Chapter Thirty-Four
I wake in an unfamiliar cot. My head throbs, stomach churns. Groaning, I close my eyes, arm falling over the side of the mattress. It brushes against the cool glass of water Fern and Lila insisted I take with me, still untouched at my bedside.
Lifting my head, I gulp the water and wait until the nausea subsides.
My new room is double the size of the one in Illusion.
A place to return to after my moon with Kassandra, which starts in a few weeks.
Perhaps I’ll collect little scraps of color like Lila and render them something new to decorate.
I’ve never truly decorated anything before.
It strikes me then how similar Lila is to my mother, with her consistent care and reliable respect.
Though Lila is more effervescent, I wonder, just for a moment, if my mother would’ve been like that as well, if not tied to my father with pregnancy.
My mother spoke of her aspirations only once, in her final days when any formality between child and parent fell away.
As I shifted her frail frame to prevent bedsores, she muttered her deepest dream. To one day learn to play the lyre.
I rub my chest, circling the pang there. Perhaps, when I’m done bribing for my friends’ debts with the High Fae, I will purchase a used one and start my mother’s dream.
The metal cot vibrates against the stone.
My head snaps up with the roll of rocky magic through the plane.
Scrambling to my feet, I brace myself, staring at the ceiling and wondering if it’ll cave in.
It’s been days since the last rumbling, and late last night, Fern spoke of a royal stable that collapsed, trapping the horses.
It didn’t take long to dig out the animals and repair, but the palace of Versara does not fall.
It never has fallen, not since the Dark Rebellion.
Still, as dust exhales from a crack in the ceiling, I hold my breath until the building has settled once more. A piece of parchment pops into the air, floating down like a feather. I snag it. My brows cinch, my eyes scanning the words:
Library. Before dinner.
The king has finally called upon us. My fist crumples the paper as the full events of yesterday surge through my mind: the door, the boot, the child in the tapestry, the faerie watching Maxian in the tree, the pair so alike.
“Shit,” I breathe. “Shit.”
He knows. He knows that we know. This is a killing secret, like swallowing a hot ember that burns my mouth and throat and belly. How the planes am I going to find proof of this? And even if I did, what would Kassandra do with it?
What if Lila and I are wrong and now I’ve included Kassandra in deadly slander? What’s more likely—that we misinterpreted a tapestry or that the king is a halfling bastard?
In the corridor, I pass the lunchtime sounds of the kitchen and reach Lila’s door. I knock.
“We’re on tonight,” I call.
Nothing. Her door is locked. She’s probably still asleep. Unease prickles the back of my neck.
I head to the shared baths of the Reign faeries for the first time.
The antechamber is lined with racks of unused towels, bars, and bottles of soap.
The space splits off into private rooms, and picking one, I find an individual empty pool the length of my own height.
Pulling the curtain across the entrance, I strip and reach for the nozzle on the side wall and twist. Cool water springs forth and I laugh in shock at the luxury.
Once the pool is full, I dip my palm below the surface, thinking of the heat of the sun on my face, fire from the hearth, and soon steam curls around my face. I climb in and scrub.
When I dip below the water to rinse my hair, my ears fill with a roaring. I break the surface and find it silent. Submerging again, I follow the deep, shuddering din, dissimilar to the rush of water. Reaching out a hand, I graze against something smooth. The drain.
Nails prying under the edge, I pull against the pressure. The lid lifts and sound explodes, reverberating through the water.
Shrieking.
A thunderous timbre that shoots up from the ground, as if a creature will crawl out of the earth’s center, splitting our world open like an egg.
A thousand voices, screaming a singular word.
Help.
I drop the drain cover, muffling the sound.
Kicking to the surface, I gasp, panting for breath, ears ringing.
My body shakes, goosebumps pricking despite the heat of the bath.
I scramble out, knees scraping the hard ground.
After toweling down, I shove clothes over damp skin and collect my belongings.
I should drain the bath—later. Later, I will come back.
But right now, my body screams to run, my genius flying around my mind, bouncing against its constraints.
Let me out! it pleads. Let me out—
It is the death at the center of the Pith, not a life, I remind myself. Not the screams of the unheard and unknown. Or it’s another chestnut tree, another door. It could be a thousand petrified things, screaming for aid, and only now do I hear them. Vomit slides up my throat.
“Food,” I breathe. “I need food.”
I took a hot bath on an empty stomach—never a good idea.
In the Mouth, I gulp down coffee and toast before fixing a plate for my friend. Placing it outside her door, I knock again. Still, nothing. A sick feeling settles in me, my breakfast threatening to make a revisit.
Maybe Lila returned to the tapestry and we just missed each other. Maybe I need to meet her there. I don’t have the keys, but with my revitalized genius and ability to free the doors in the Salon of Stars, I don’t need them. I just make sure to stuff some hairpins in my pockets.
Reaching the door to the salon, I recall the word Lila learned from her father, the keeper of the chambers. Etoles. I will not be using it tonight. No one will ever use it again.
A palm to the door, I call up my fluttering genius, picture it flapping out of the confines of my mind, along the length of my arms, through my fingertips and into the grain of wood.
An oak tree. An oak tree surrounded by others, cut down and stuffed with an oily, parasitic force.
The oak does not scream, only sighs to be let go, so I let it go.
Reign magic sizzles into the air once more.
Still, the door is locked, and Lila would leave it that way if she were inside. Crouching down, I wedge a hairpin into the lock, then repeat the process with another. My father did not bestow on me a set of keys like Lila’s did, but he did teach me what to do if you don’t have any.
The lock clicks free.
The door to the Salon of Stars creaks open, and for a moment, I’m curious to see it in the sun for the first time. I step inside.
Blood drains from my head, my hand reaching out for the jamb to steady myself.
The entire space has been ripped apart. I rush inside.
“Lila?” I call, not caring how loud I am. “Lila!”
Furniture shattered, clothes shredded and strewn about, large crumbling gashes on the walls as if a giant beast raked its claws against them. Whatever—or whoever—did this is full of unspeakable power and violence.
And it was not my friend. So where the fuck is she?
I sprint out of the apartments.
I sprint back toward the light.
I slam into Fern outside the Mouth, carrying a tray. “Whoa, there—”
“Lila,” I gasp, tears streaming down my cheeks, lungs burning. She tries to steady me with one hand. “Where is Lila?”
“In the library, of course. With the king,” Fern answers. “They’ve been in there all day.”
No no no—
The secret has risen, finally, to the light of day. What will the king do to bury it again?
This is the end. This is the end. Terror claws at me like at the coronation, but this time I can move, I can fight, I could save a friend.
Pivoting, I race down the hall.
“The king asked for privacy!” Fern calls after me. “It’s been locked for hours!”
As if I don’t know what to do with a locked door.