Chapter Thirteen #2
Even if all I want is to get back to Finn, the truth is that a part of me I can’t ignore any longer also itches to know what kind of world, what kind of people, my sister is working with.
Because there’s no doubt left in me, after the way Wolf’s gaze turned dark and secretive at my question about whether Finn is fighting with them.
She’s working with the Whisperers somehow. Just like I am now.
Talon’s brown eyes shift in the candlelight. The warmth vanishes as a strange, weighty sadness pulls across their face, and they glance away.
“He won’t let himself make the same mistake twice.”
Excuse me? “What is that supposed to mean?”
A guard with cold, hard eyes raps the hilt of her sword against the wall next to the red curtain, and the clatter cuts through the din of whispers and gossip. Her black-and-red uniform is like flame in shadow through the flickering candlelight as she snaps an order to the room. “In your places.”
Talon takes the cup from my hand and places it on the table. “Don’t finish that,” they warn. “Cymrean wine is stronger than you think, and there’s a staircase waiting past that curtain to take you down to the throne room, where the rest of the court is waiting.”
“Don’t tell me what to do.” I wrench the cup back and swallow it down in one gulp.
An older noblewoman herding a young girl with skin the color of cream a few feet away gasps. The girl in her charge is barely five feet tall but drips with emeralds and what must be achingly heavy braids of woven gold draped around her narrow neck and shoulders.
“Gran, can I have a cup?” Her voice reminds me of a lamb, sweet and soft.
Talon stifles a snort next to me.
“Out of the question,” the older woman snaps, glowering at me as she hurries the girl away.
It’s as if just being near me might besmirch a girl who barely looks old enough to be named as an heir, let alone marry one.
The girl is brave enough, though, to risk a glance back at me, past the old woman’s silk-clad arm, and offer a small, quick smile, her eyes lighting with laughter.
Talon grabs my arm, steering me to the end of a short line of six noble daughters gathering in front of the curtain, and nods to the guard as if they know her.
She nods back, eyes sweeping over me, hard and quick.
“I’m not a mistake.” I choose my words carefully, so none will betray us if anyone overhears and reports us to the Lady of Shadows—the High Queen’s lethal spymaster.
“I wasn’t talking about you.” Their voice drops just low enough for me to hear them. “You’re not the only one with lives on the line if you fail.”
Without another word, Talon steps back through the curtain and disappears into the shadows beyond. For the first time tonight, I’m alone. My stomach somersaults; I run a hand along the midnight shimmering silk, smoothing out creases that don’t exist.
One by one, the six noble daughters in front of me approach the curtain. I follow at a small distance behind—red velvet, thick and lush in the glow of the candlelight, fills my sight.
The guard at the edge of the curtain takes the small folded card that the noble daughter at the front of the line offers and pulls back the curtain to read it out. “Eavan of Antrim,” she announces, voice loud enough to surely reach every part of the space beyond.
The tall noble daughter with red hair—the one from the hall outside the baths—steps forward as the guard pulls the curtain back for her and walks through.
While her shoulders appear as bent and weary as before, I think I catch her eyes snap with a determined light I didn’t see there earlier, and the crowd beyond the curtain cheers.
Still, my spine stiffens, remembering her pleas, her willingness to take help from Oona, the noble daughter whose estates used Cymrean mercenaries to crush dissent during the uprising.
I know what happens when nobles band together.
People like me end up as their sacrifices. And a famine would be no different.
What if there was a way to divide them? A way to set them at each other’s throats, even at the High Queen’s so that the idea of annexing our isle looked anything but easy?
My blood races as the whisper of an idea takes shape in my mind.
Another noble daughter—the girl who’d asked for a bit of wine before—steps forward from the line, little card in hand.
She stumbles slightly, tripping over her gown.
She’s still just a girl, this noble who risked a smile at me moments ago.
She looks up at the older woman she’d called Gran, and the woman’s eyes narrow, nudging her forward with clear impatience.
A tiny knot unfurls somewhere in the vicinity of my heart.
Is it possible some of these girls have as little power over their own lives as I do?
I almost laugh.
As much as I despise the way Talon dismissed the peasant girl’s death in the dungeon as a necessary sacrifice, I can’t deny that every one of these girls has to be exactly that if I’m going to walk out of this alive.
Every single one of them needs to die before I do, so I can live long enough to kill the king—then escape, or find that loophole and leave, if I do win.
Because the survivor of the Assay will marry Prince Cashel.
And there’s no way Wolf can think I would ever…
The guard calls out the young girl’s name. “Caitria, heir to the Decourcey estates and daughter of the Duke of Mide.”
Mide—I know the name from Keeva. Her favorite strain of water hemlock comes from the rainy forests clinging to the southern hills there—and she’s mentioned the estate won’t let Cymreans dock at its port.
Could she be an ally for me? Someone who might side with the Whisperers?
Movement flickers at the edge of my sight as the line of noble daughters shifts, jostling for position. A sharp blow slams into my ribs and cheers echo from the crowd beyond.
I double over from the pain, radiating out from my ribs, leaving me wheezing as the line inches closer to the hanging curtain. But even as the blow makes my side seize, there’s no wet heat of blood spilling from me, no sear of a fresh wound. No knife lodged in my side.
Not yet, at least.
I fight to breathe past the pain clenching my muscles, eyes flying over the four girls left in line ahead of me. It was one of them, an elbow jabbed into my side, surely. One of them who just made their first move against me—but which?
“Saraid of Askeaton Abbey and Connacht,” the guard calls out proudly then, and another noble daughter, with golden hair, steps forward.
Even through the pain, I have to look twice.
I recognize her—she’s the one from the carriage on the King’s Road, the one who threw coins when the crowd balanced on a knife’s edge.
She glances back at me, just for a heartbeat. Her topaz gaze is unreadable before she turns and glides past the curtain.
A deafening cheer goes up from whoever waits for us in the room past the curtain and the staircase beyond, far louder than for the others so far.
“Neve of the High Valley Hills,” the guard reads out for a noble daughter in layers of silver and white silk.
Then, again to smaller cheers, “Aisling, daughter of the Sea Snake, lord of the Inis Peninsula!”
I recognize that name at least. The Inis Peninsula is on the east coast of Eireann, home to the sea urchins whose poison Keeva taught me to milk and catch in delicate glass vials.
One drop can cure a headache, if mixed with a small cup of goat’s milk.
Alone, the briny poison can make you bleed from every orifice you possess.
I wouldn’t mind a drop right now—but not for me.
The noble daughter with hair as dark as a raven—Oona of House Dunluce—has the audacity to rub her elbow, as if I’m the one who slammed my ribs into her, and scowl back at me.
“Welcome to the Assay, rat,” she hisses down her sharp nose.
She practically floats over to the curtain. As if she knows this is her contest to win.
Or to lose.
She doesn’t even deign to give the cursory faint smile or polite nod the other noble daughters offered to the guard who reads her name as she steps through.
The soft murmur of the crowd, gasps of breath, words like serene beauty, and the loudest cheers we’ve heard so far—they all drift back through the curtain and make it past the faint hum beginning to haze the edges of my mind. Apparently, Talon was right about the wine.
The guard who nodded to Talon takes one look at me, a knowing look sharpening her hard eyes. “Name?” she asks warily.
“Maeve,” I answer, pulling up tall. “Of Quayside.”
I don’t bother waiting for her to announce me before I step through the curtain.
The light of an impossible number of glowing candles blinds me for a long second before my eyes adjust, and I make out a sweeping staircase of pure black stone stretching down from a small landing just beyond the curtain into the largest hall I’ve ever seen.
Hundreds of nobles wait below. A menacing silence weighs over them.
Talon barely manages to tame the rare grin curving across their mouth before offering out a hand to me from where they wait at the top of the staircase. “Thought you might need an escort, my lady.”
“Don’t even…” I shake my head, and the heat of the attention and the flickering candlelight makes everything spin just a little around me. “Tell you what. Get me down these stairs in one piece, and I promise I’ll listen next time.”
“Told you the wine’s ridiculously strong.” Talon steps to the edge of the stairs, wide and sweeping down into a room of black marble, glimmering mirrors, and torches setting every surface ablaze with dancing light.
“You were right,” I admit, hooking my right arm through their left and holding on tight. “And I’m sorry. About… before.” I swallow. “I have a temper.”
“I never would’ve guessed.”
Step by step, Talon leads me down the stairs, and the humming in my head quiets to a hush. Someone moves in the crowd, a blur of crimson and steel. But there are too many shadows for me to see clearly from this high up.
My heart thrums in my ears, filling the nerve-racking quiet.