Chapter Eleven
ELEVEN
The rough outlines of a way to kill the High King take shape in the dark of night.
Before I hear the rustle of whispering servants in the hall, before the dawn slices in hazy slivers through the door to the garden, I piece the fragments of a plan together over the scrolls of old maps laid out across my table in the dim light of flames in the hearth.
Tension turns every muscle taut.
The High King’s rooms are marked on the oldest section of the map, stained with age and the dark lines of fold marks.
How I’ll get in is still a question without an answer. There will be gardai, and not just a couple. And the how of killing him once I do get in? I let out a breath, thinking.
Knowing Keeva has to come with some perks, right?
If I somehow can get into his rooms, maybe I could slip a lethal dose of poison into the water or wine that’ll surely be beside his bed.
Nightshade, to stop his heart.
White snakeroot, so he chokes to death on his own swollen tongue.
I bundle up the maps hours later, before the servants come with breakfast, to hide the evidence of my plotting. Even if a few of them are working with the Whisperers, others would report treason to save themselves from accusations of complicity.
All the while, I can’t get the fear out of the back of my throat—
Is my sister still alive after the High King sent the gardai through Quayside again?
The first rumors about the latest massacre—of blood running like tears down alley walls, the taste of iron on the mist—come from the servants. And even though I thought I knew the sour bite of fear before, it’s nothing like this.
There’s been no sign of Talon for two days, nothing to ease the churning dread that Finn or Keeva could be lying dead in the streets of Quayside. Wolf stays away too, which only makes the fear sharper. If everything was fine, wouldn’t he be around here somewhere, taunting me?
Especially with the first ceremony of the Assay just hours away.
The scrawled invitation for something called a First Look arrived last night on neat paper with dark ink, the date and time in swirling cursive, from the High Queen’s secretary.
Crushing pressure builds in my chest each time I look at the invitation I’d left lying on the table where I’d pored over the maps before hiding them.
The history book Wolf gave me lies open still—there’s no way a history book could possibly be dangerous.
That pressure is what draws me out of my room, determined to start getting a sense of my way around these halls, every muscle tight and bracing for an attack from the shadows.
The maps Wolf brought me are wisps at the edges of my mind, and I try to track each step thinking of them. The etched drawings seemed to have… layers. Like they’d been drawn and redrawn over time. But quickly I discover that what’s outside my door doesn’t match the drawings.
Damn.
The section I was sure showed this part of the castle indicated a hallway branching off from the far end of this corridor—but there’s nothing here but straight walls… and old hanging portraits. The other end of the hall is the same, but full of servants.
They whisper in a small huddle, knuckles tight where they grip heavy woven baskets.
One of them I recognize.
“Any word on the dead?” I murmur to the one who’s brought most of my meals so far.
She glances behind me, then meets my gaze. Her eyes are the color of grass. “Two hundred,” she answers softly, nodding. “Maybe more.”
“Definitely more,” a familiar, tired voice adds from behind me.
I whirl.
Talon towers over us in the dusty air of the corridor. The freckles across their nose and cheeks stand out against the pale pallor of exhaustion. A deep gash cuts across their cheek—still raw.
A heavy blend of dread and sorrow tangle in my stomach.
With a nod to Talon, the servants scatter down the staircase.
When it’s only us two, I cross my arms and glance up at them. “How many of the dead are from your sword?”
Talon rubs a hand across their face. “None, unless they raised theirs at me first.”
I scoff. “And did the girl you killed in the dungeon raise one at you too?”
Why couldn’t the Whisperers have forced her into this instead of me?
Talon’s mouth draws into a tight line, guilt clear in their brown eyes. They’re quiet for a moment; their shoulders sag with the release of a heavy breath. “She was… a necessary sacrifice.”
I fume. It’s the phrase those with power use to ease their conscience when they decide which lives matter more than others.
“She was just like me.” My chest aches. “Just like you, once.”
That is, if they’re telling the truth about being from Quayside.
Talon shifts, subtly guiding me back toward my door. There’s no one coming up the stairs at my back, but they guard them anyway. Their voice is low. “The High King thinks the ones burning the grain are here in the castle.”
I arch a brow and let them open the door for me. “Are they?”
The only answer Talon gives me now is a look.
Their brown eyes sweep over the room. “Wolf managed to bring what you need?”
There’s something in their tone that pricks at me. “He didn’t seem happy about it.”
“Being here is… hard for him.” Talon’s eyes slash out to the window, avoiding mine.
“I’m sure.” But somehow, I doubt it. He probably revels in this shit, sneaking into his enemy’s stronghold, slinking down halls grander than anything he’s ever seen in his life.
Logs crackle in the hearth, and a flare of heat ripples out from the snapping flames. Talon’s eyes land on the table by the fire, flying wide. “You left that lying around?”
Hand-scrawled ink lines sit in the margin of the book Wolf gave me, at the end of chapter thirteen. The markings are familiar: ogham, but the sound they make in my head… it’s foreign but eerily familiar, as if I’m hearing the Eireician I know through the muffle of centuries.
A hinge creaks in the cool air, and the flames hiss in the hearth.
The door on the other side of the garden cracks open, and Aoife slips out.
Talon’s eyes fly to mine, then back to the book. “Hide that. Now.”
I snap the book shut and stuff it under the mattress. What about a history book could possibly be worth hiding? But I would’ve said the same about green tunics a month ago too.
Talon’s fist grasps the doorknob just as they turn back to me. “Be careful with her,” they warn quietly, nodding to where Aoife nears in the garden. “Find out what she wants but don’t trust her.”
“I don’t even trust you.”
The flare of hurt in Talon’s brown eyes is so brief, it’s almost easy to convince myself it wasn’t there at all.
Almost.
The worst part is—I’m not even sure what I said is true.
A guarded weight shifts behind their gaze. “That’s up to you. Either way, just be careful.”
Aoife knocks from the garden door just as the one into the hall clicks shut behind Talon.
“Come in,” I call out to her.
Aoife’s sandy hair curls in loose, glossy locks this morning. She takes one look at me—the plain braid hanging over my shoulder and the wrinkled tunic I threw on this morning—and raises her brows. “Please tell me you aren’t planning on showing up tonight like that.”
I still have no idea where to begin preparing for the ceremony to start the Assay tonight, but I won’t admit that to her. “Believe it or not, we peasants do know how to bathe ourselves.”
“What, with a bucket and some lye soap?”
My pride stings, and a retort bites hot and sharp on my tongue. But before I can hurl any venom back at her, I catch a faint glimmer in the corner of Aoife’s blue eyes.
I cock my head at her. “You’re teasing me?”
Aoife reaches for my wrist. A small smile toys at the edges of her lips. “Come on. You might die tonight.” She looks knowingly at me. “You might as well take advantage of the few perks that come with being in the castle while you can.”
Aoife navigates the twisting stone halls without hesitation.
She leads me deep into the maze of castle corridors, down several sets of stairs that make it feel like we’re descending into the mountain itself. The taste of stone and damp in each breath sends my heart racing as I remember the smell of the dungeons, and I tense.
Whatever happens, I can’t go back there.
Faces, all of them hard and cold and unfeeling, glare down at me from portraits in heavy golden frames, some blackening with age around the edges, lining the walls.
Their eyes follow each step, no matter how far we go.
And more than once, I notice that the sandy hair on so many of them is the exact same shade as Aoife’s, and the prince’s, too.
I still have no idea why he let me walk away from that garden after the way he looked at me like… Old Ones, I don’t know what to call it. Like he was seeing a ghost.
Torches flicker from iron sconces on the walls. The halls narrow, the castle starting to feel more like a catacomb delving deep through the rock, fat candles wedged into every nook and cranny.
A sharp voice snaps from one of them, and Aoife’s hand grips my wrist. Her eyes widening, she pulls me into the shadows of an empty alcove. My muscles jerk as the low hiss of a whisper snakes in the flickering candlelight from just a few feet away.
“All you have to do is agree to not kill me until we get to the last test,” a hard voice says. A girl, I think, probably around my age. “Keep your word and the shipments will start arriving next week.”
“You can spare the grain that quickly?” A second girl’s higher voice sounds incredulous.
The first voice sneers. “Unlike some, we don’t let traitors near enough to scorch our harvests. We smoke them out like the rats they are before they get anywhere near—”
“We don’t let them near,” the second voice snaps, each syllable like cut glass.
“The whole north is in the same position. We never came close to catching all the rebels, or their army. I bet they’re staging somewhere in the north, or out of the islands, ready to land on my front door as soon as the harvest fails. Nothing grows in this damn cold.”
Next to me, Aoife’s rose cheeks go pale, and my blood races.
Why would these girls think rebels are burning grain? No Whisperer would want to hurt Eireann, and burning grain would devastate us, with supplies already so low.
And staging out of the north? Not a chance. The High King was merciless after the uprising. Any rebel force, any army… there’s no way they could’ve survived, or stayed hidden, for five fucking years. As for staging out of the Málmar Islands, that’s utterly impossible.
There are no caoranachs left to get across the Sea of Serpents.
But Old Ones… those blades Wolf wears: steel so fine it has to be from a forgery of Málmar weapons, even though in all the years my father’s had his weapons stall, we’ve never so much as heard of any forger on Eireann who can replicate those swirls in the steel.
No—there’s no way it could be real.
No way any of what these voices are claiming could be real.
“Sounds like your people need a High Queen who’ll authorize more aid funds for counties on the front lines of this fight.” The first girl’s voice sounds too sure of herself. Arrogant, like she’s used to getting exactly what she wants.
A beat of silence, then a slow draw of breath. “You could get him to fund aid?”
“I’ve known him since we were children,” the first voice sneers. “I can get him to do whatever I want. Whatever we want.”
Bodies shift in the alcove, and Aoife yanks me deeper into the shadows.
My breath catches, and the blur of a young woman with raven hair storms past. A long moment later, a second emerges from the alcove. Tall, with reddish-gold hair, and the bent shoulders of someone already exhausted by a battle that’s barely begun.
Neither of us moves.
Not until their footsteps disappear, and the tense crackle of torch wicks snap and pop.
Aoife takes a shaking breath, finally stepping out of the shadows.
“And that,” she says, voice trembling, “was Oona of House Dunluce. Her father’s the High King’s third cousin, and she’s the favorite in the bets being placed so far. She’s… lethal.”
A sneaking fear climbs up my spine. “Would she support Cymrea?”
“Her family’s estate is right in the thick of the nobles who rebelled in the uprising.
Cymrean mercenaries kept the dissent from spreading to hers, and the High Queen apparently helped strike a deal that wouldn’t bankrupt Dunluce.
Oona’s family never would’ve been able to afford the mercenaries otherwise.
” Aoife glances up at me. “So, the short answer is yes.”
Part of me is afraid to ask for the long answer.
The scope of what I’m walking into bears down heavily on the back of my neck. Every whispered stitch of information I manage to gather only seems to pull apart the tapestry I’m fighting to weave in my mind. The more I learn, the more the edges fray.
To make it worse, the noble daughters here aren’t just the foolish girls I always imagined them to be, fighting over a prince’s heart and a crown.
They’re ruthless. And cunning. And desperate to secure their families’ positions, willing to do whatever it takes to be the one who survives.
And if the Assay is shifting into a bigger battle between those who support annexation by Cymrea and those who recognize the threat the Cymreans pose to Eireann and any hope for a better future…
A suffocating weight claws into my shoulders.
The world is shifting under my feet. I can feel it, even if I can’t name all the ways the world will look different one month, six months, or a year from now. But the grim certainty that change is coming lights the marrow of my bones, quick and sharp.
My breath comes fast and shallow until a dangerous—and admittedly, wild—idea slithers into my mind.
What if while I’m here, I could remove the High King and the noble daughters who support Cymrea’s annexation plans?
Even if I’m determined to survive the Assay without having to marry Prince Cashel at the end of it, there must be some way.
Maybe taking out those who would hurt Eireann will make all of this worth it in the end.
Maybe killing them all would buy more time for the Whisperers to gather another uprising.
That has to be why they want the High King dead, surely—and to replace him with a leader who would let the mages bring magic to Eireann.
For the first time since I got here, the ground feels a little more solid beneath me.
I arch a brow at Aoife, who watches me carefully from the flickering torchlight dancing along the walls. “After you.”