Chapter Eighteen
By the time Ina and Karai reached the marsh court again, the light had gone softer and lower, the late afternoon turning the reed waters bronze. They landed well short of the main approach.
“It would be better if we were not seen,” Ina said slowly.
Karai gave her a look. “That would be easier if either of us had a useful creature form. Like a snake.”
Ina glanced at his small, satisfied smirk at being right about the form she should have chosen for the ball, and even in the face of danger and murder, had to laugh inwardly. Though him, she graced with only a roll of her eyes.
A heron would draw immediate attention. A half-blind mole would be even less practical.
Neither offered much in the way of stealth in a palace full of marsh fairies with eyes in good working order.
So they kept their own shapes, pulled their cloaks close, and went in on foot through a lesser side entrance used more often by servants and quiet guests than by queens and princes.
They did what they could. Stayed near the walls. Chose shadow where the passage allowed it. Kept their heads down and their pace neither hurried nor slow. They got almost as far as the ballroom wing before fortune betrayed them in the shape of Shayna.
She came around the corner with a tray in one hand, saw them, and let out a delighted squeal that bounced off the walls before either of them could stop her.
“Your Majesty! Prince Karai!”
Ina closed her eyes briefly.
Shayna, who plainly took their presence as a charming surprise and not the beginning of disaster, hurried toward them. “Come in, come in. They’re all inside.”
Before either of them could invent a better plan, she had swept them along through the carved doors and into the evening gathering.
It was not the grand ballroom arrangement of the previous night.
The marsh court had softened things for the quieter festivities, turning the throne room into something more intimate.
Rugs layered across the polished floor. Low chairs and cushions were arranged in conversational circles.
Small hookahs sent pale streams of smoke curling toward the ceiling.
The light came from dozens of low lamps and hanging lanterns, so that the whole room glowed gold and green against the dark wood.
A dozen noble lords and ladies were present, no crowd, only a close evening company.
Lugomir sat in one of the larger chairs beside Jasenka, not exactly enthroned, but central enough that no one could forget who the room belonged to.
At Jasenka’s side sat Zuri. Eogan sat a little away, his face permanently etched with irritation, as though he did not appreciate the continued frivolity when Matilde or some other danger could be lurking so close.
Shayna, still pleased with herself, crossed the room and resumed her place beside Jasenka, excitedly announcing something.
The noble lords and ladies looked up.
Then Zuri saw Karai.
The room, for Ina, narrowed to that one exchange.
Karai stopped where he was.
Zuri’s violet eyes met his indigo ones, and for an instant they did look alike in some deep and unnerving way, as though both had been cut from the same dark jewel and polished by different hands into different forms.
Ina saw too much pass through Karai’s face too quickly. Hurt first. Then fear. Then anger. And under all of it, some softer thing she could not fully name. Not longing. Something more worn than that. Pity, perhaps. Or grief that had gone old enough to harden at the edges.
Zuri’s face was easier to read.
She smiled.
Slowly.
The smile grew with dreadful calm, and the more it grew, the crueler it became.
There was no confusion in it. No uncertainty.
She knew him. She had been waiting for the moment he would know her.
For the moment he would hear her true name and see her true face and feel the deathly fear of it lying in the open, unhidden.
And whatever lay between them, she hated him enough to enjoy this.
She stood up.
In doing so she upset one of the little tables at her elbow. A hookah tipped. Coals spilled and rolled red across the rug.
Jasenka looked up sharply. “Zuri, what are you doing – ”
Then she stopped.
She saw what Ina had already seen. Zuri’s face. Karai’s stillness. The line of tension that ran between them before a word had been spoken. Her eyes moved from one to the other and widened.
“A curse, Karai,” Zuri whispered. Then, quick as lightning, she darted sideways.
She flung a ball of flame at Karai in the same instant.
He shoved Ina to the ground and blocked it without seeming to think, one hand lifting, the fire splitting around a shield of his own magic and bursting harmlessly into the air.
In the same motion he sent metal and fire back at her in a streak so fast it looked less like a spell than like the floor itself had cracked at Zuri’s feet.
Ina had seen him fight in the cavern. Seen him angry. Seen him dangerous.
This was something else.
He moved with a speed she had not thought possible, as though the years between this moment and the last time he had faced Zuri had been waiting only to be burned away.
Zuri matched him. She was no slower. No weaker.
Their magic collided in bursts of light so bright they left afterimages in Ina’s eyes where she lay sprawled on the floor.
Something about the way Karai threw his magic, though, made Ina wonder whether he was aiming exactly at Zuri, or just around her.
Chairs overturned. A marsh noble shouted. Someone screamed. Smoke from the fallen hookah thickened as another table went over under the force of the magic.
Then the room changed.
Not truly. Ina knew that and did not know it.
One instant she was getting back on her feet in the marsh throne room amid rugs and lanterns and scattering courtiers.
The next the walls were gone, replaced by a forest thick with wet green leaves.
Then the forest became a jungle. Then a black prison chamber with chains bolted to the walls.
Then something else again, shifting too quickly for the eye to hold.
Mirage magic.
Zuri was breaking the room apart in every mind present, making vision useless.
Ina shut her eyes.
Breathe, she thought. Hear. Smell. Feel the floor.
Karai had done it blinded. She could do it with her eyes closed for a few breaths.
And yet, without meaning to, she opened them again.
Now they stood in a garden. One she knew.
She recognized the paths, the low flowering shrubs, the carved stone bench near the pond. It was the garden in the burrow court palace, rendered with such force that it took her half a second to remember the hookah smoke in her lungs and the marsh rug under her feet.
Across from her, Karai was suddenly on one bent knee, his hand braced against it, the other hand braced against the ground that he looked at, trying hard not to look up at the shape before him.
Because before him stood Ina.
Not herself.
Another Ina.
Zuri had taken her shape.
The false Ina was perfect enough to unsettle the bones.
The same hair, the same green eyes, the same mouth.
Even standing in her own body, Ina nearly believed what she saw.
That was the true horror of it. The mirage did not merely paint over sight.
It persuaded the mind to kneel before the lie and call it truth.
She understood then why this magic had ruined Karai once.
The false Ina spoke in a low sweet voice that was exactly hers and not hers at all. “You don’t want to hurt me, my sweet Karai. You love me.”
Karai still did not look up, but the words came out of his mouth as if against his will. “I would never hurt you,” he murmured. “I love you.”
Ina felt anger rise in her so fast it left no room for anything else.
Not jealousy. Not fear. Only anger, so pure and so hot it burned in her chest.
How dare she.
The words rang clear and true in her mind, the first inkling of that fury resonating through her skull.
Months had passed since she had last lost control this way. Since glass had shattered under the force of her temper. Since rage had broken loose in her magic and run where it wanted. She had held herself steady for so long that part of her had begun to believe the destruction lived behind her.
Now it returned as though it had never left.
How dare she take my shape.
The anger was not wild in the same way as before. It was darker, more pointed. She did not want to smash the room apart. She wanted to break this lie.
How dare she trick Karai.
She dropped to her knees and pressed both hands to the floor.
Her green eyes went dark.
The anger moved through her like deep ground-rumble, exploding outward in a fierce controlled burst. Her magic struck Zuri’s illusion and cracked it.
The false garden shattered into facets. Little bright pieces, sharp as diamond, hanging in the air for a breath before they vanished.
The marsh throne room came back all at once.
Rugs. Lanterns. Fallen chairs. Nobles pressed against the walls in panic.
Jasenka standing white-faced by Lugomir.
Zuri in her own shape again. On her neck was the diamond necklace, missing two of the large diamonds on either side of the one containing Lugomir’s heart.
Zuri looked at Ina then, and for the first time there was surprise in her face.
Only for a moment.
Then she laughed, and her face turned cruel again. Vengeance, thought Ina, the only word her mind had enough time to come up with before the next moment passed.
Karai was still down on one knee.
He moved quickly. Zuri moved faster.
She struck him with a blast of magic full in the chest, and though he put up a shield to block the blow from going clear through him, it sent him flying backward across the room.
He hit the floor hard enough to slide. Before anyone could close the distance, Zuri wheeled and fled, vanishing from the throne room in a streak of speed and light too fast for the eye to follow.
“Karai!” Ina screamed and ran to him.
Derran appeared beside her almost in the same instant, breathless from flight, one hand already reaching down. He must have come in on the very heels of the fight, drawn by the servant’s message and the sound of disaster. There was no time to ask.
“I’ve got him,” he said.
Karai lay on the floor, broken and bleeding heavily from the chest. His eyes were closed, face drained of any color. His breathing was shallow enough that Ina nearly missed it.
Derran put both hands over the wound. Warm yellow light poured from them, steady and clear, unlike the harsher flashes of battle magic. Healing magic. The torn flesh drew together beneath his hands. The blood slowed. Stopped. The wound sealed.
When it was done, Derran sat back. Karai’s chest was whole again. But his eyes remained shut, where she had expected them to open, as she had always seen and done in the past after the healing magic had done its work.
Ina looked at Derran. “Is he... healed?”
Derran glanced at her, and there was worry in his face she had not wanted to see.
“He is healed.” The words came haltingly, unsure. “But… if he was already in death’s arms, I… I cannot bring him back. There’s no coming back.”
Ina gasped. She had not understood that before. Not really. Healing closed wounds. Restored flesh. Bound life where life still held. But if a fairy had already crossed beyond that invisible line, no amount of golden light would pull them back.
Death, then, remained death.
Ina dropped to the floor next to Karai, a small anguished sob leaving her lips. She picked up his limp hand and held it tightly, finding the barest hint of a pulse.
The room had gone quiet around them. Even the frightened nobles had fallen still. Jasenka stood with one hand over her mouth. Lugomir had moved in front of her without seeming to notice he had done so.
Then Karai made the smallest movement.
His fingers twitched, tightening around Ina’s hand. His mouth shifted. His eyes opened a sliver.
He looked at Derran and said, with a voice rough as stone dragged over stone, “You wish.”
Derran could not help smiling.
Ina sobbed once more, then laughed, and the sound came broken with relief.
Karai pushed himself up on one elbow, wincing now that feeling had clearly returned along with life. “We need to go after her.”
Ina put a hand flat against his chest and pushed him gently back. “You need to rest. You’ll be no use to us if you lose consciousness mid-air.”
He looked ready to argue, to scoff about how the rule of rest after being healed applied to every fairy in the kingdom except the burrow court prince.
She did not give him the chance. “Derran and I will go after her.”
Karai’s gaze moved from her to Derran and back again. She saw the reluctance in him and pretended not to understand it came with possessiveness. Derran, wisely, stayed silent instead of making some quip, even when Karai’s eyes met his again.
He had no argument against it. They all knew it.
Whatever he searched for between them satisfied him just enough, and his shoulders eased. At last he nodded his assent. “Be careful. Her power is in her sight and yours.”