Glorious Chaos
This piece is carved into the wall directly across from the door, hidden from sight unless one knows where to look.
Unlike most of the reliefs, this one combines color and texture.
It is both a relief and a fresco, a figure of a woman astride a pooka, glorious hair streaming behind her as she rides.
Other figures give chase, but she is untouchable, untamable as the wind and cannot be bound.
Only the woman possesses the gift of color.
Everything else is presented in natural hues, varying shades of brown.
She is the focus of the piece and the center of everything.
Kerboros
I can count the number of times I have visited Liskaal in his chambers on one hand.
It must be serious this time.
The fact that he doesn’t wish to have this conversation in the great hall, to pour salt in the obedience-shaped wound and humble me before the court? This is practically unprecedented, and it signifies a crisis so profound that I relish the moment in a heated flush of delight.
Is your empire crumbling, Cousin?
I articulate none of these thoughts, striding past the attendant to the antechamber where I wait for the Lord and Lady of Winter. They leave me tarrying long past what is reasonable or polite, but eventually, Liskaal appears, his usually pristine person bearing visible signs of distress.
“Find them,” he barks.
“More information will be required.” I can’t track someone from thin air with no details, although I have been cautious enough to conceal the range and scope of my powers.
If Liskaal understood what I do, he might recruit someone to replace me. And that I will not permit until my plans are complete.
“The entire Summer delegation has vanished, including the scion pledged to wed Thea de Winter as part of our peace accords.”
“Will Summer consider this an act of war?”
Liskaal paces, ravaging his pallid hair with a careless hand. “They might. But I did not summon you for idle talk. You’ll take the abandoned bride and hunt down her spouse. Before word spreads beyond containment.”
Amusement sparkles through me.
Dear, credulous Cousin, the brownies are already whispering tales as fast as they can share them. Soon, everyone will know that things have gone drastically wrong.
“We’ll leave at first light,” I say. “Do I have leave to visit the suite where the Summer delegation was housed?”
“To get their scent?” Liskaal offers the icy quip, his mouth curled in a mocking smile. “Of course. Do it now before the traces fade.”
I merely nod.
I enjoy how much it irritates him when I fail to respond to his jabs. But every hurt forms scar tissue over time, so I no longer feel those needles. Some days I feel nothing at all.
Except when I catch a glimpse of Thea.
I wheel just in case my expression quickens even a fraction, yielding Liskaal a hint of my true inward state.
To me, Thea de Winter is freedom. I love her—or maybe the idea of her—the way I admire a pooka running unfettered or a bird arcing across the sky.
She has never once been bowed, and she never obeys.
She is the most intractable, glorious chaos, and I treasure her rampages, even from a great distance.
I don’t know her, so, of course, I don’t love her.
But what she represents? Resistance. Defiance. And kindness.
Such kindness for all the wild fae.
And devotion to Mudge, who would walk through fire for her. Among the wild fae, it would be tough to find someone who wouldn’t. Thea brands everyone she touches with her quintessential fire, leaving them forever changed.
Liskaal has no notion what a boon he’s offering and would probably rescind the order if he realized.
I don’t linger lest that happens, instead aiming myself toward the quarters formerly occupied by the Summer contingent.
While I do sell certain secrets, I don’t know how Summer vanished within these walls.
The palace compound is finally quiet, and I encounter no one on the way.
The rooms are unlocked and wildly untidy, as if some revel occurred here shortly before.
There is wine spilled on the floor, pooling crimson here and golden there, and there are feathery strands tangled on the light fixtures.
Not spiderwebs but something similar, gossamer-like, carrying an unusual scent.
I close my eyes, feathering my senses outward. There should be a burst of magic if they left through some portal, unless it’s a magic unknown to me. I have never traveled to the mortal realm, and I’m unfamiliar with how witches might work a transport spell.
Could we be facing interference from beyond our realm?
Impartially, I analyze the facts, reviewing what I have observed in the past twenty-four hours.
Nothing unusual. No traces of outside influence.
There would have been whispers in wild fae circles if even a hint of outside presence had been known.
No, it doesn’t make sense. This didn’t happen because witches made a pact with Summer…
I close the door and bring forth my spiderlings, reviewing what happened in this room.
But the spiders show me what the evidence suggests: The Summer delegation drank a lot of wine, frolicked, and sprayed some fluid that made everything shiny and sticky, and then they rolled around in it.
Not quite an orgy, but along those lines.
And then they left the room through this door. When I try to send my spiderlings after them, deeper into the palace, the little hunters stop.
I’m missing something.
This is a suite, connected rooms made to house a large party. But the Summer scion would have been assigned to the largest space. I’ll go over that territory again.
Frowning, I move into the primary bedroom with its ice-white furnishings. The doors to the wardrobe stand open, nothing inside. I close them thoughtfully, feeling the tug of…something. I close my eyes and scan in here. Not a tingle. Not a spark.
I’m already intrigued by the Summer scion because for the first time in what has sometimes seemed like an endless existence, I am…stymied.
How did they vanish?
No magic can explain this. There should be traces for me to follow, even if I’m unfamiliar with the one who compelled the parting of the ways. There are always trickles, runnels of energies soaked into nearby objects.
But this room is dead to me, silent as a cell before a prisoner cries out.
I cannot report my failure. My dreadful cousin might cut off my head if I admit that I don’t know where the quarry has gone to ground. Hunting is what I do.
As I turn to depart, a thought strikes. The fluid that they sprayed, did it dry into those feathery strands? I breathe in the scent again. Moonmallow. It blocks magical energy for a time, and used in conjunction with a glamour…
Could it be that simple? Oftentimes the simplest explanation is true. I examine the premises one last time, and when my supposition proves plausible, I laugh.
For the first time since I accepted that I’m alone in the universe, I laugh and laugh and laugh, practically beside myself with glee.
If my theory is correct, the Summer delegation used my information about the secret passages concealed within the palace.
They created the signs of a bacchanal here in alliance with some wild fae, and the whole group used moonmallow.
Most likely, the wild fae, disguised as the Summer delegation, went into the palace so they would be seen, then not seen, once they dropped the glamour and resumed their own identities.
A powerful illusionist must have created the fachan diversion, and allies flipped tables as corroborating evidence.
Meanwhile, the actual Summer host crept out through secret tunnels, their own magic concealed.
Two things are absolutely clear in this moment: Lord Liskaal is in no fashion prepared to face the Summer Court, and I cannot wait to see how it all unfolds.