Chapter Twenty-Six
My knees sink into plush carpet. A medallion of coral and cream, a border of pink roses. The vibrancy stuns me, like the color of my mother’s cheeks on a hot day. A female screams, a gruff male voice shouts: “Maxian! I—”
“Hector.”
“—what are—hon, can you—”
I scramble to my feet, taking in bright walls, azure drapery, and a wide four-poster bed.
A naked female with sage skin and long limbs stumbles from the mattress like a doe.
She clutches the bedsheets to her breasts, grappling for her dress on the floor.
She appears familiar and in a less shocking situation, I could place her.
Instead, my attention moves to Hector Vandorne as he sits up in bed, gray hair curling across his chest.
For a moment, I’m not sure what shocks me more: that the king’s advisor has a nipple piercing or that his centuries-younger mistress just had her tongue around it. Or that the king just laced us into his bedroom “to interrupt.”
Maxian turns to the female, who’s bowing, apologizing, fixing her hair. In her movements, I catch a flash of silver. Not a coin, but a ring. She’s married, too.
“Was it consensual?” he asks.
The female blinks at him. “I—of course!”
“Speak the truth or I will dig it out of your mind.”
The fae blanches. “Yes, Your Magnificence.”
“Good. Now, Illusion or Healing?”
“Illusion, my lord.”
Maxian reaches forward, touching a hand to her shoulder. Her mouth opens in protest, before she disintegrates into the plane like mist.
“Maxian Cornelius Vandorne!” Hector shouts. “It is inconceivably crass to lace another male’s mistress.”
“Clothe yourself, Uncle. We need to talk.”
“What is so important that you must interrupt me in my own chamber?”
Maxian gestures to me. My face burns and I wish, more than anything, that I could sink into the lushness of this carpet. The plane around me rumbles, warming. Hector’s mixed heritage of Healing and Reign. Then comes the rush of Maxian’s rocky power.
“Assault laws,” he says. “We’re going to rewrite them.”
Rules can change.
It is unfolding but not in the way I imagined, not in the way it was intended.
The king, the advisor, and I regroup in a gold-trimmed parlor adjacent to the bedroom.
The males settle themselves in the two tufted cream armchairs before an oval glass table.
Across from them, I perch on a green settee at which the king gestured.
My palm presses against the soft but firm texture.
My hand leaves a darkened impression on the fabric.
I reach down, brushing the threads in the opposite direction; it is once again shiny.
“Something wrong with the cushion, girl?” Hector asks.
Blood rushes to my face, and I keep my chin tucked. “No, sir.”
“You have a question, Avery,” Maxian states.
How in Lucan’s Tree does one clean this thing?
“Lady Kassandra does not own this material,” I say.
“Crushed velvet. From Cont.”
“And what exactly is she doing on my crushed velvet, Max?” Hector grunts, tugging his robe around his belly.
“She’s going to help us close the loopholes in the assault laws.”
Hector opens his mouth, but the king cuts him off with a wave of his hand.
In a moment, a stack of documents drop on the glass table, fanning out across the top.
A pile of empty parchment comes next, two quills and inkpots, as well as more folders of work.
The armchair creaks as Hector angles himself toward the king. He drops his voice.
“And why, sir, is she helping us and not the Council of Keepers?”
Maxian stares down his uncle. “You and I are both on the council, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever been a faerie?”
Hector laughs. “My lord, I don’t—”
“Have you ever been a faerie serving the High Fae in Versara?”
“No.”
“And have you ever been assaulted by a High Fae while serving them?”
I suck in a breath. Hector cuts a look to me, then back at the king. I cringe, keeping my eyes downcast. Please, I beg silently, ears ringing. Do not bring me into this—
“No,” he grinds out.
“Are there any faeries on the Council of Keepers?”
“No.”
“So you and I, and the rest of the council, are wholly unqualified to write new laws that will actually protect faeries from assault—no matter the class of the attacker,” Maxian says. “That is why Avery is sitting on your crushed velvet.”
Hector shifts in his chair once more. “I know you are eager to assert yourself as king and build a legacy worthy of the Vandorne line, but this may only further disrupt the dissatisfied council.”
Maxian quirks a brow. “You are satisfied doing business with rapists?”
“Well,” the advisor sputters. “That’s a bit harsh. I see you want to make your mother proud—”
“Do not speak about my mother.”
“Then let’s speak about you. You are king. Your job is to stabilize the kingdom with a marriage, not—”
“Yes, I am the king, not a common whore!” The plane quakes, a deep shuddering beneath our feet. “My job is to rule, Uncle, and yet when I try to do that, you discourage me. So which is it? Am I weak or am I threatening?”
“Maxian, you know I didn’t mean—”
“You will address me as ‘my king’ or ‘Your Magnificence.’ ”
Hector jerks back. I can hardly breathe. After blinking rapidly, the advisor collects himself. “My king, while I admire your commitment to protecting all the denizens of Amyria, I fear this type of law will upset certain Houses—”
“Good,” Maxian rumbles, dust floating down from the ceiling. “They should be upset. They should be disgusted that their peers are monsters. They should be horrified that the law allows these atrocities to go unpunished.”
“I just don’t see a way where we can properly protect the faeries while also incentivizing the High Fae not to—”
The room thunders again, the glass table cracking.
“Incentive, Uncle? They need incentive? How about the fact that they are Illusion. They are Healing. They are not Reign. They do not rule—we do. If they need incentive, they will do well to remember that the Desert Walk applies to the High Fae, too.” Maxian draws up to his full height.
“And if they cannot obey my laws, then I will take their Matter and Mind.”
My stomach feels as though I’ve swallowed sludge. This isn’t what I meant at all; this isn’t how it should go. But if it leads to better for all, perhaps I can compromise and be thankful. Perhaps this is what true change looks like—halting and hard.
Hector bows his head. “We do not need other House support, but we will want it.”
“We have never been wealthier, more influential.”
“We have never been so few in numbers. We are a dying breed, we Reign fae.”
“An Illusion fae cannot assault my faerie in front of me. The audacity to do that in front of his king, to my coronation present, no less.”
A chill claims me. My fingers dig into the expensive fabric. This is not about me or any other faerie. This is once again using us as pawns—this time, to curtail Illusion’s ego for the sake of preserving the king’s.
This is about destruction of property. Reign property.
I set my jaw. It doesn’t matter, I tell myself. It doesn’t matter what their motives are if change happens. If my people are better protected. That is what matters most. Impact over intention.
Hector grunts. “Illusion must have an outlet for their malice, Healing for their experiments. Better the faerie servants than you.”
Maxian paces, the stony surge of power retreating from the plane like thunder rolling away. He runs hands through his hair until finally he stops before his advisor.
“We will increase the assault fee by five silvers and ban complaints against the victim for one sun cycle, at which point the High Fae can choose to file one or not. Eli will bring me the data at the end of this year, and we can reassess.”
My chest feels so tight. High Fae don’t blink at a few silvers. This is nothing. This is worse than nothing—this is an insult—
“And while you’re here, you must know that this food waste redistribution proposal is preposterous,” Hector says, grabbing at a parchment on the table.
I go still, attention falling to the king, whose hair is messy, square jaw clenched. He plants hands on his hips.
“Why’s that, Uncle?” This time, Maxian’s voice is deadly quiet.
“If the Unskilled are going hungry, then they shouldn’t have spent all their coin on drink or theater or trinkets in the market.
If they aren’t earning enough, they should work harder, like the rest of us.
We don’t give handouts to the ill-behaved, addicted, or foolish.
If we did, they would never learn their lesson. ”
The muscle in Maxian’s jaw feathers. “And what’s that?”
Do something! I want to scream at the king. Why aren’t you doing something?
Hector doesn’t even have the decency to ask me to leave when he leans forward, saying: “That the Unskilled need to take it upon themselves to become skilled.”
I flinch, something in me breaking. The Unluckies are worked beyond the bone, for even their bones are not free from debt, nor the whites of their eyes from the involuntary ink.
They are skilled, even if they don’t work, though many do.
And how can they step out of immense poverty when there are no stepping stones?
“A hungry people are an angry people,” the king tries.
“And a fed people are a strong people.”
“But wouldn’t that be better—”
“To give up your way of life? Trust me, you do not remember what Healing had to quell in the west in the years following the rebellion.”
In Remiti, we do not make windows so large, and the High Fae especially do not purchase this much glass, the faerie from the coronation had said. Windows can be shattered.
The High Fae stare down each other, the plane pulling taut, neither male blinking. Finally, the king looks away, and something in me sags.
“Shall I do with this what I do with all of her proposals you bring me?” Hector says, voice like iron.
Her. Lila. Lila’s proposals she writes to the king, the ones he asks for—
Maxian doesn’t even look his uncle in the eye when he nods.
Hector snaps his fingers, a flame on his thumb, then touches it to the parchment. In the silence, the thought and effort and hope for a better future shrivel to ash.
That’s it? I want to snap. You’re going to lie down so easily?
I should’ve known. He’s the kissing king, after all.
When he looks my way, he almost looks chagrined.
Maxian does not want to be good. He wants to seem good. He wants to seem good so much that he is malicious enough to waste Lila’s heart and hours.
My eyes water at the images that play through my mind.
Lila, staying up all night trying to envision a better world, an artist at work, drafting page after page to give to the king who signs his own name, to a council who will never read them, all for the vicious ruse of hope.
Lila, befriending those around her and trying each day like a schoolteacher to make the king better.
As if he were a troubled boy in need of love.
As if he did not perceive her as a decent dog that never pissed inside, withholding everything but occasional pats on the head for good measure.
“Here.” Maxian crouches before me, voice calm. My body goes rigid, though not with his magic. This time, however, the royal does not seem insulted by my self-preservation, merely sad. He pushes a strand of hair from my eyes, his fingers leaving a trail of rot behind.
Cool, heavy metal presses into my hand. I glance down at the glimmering myth in my grasp. A gold coin. My fingers trace the rays of the sun, turning it over. I read the words printed above and below the Reign crest: Matter and Mind.
The rising eagle, spread wings, each claw clutching an item. One set of talons holds a branch from Lucan’s Tree, a peace offering. In the other, the bird clutches a whip.
The question never was whether to bring a sack of food to one Unluckie each week or try to change the law for all.
It was never about getting a menial raise for the illusion of safety.
Not when the answer was always going to be no.
I have been begging for shallower wounds to a general who will never release his grip.
The High Fae will never grant us anything, even when they already have everything.
And the king—the head of this violent system—has the most to lose.
The House will never risk its foundation.
My fingers wrap around the money as I meet his violet eyes.
“Thank you, my king,” I say.
He nods, patting my cheek. “Clever faerie.”