did I have to kill in order to break the wheel, to end the trials? Perhaps the dagger didn’t have to draw blood. You may use it three times, and then— I didn’t want to find out the next part. Even the promise of the dagger could be enough to change a kingdom.
And with a single glance at its edge, Liora had offered to ally with me.
In exchange for a crown, I had offered the spiritstag one thing. A daughter of scorn didn’t break her vows.
“The spiritstag wants what you want,” I said. “To break the wheel. So do I.”
Liora’s mouth curved, not quite a smile. Her hand came out, reaching for mine across the divide. “Then it is god-ordained.”