Chapter Fourteen
We walk into a small private library, a contrast to the grandeur I had expected.
Leather chairs cluster around twin stone fireplaces that flank the room.
A round table stands in the center, a cloth draped over its top.
Rows and rows of books are crammed into shelves that run along the walls.
I manage my basic letters and have always been jealous when Kassandra gets lost for hours in dense, scratched-up novels.
“Tonight, we’ll just need to set the table for two.” Lila crosses the room to the bookshelf on the opposite wall and takes out plates from cabinets built above the shelves.
“Who’s dining tonight?”
“The king and the advisor. You’ll feel them coming.”
I retrieve silverware, crystal cups, and napkins, stunned at their weight and richness of details. The plates are not glass, nor the napkins cotton as they are in the House of Illusion.
“What is this material?” I ask, centering a plate.
“Porcelain. It’s made of a white clay that can be found in the Amyrian Desert.”
I pause. The kingdom of Amyria occupies an expansive valley between two mountain ranges, and the desert skirts around it all. My gaze drops to the plates.
“Who collects the clay?” I ask. “And makes the plates?”
Lila doesn’t look up from the serving tray she is setting up by the servants’ entrance, placing a water pitcher and wine bottle down. “I can ask the king.”
“No—I mean, I was only curious.”
Lila shrugs. “He speaks to the faeries.”
“But…he’s the king.”
“He was like that even as a prince. An older faerie once told me it’s because his mother was like that. Always asking us our names and opinions.” Lila pauses. “But sometimes, when he’s between fae females and feeling bored, he flirts. He is a male in power, after all.”
Dread curls in my stomach. “I understand.”
“It is more a curiosity to him than a true desire, I think. He usually finds a new fae quickly after that.”
A creeping, sickly sensation worms through my veins. It would be easy for the king to overcome me, and the only thing stopping him is a flimsy conscience and attention span.
I need to learn how to fight in every way possible.
The thought pops into my mind before I can stop it, my hands still on the dishware.
My muscles, though sore from working out last night, are already honed from many years of physical labor.
But it’s more than that. The fae males have the physical and magical advantages. What do I have?
Two blood oaths and riddles to get around them.
A rotting genius looking for a challenge.
If I’ve learned anything from my short stint as a Night Crest in Illusion, it is that even the most tightly wound secrets unspool in the dark.
Information, and a way to carry it to the light, is power.
I will free Benji. But perhaps I can work to free more than just him.
For the first time, I regret not asking the names of the faeries I have fed.
I regret not learning my former roommates’ names.
There was so little I asked my mother when she was still here, and now I feel the disrespect of that sharply.
She said to keep my head down and my genius in check—but she also butchered her julienning so that I might have more scraps to eat.
After her death, I felt that stealing fae food could somehow continue her legacy.
I focused so much on the thrill of the thieving, I forgot why my mother broke rules in the first place: to give.
To give an advantage to me, her child, in any way she could.
Jeremee said to do less alone, and for the thousandth time, he was right.
I need a network. A network of peers.
A bookcase swings forward, and King Maxian steps through the concealed door, quickly shutting it behind him. An expansive muscled chest peeks out from beneath the undone laces of his tunic. His tousled dark-honey hair seems damp. He seems…relaxed, more so than he did with Kassandra.
I compose myself, falling beside Lila as she backs from the table.
“The table is ready whenever you are, Your Magnificence.”
“Thank you, Lila. And you as well, Avery.”
My name on the king’s lips jars me.
“Would you like to begin with wine this evening? Or a specialty drink?” she asks.
“I would love a Lila specialty. Have you named it yet?”
“I’m thinking of calling it Lavender’s Breath.”
“Brilliant.” The king smiles. Then he pulls out his own chair and sits down.
How is this the same male who allowed the order that—
I stop the thought before it unravels me. Lila turns to the serving table, opposite the wall from which the king entered. I follow her to the cutting board, the bowls of sliced lemons and limes, lavender flowers, a carafe of bubbling water.
“Your mouth is open,” she whispers, and I close it. She hands me the water pitcher. “Serve this while I make his drink, please.”
“What exactly is it?”
“Liquor mixed with lemon, lavender, and sparkling water.”
“Where did you learn this?”
“I invented it.” She turns to me. “Your mouth is open again.”
I close it once more.
Approaching the table, I catch the king’s scent of soap and vanilla and male. Of all my expectations, I never thought he’d wear body oil. As I pour him a glass, I feel those eyes slide to me once more.
“You were shocked by my interaction with Lila,” he says, his voice warm and smooth like honeyed tea. Nodding, I circle the table to fill the other glass. He clears his throat. “You may answer.”
“I’m still learning the rules of decorum for House Reign, my king,” I say. “The House of Illusion is a great teacher.”
“But a strict one.”
I bow my head, heart pounding in my ears. If I confirm, he may find it disloyal. If I disagree, I am opposing the king of this land. It’s a verbal trap; one I refuse to step into. So I remain quiet as I pull the letter from my pocket and hand it to him.
“From my lady.”
The king raises his hand, and despite myself, I wince. He looks at me once more, lips twitching. “I’m going to lace a letter opener from my private office to here. No harm will come to you.”
He waits for my nod, then waves his fingers.
A golden letter opener appears in his palm.
He slits the envelope and scans the parchment before slipping it into his own pocket.
The opener disappears, and he tilts his head.
“You agree that the House of Illusion is strict despite their…alluring nature?”
“I—” My face heats. “I-I’m unsure.”
“You may answer truthfully. In my House, you can make your choices within reason, but you must own them.”
Lila places a cloudy pale drink beside his hand. He brings it to his lips and sips, attention never leaving me.
You must own them. My knees had hit the floor so forcibly that night.
King Maxian leans back in his chair. “Tell me your thoughts.”
Lila moves around the table, giving a small nod. Yet her optimism may only reflect years of building their precarious nighttime intimacy, like Briar with Kassandra.
Do not insult him with your slowness, Kassandra said. But she also said, He thinks himself an intellectual. Perhaps I need to pose it as a question that only he can answer.
“You say in the House of Reign that we must own our choices. Yet the chief ability of Reign fae is control over others and our world. I feel I may be missing how those two are not contradictory.”
The king’s eyes brighten. He leans forward, and despite my best efforts, my body shivers with the rush of power, a thrumming in my very core.
“You find it ironic,” he muses.
“I find it interesting, my king.”
“Control is the most dangerous power to possess. It must only be used as a last resort—an ugly necessity.” He swallows his drink, staring at the table.
“I was worried about a brawl breaking out on my very first day as king. Not only could that have harmed everyone in the room, but it would have shaken the confidence of the most powerful families in Amyria. That can’t happen.
” He examines his glass, finger tapping on the table.
“Uncertain nobles are scheming ones. That leads to fae and faeries dying.” He glances up. “Do you know of the Dark Rebellion?”
The grout was pink.
It was blood that had soaked into the floors during the Dark Rebellion.
“House of Death lost faith in Reign. Felt we had become too soft—and so they staged an uprising. The royal palace was a bloodbath for months,” he says.
A bloodbath. It smells like a bloodbath. It smells like fear.
“Until one day, all that remained were corpses and rubble and a few members of each House. It’s why the palace was rebuilt as a labyrinth. It’s why all the Houses have their own area of the maze, except for Death,” he says.
“Death accepted their banishment to the borderlands,” I respond.
“And why only one halfling representative is allowed in court.” King Maxian grimaces.
“On coronation day, I became…alarmed. That history was top of mind. Training is one thing. Doing it is something else. You are still learning the decorum of Reign, and I am still learning to be king. We have both taken important oaths.”
Why would he show such vulnerability? Why would he think I care when he killed my best friend? Lila prepares another drink, humming. Surely this is an Illusion. This can’t be real.
“Speaking of Death…” Maxian finishes his drink and stands. In a moment, he transforms from that handsome stranger in a tavern to the towering figure of power and might. A cloud of black smoke explodes next to me, the plane stilling.
I dart over to Lila. “What can I help with?”
“Serve them while I grab the first course from the Mouth.”
“The Mouth?”
“The king’s private kitchens,” she says, and passes me a brown drink with an orange peel. It smells strongly of the liquor that’s stored in barrels in subterranean levels of the palace.