Chapter Seven #2
She crossed the bridge and the lantern-lit approach in proper heron dignity, or something close enough to it that no one laughed. It was only when she reached the place before Lugomir and Jasenka and began the change back that she remembered, too late, the tiara.
It had stayed exactly where it had been. On top of her heron head, looking ridiculously small against the large form, towering over the fairies.
By the time she stood again in her own skin, dressed correctly and balanced on proper legs, the gold crown of pink sapphires sat rather magnificently in her hair,
though she knew very well it had spent the last stretch of her entrance perched on the skull of a marsh bird in a manner no one could possibly call traditional.
There was a beat of silence, then resounding applause.
Ina lifted her chin as if every part of it had been planned.
“Your Highnesses,” she said to Lugomir and Jasenka.
Lugomir bowed with perfect gravity, though his wife’s mouth had already begun to betray her. “Your Majesty,” he said.
Ina turned slightly, letting her gaze skim over the assembly, and caught Karai’s eye.
He had seen it. Of course he had. He stood two paces behind the others, hands folded, face composed, but a small smile had escaped him anyway, brief and genuine. It vanished quickly, yet not before she saw it.
That helped give her courage.
Then the ceremony moved on. Greetings were exchanged. Formal blessings were spoken. Musicians struck the first true notes of the evening’s dance. Lugomir offered Ina his arm, and she took it.
He was a better dancer than she had expected.
Not elegant in Derran’s fashion, but solid and measured, exactly the kind of partner a public ball required.
Jasenka, for her part, stepped out with Derran.
Karai found himself paired with a marsh lady in a gown the color of deep water, who seemed less than pleased by the arrangement, though not at all frightened by the reputation of the mysterious burrow court prince.
Ina did not stumble. That was the first relief.
Lugomir’s lead was clear, and she found the pattern quickly – turn, cross, pause, open, return.
The music moved slower than the sky court favored, but with a heavier undertow to it, a sense of old custom built into every measure.
Around them, partners turned under lantern light and the gathered courts watched with the attentive politeness of people who fully intended to discuss everyone’s performance later.
Ina did well. Better than well. By the second spin she had begun to enjoy herself.
Then the line shifted. Partners turned. She found Derran across the set for a passing instant, Jasenka at his side, his face beaming with the movement of it.
And beyond him, on Karai’s arm, she saw the other woman clearly.
The breath left her.
Derran saw it in the same instant. His eyes cut from the woman to Ina at once.
The marsh fairy who had stolen her from her windowsill.
The one who had laughed while she had struggled to break free. The one who had carried her into the marsh court’s first trap, and its second one too, and handed her into Aikento’s reach as calmly as if delivering a parcel. The one who had dragged her into a prison room and locked the door.
The dance carried on because it had to. Ina took the next steps on memory alone. Lugomir said something she did not catch. Her skin had gone cold under Emmie’s gown, and her hand in his felt suddenly too small, as if she had gone back to being weak prey in a hostile court.
When the measure ended, the dancers separated, and the lady came closer to them.
Lugomir, unaware of any trouble, said, “Your Majesty, may I present Achlys, one of our most trusted advisors.”
Achlys bowed.
“I remember,” muttered Ina before she could soften it.
The woman’s head was lowered, but in that brief angle before she lifted it again, Ina saw the expression slip. It was not open hatred. Achlys had too much control for that. It was smaller and meaner, the first curl of a sneer, quickly mastered.
Then she looked up with all courtesy restored.
“Your Majesty,” she said, in that sing-songy voice that made Ina’s skin prickle.
She made herself nod.
If Achlys was a trusted advisor to the marsh court, then reason said she must now be loyal to Lugomir and Jasenka, as she had once been to its prior prince. Aikento was dead. The court had turned. The old order had broken. No one wanted to imprison her and violate her.
All of that was true.
None of it kept the prickles off her skin.
For the rest of the evening Ina kept Achlys in sight whenever she could.
It was not difficult. The woman moved in and out of conversation along the edge of the hall, too poised to attract notice, too well placed to be dismissed as a lesser courtier.
Once she spoke quietly to a steward. Once to a pair of marsh elders.
Once to Jasenka herself, who listened and nodded, then rolled her eyes at Lugomir when he tried to interject. Nothing in any of it looked wrong.
Still Ina watched.
By the time the first few minutes of her staring passed, Karai had already noticed.
He came to her during a change in the music, when the hall had loosened into conversation and wine had begun to circulate more freely. “My queen.” He interlocked his fingers with hers, hiding the motion between them so watchful eyes could not scandalize it, voice soft as ever. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
He glanced toward Achlys without even needing to follow her eyes, and gently tightened his hand around hers. “The truth this time, Ina.”
She couldn’t bring herself to answer. Derran joined them a moment later, taking one look at Ina’s face and then at the woman across the room.
Karai’s expression became enlightened. “You both know her.”
Ina let out a breath she had not realized she was holding. “Yes.”
Derran answered further because she did not seem inclined to. His voice stayed level, but the air around the three of them had become thin.
“She was one of the marsh fairies who took Ina from her home before I could bring her safely to…”
he hesitated a beat, as if deciding not to mention the sky court, and settled instead on, “to the fairy kingdom. Aikento’s advisor, who seized her first. She brought her to him as a gift. He imprisoned her. Then he…”
He paused a moment, taking a breath at the memory of deep gashes across her back. “He whipped her viciously.”
Karai stared at him.
Derran went on. “I found her afterward. Healed her. Got her out.” He shook his head slightly, a bitterness stirring in him. “I only wish I’d gotten to her sooner.”
He said it plainly, without drama. That almost made the memory worse.
Karai’s face did not change much, but what little it did was enough to show the immediate fury in him.
He already knew the broad shape of Ina’s past with the marsh court.
He knew Aikento had imprisoned her, twice.
He knew enough of the former prince’s intent, at least the second time, to hate his name.
What he had not known, Ina realized now, was the beginning of it.
The windowsill. The kidnapping. The lashing.
Derran carrying her out of that first prison before the later horrors had fully unfolded.
She had not mentioned that part of it in much detail, because it had seemed less important, and because she had wanted even less to relive it through retelling.
Karai looked from Derran to Ina and then back again. Something settled in his expression when the flash of anger subsided. Not surprise, exactly. More the arrival of a missing piece into its rightful place. He knew Ina loved Derran. He had not known how fiercely Derran deserved that love.
He reached out and clasped Derran once on the shoulder. It was brief. Firm. Entirely wordless. Derran met his eyes and, for once, made no joke at all.
Ina watched them both and felt a queer tightness in her throat that had nothing to do with fear.
The two men had spent long enough recently circling one another in reluctant allyship, rivalry, patience, irritation, and unwilling admiration that even this small act seemed larger than it ought to have been, and the emotion of it instantly overwhelmed her.
Across the hall, Achlys raised her cup to some passing noble and smiled as though she had never carried violence in her hands.
Ina did not trust that smile.
She doubted she ever would.