Chapter 57 #2
Her father, Rhiannon’s spymaster. What a fraught role; the hairs raised on my arms. But I wouldn’t dare stop her, because here it was, Faun’s story.
The one I’d caught the edges of over time, but every time it had been tugged away from me.
I wondered if she’d ever have told it to me if she hadn’t lost her arm and nearly her life.
“I hated it,” she said. “My father dead by her hand. An eternal punishment for a crime I hadn’t even committed. It put a bitterness in me I didn’t know was possible, and every time I saw her pass by, that bitterness deepened.”
I slid my fingers over the duvet and touched her wrist. She jerked it away.
Her face turned toward me, eyes big and wet. “I thought I’d lost everything. Now I’d give anything to be on my knees and both hands again, just to know the feel of it.”
I couldn’t presume to understand the pain in her eyes—not the exact shape of it. But I did understand some part of it. The feeling of powerlessness. Of grief. Of the redefinition of a body you thought you understood.
And just as I had known the day I’d met her, I recognized that she and I were kin. I loved Dorian, and he was my heart, but Faun was my sister.
I moved from my chair to the edge of her bed. This time, I gripped her hand tightly with both of mine. “Tomorrow, I’m meeting with my inner court. We’re appointing a spymaster, and I need your voice in the room.”
Her eyes rolled, and the tears fell down her cheeks. Quick, angry. “Your inner court. Convening with the dead, are we?”
She wanted me mad—as mad as she felt. “You’re not dead.”
“Oh, fuck off.” She tried to jerk her hand away. I held on. “Who wants a second-in-command with one arm? Maeronyx will laugh.”
“So let her laugh in her sad, echoing castle. She dare not in my presence.”
Her eyebrows lowered. “You can’t be serious. I lost my good arm, Eury. I can’t even hold a fork right.”
“So learn to feed yourself with the other arm. It’s not your hand I need, Faun.”
Her face contorted; her cheeks reddened. The grief had broken through, sudden and whole. Her fingers squeezed mine. “Why are you fluffing my pillows? I tried to kill you.”
Faun with a shell like iron. Faun with a mess of emotions on the inside.
Yes, we were sisters. Perhaps our lineages were entwined through time, and at some point a Seelie had loved an Unseelie. But our natures remained, and the knowledge that we were more alike than unalike.
“I tried to kill you, too.” My lip curled. “You can try again, if you like. Any time.”
She let out a one-note laugh. “I would have defeated you in that cave if the fucking Wild Hunt hadn’t come.”
“You’re absolutely wrong about that.”
Her nails dug into my hand. I welcomed it. “We always do remember things how we like them to be, don’t we?”
“Some things.”
Her gaze traveled over my scalp. “Tell me what happened to your hair.”
I sat back, didn’t let go of her hand.
“You don’t want to,” she said. “Which means you’ll arrange my pillows and cut my butter and hold my hand, but you won’t tell me important truths.”
I couldn’t tell her. Only Dorian had access to the softest, most delicate parts of me.
“And the dagger.” Her fingers tightened on mine. “You swore to me you’d never use it again.”
The words came quick, easy: “I won’t.” They were the truth here and now. I had no intention of using it.
Her eyes traveled between mine, narrowed.
“I swear it, Faun.”
She leaned off her pillows, and the sight of her nearing was like the shadow of my mother looming when I’d stolen from Jo the busybody’s windowsill. “If you break that promise, you’ll lose me. Forever.”
A flame lit in my chest. Hot, fast, the kind of anger that rises in the face of judgment and the impossibility of changing someone’s mind. For all our likeness, our trust still remained a thin, breakable band.
My chin hardened. “I understand.”
She remained a second more like that—large, above me—then slumped back. The effect was gone, and we were Faun and Eurydice again.
“I’ll need something to call you by when I travel to Maeronyx’s court.” When my eyebrows pulled together, she said, “It’s a very important part of the second’s role, you know. We travel to the other courts and make a great spectacle of how our queen is the most fearsome to ever live.”
I stifled a snort. “I didn’t understand the extent of your sacrifice when you accepted the job.” A pause. “Is it really necessary at this point?”
“More than ever. Maeronyx has a few titles—the Black Frost, the Bone-Eater. But the one every fae knows—Seelie or Unseelie—is the Architect of the Endless Night. Do you know why they call her that?”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Maeronyx is a vindictive creature. Her grudges are as indelible as tattoos. Rhiannon became queen because the queen before her treated Maeronyx like a whelpling at her own dining table. She waited decades, nurtured her grudge like a baby, and then at the Festival of the Last Light, she trapped that queen inside a mirror-way.”
I reeled. “You mean to say…”
“Yes, I mean to say that Rhiannon’s predecessor is still alive. Broken, most likely, but alive somewhere in the endless night of a mirror.” Her jaw ticked. “Titles are weapons, Eurydice.”
Yes. Invisible, intangible, but no less potent than blades.
Faun’s eyes narrowed on me. Her lips pulled to the side—then curled upward. “Of course. It’s obvious.”
“Oh?”
She let go of my hand, straightened her fingers. Carved a quick line through the air, a leftward swipe as though underlining the word. “The Courtbreaker.”