Chapter 11
SAPHIRA
Lorien angled the silver knife towards me, tilting it close to my face. It gleamed bright and sharp, and my breaths came faster, my heart thundering as I realised he would do it. I reared back, into the males who caged me, snarling and snapping fangs at the blade.
He would do it, and I doubted anyone would punish him for it.
They hadn’t punished him for murdering other heirs after all.
I would be just another dead heir, killed in the fight for the crown of the Summer Court.
A crown I didn’t want.
But Lorien didn’t know that.
All he could see when he looked at me was an obstacle in his path—someone who stood between him and the power he felt he deserved as a highborn—as a male.
He brought the knife to my clammy forehead.
My breaths blasted back at me from his chest as he crowded me and seized hold of my face with his free hand, holding me in place as I frantically struggled against the hold of his thugs and snarled at him.
“What are you doing?” Meiryn casually leaned against the doorframe, her pale eyebrows pinned high on her forehead.
Lorien grinned at her, easing back a few inches. “I am going to find out whether cutting all her hair off will leave her wolf just as bald.”
She half-laughed, half-scoffed at him, earning herself a black look. “Don’t be so stupid. If it did, surely Saphira would be covered in hair in her human form? Her arms are not bare when she shifts, yet they are bare now.”
She strolled into the room, folding her arms across her chest, and stopped beside the males holding me, an expectant air about her when they looked at her. When they didn’t do as she wanted, she turned a dark look on Lorien.
“I suggest you have your bodyguards remove their hands from Saphira. Sylvan has requested our presence in the grand courtyard and I doubt Uncle will be happy if one of us is missing.”
Lorien huffed, his jaw flexing as he twisted his blade, looking as if he was debating going through with it anyway, and then he shoved me backwards, into his men, and released me.
He sheathed the small blade in one hard motion, his eyes never straying from mine, and the look he gave me warned that this wasn’t over.
I waited for him to storm out of the library with his friends in tow and move beyond the sphere of my senses before I sagged into the wooden chair and blew out the breath I had been holding.
“Thank you.” I flicked a look up at Meiryn as she remained at my side, her steely gaze locked on the door, as if she didn’t trust that Lorien was really gone. “You said Sylvan is our uncle?”
I picked up my book with trembling hands, pausing to look at them, willing them to be steady again. As far as first encounters with my brother had gone, it had been about as badly as I had anticipated, but it had still shaken me. Meiryn was right and I needed to be on my guard at all times.
The next time I might not be so fortunate.
“Not technically our uncle. He is our father’s cousin, but the two of them were very close and grew up together, and when I arrived Sylvan asked that I call him uncle, since Sylas was like a brother to him.”
“We should go see what he wants.” I set the book down on my pile, glad to see my hands had stopped trembling, and went back to my notes to scribble down what Meiryn had said.
Sylvan was Sylas’s cousin, and that made him, well I wasn’t sure what that made him to us.
Some sort of cousin, I thought. But he wanted us to view him as an uncle, and he had been very close to Sylas.
I noted all of that down, together with a scrawled task to find out more about my new family tree.
She shrugged and rested her backside against the edge of the table, her arms opening and hands coming to rest beside her hips, brushing the gold fabric of her dress.
“Sylvan doesn’t want us for anything. I just said whatever came into my head to get rid of Lorien.
If you let him, he would follow Sylvan around like a little puppy, eager for its master to notice him. ”
I filed that away too.
Together with how Lorien had looked when Sylvan had praised me at the presentation, telling me I would make a wonderful queen.
“Well, thanks for the save anyway.” I gathered my notes, hugging them to my chest.
“It was nothing.” She waved me away, her bright blue eyes warm and filled with light that reminded me painfully of Everlee.
I hoped my friend was coping with the things she had been through. She had looked so hollowed out when Malachi had walked out of that building with her in his arms, so distant from us all as she had clung to him. I wanted to hug her so badly. I wanted to see her smile again. Laugh again.
I would in time.
I just needed to get through this, and then I would help her through her trauma. I would do whatever it took to bring her back to us.
Meiryn angled her face towards the huge windows at the far end of the library. “You know… I was about to head into the lower city when I heard Lorien threatening you. Would you like to see it?”
I nodded, eagerly taking her up on her offer, and not only because I wanted to see what was beyond the high walls that separated the highborn from the rest of the castle town. I wanted to learn more about Meiryn too, and discover whether I could trust her.
Whether that feeling in my gut was right and she could be another ally.
I stuffed my notes into the pocket in my dress, leaving my pen with my books, and followed her from the room.
Guards joined us at the ground floor, falling silent and standing to attention when they spotted us sweeping down the stone staircase.
They fell into step around twenty feet behind us, hands resting on the hilts of their fine swords.
I had shadows again. Bully.
Several finely dressed males and females greeted us and I dipped my head to all of them.
The courtyard of the castle was a rather functional affair, with a large expanse of pale flagstones and only a few trees and planters that surrounded a long rectangular pond in the centre of it.
Cool air drifted from that direction, tempering the feel of the sun as it beat down on my back.
If it was a sun. This realm had a moon that matched the one back in Canada, so I imagined the source of all this blinding light was a sun that mirrored the one in the mortal realm.
The wall that separated the castle from the garden loomed ahead of me, the great wooden gates that filled the enormous arch open to all today. They had been closed yesterday, and I had noticed a lot fewer people in the area.
“Sylvan only allows visitors into the castle on certain days. For the most part, he keeps it closed off and only the elite or the courtiers can petition to be allowed to enter.” Meiryn waved a finger at the buildings at the far end of the garden and the ring of beautiful homes I had studied from my terrace.
“I thought highborn lived there.” I frowned at them and then at Meiryn.
She went to shake her head and then nodded. “They do. But only certain highborn are allowed to reside in the vicinity of the castle.”
“Only the elite.” I didn’t make that a question. The division between the people of this court and the nobles was even more dramatic than I had thought. “Let me guess, Lorien was born there.”
Meiryn smiled.
It was answer enough for me.
“Has he always been an insufferable asshole?” I didn’t mask the contempt I felt for him, but I wasn’t sure the translator spell would know how to make my cuss word for him convey the right meaning in fae.
Judging by how her smile widened, it did a fine job of it.
“I would not let him hear you speak of him like that.” She looped her arm around mine, picking up the pace. “Come, let us hurry. I want to be back in time for dinner.”
The way she glanced over her shoulder at the guards that trailed behind us left me feeling it was more like she wanted to give them the slip, or at the very least escape this castle.
Or was it the people she was running from?
The highborn milled around the expansive garden today, all of them bowing or curtseying when they saw us, and then whispering to each other in our wake.
My gaze flitted between them, mind swirling with what Meiryn had said. Which were elite and which were courtiers, and what was the difference? If I asked her that, would I look as stupid as I felt, as uneducated about courts as Lorien had believed me to be?
I held my tongue, refusing to risk it, because one highborn laughing at me today was enough for me.
Although.
I looked at Meiryn again.
What Lorien had said ringing in my mind.
“What?” She touched her hair, her face, her blue eyes that were a mirror of mine widening in horror. “Do I have something on my face?”
“No.” I shook my head. “I was just thinking about something Lorien said.”
“Goddess, don’t give him any of your time. He doesn’t deserve it.” She chuckled, her smile returning and growing wicked.
She liked speaking openly about him, and I supposed that she could without feeling in danger. She was younger than him. No threat to what he wanted most in this world—the throne. She had survived the three years Lorien had been here, and I doubted she had held her tongue in all that time.
“Are you… this might sound terribly rude.” I grimaced and debated not bringing it up, but then pushed the words out. “Are you lowborn?”
“Yes.” No hesitation. No shame. Just that brilliant smile. She sighed. “Lorien loves to bring it up at every opportunity. Not only am I female, but I’m lowborn. How terrible I am. Of course, I’m sure you’ve been subjected to his rather antiquated opinion of our gender and class by now.”
“He made it wonderfully clear that I’m far beneath him.” I rolled my eyes for effect and then grinned at her. “Of course, I made it wonderfully clear that I didn’t care.”
“Good.” Meiryn patted my arm and then rolled her eyes as she surveyed the route ahead of us. “Goddess, look at them all.”
I tore my gaze from her, curious what she had seen.
We were much closer to the highborn district than I had realised.