Chapter Fourteen
FOURTEEN
A gasp rises from the crowd.
Ringing fills my ears.
My eyes jump from one noble daughter to the next.
What do we do?
Tension crashes off them in waves. Some twist back, as if they’re trying to check for guidance from their families behind them. Even Oona flinches, though her cruel eyes darken almost instantly, as if settling on a plan while the rest of us squirm.
This isn’t what any of them expected either.
A haunting pipe tune picks up from a back corner of the room somewhere behind the dais.
I breathe in deep, my mouth watering sickeningly at the taste of roses.
I sense the prince’s cold eyes lingering on my skin, and my gaze snaps back to his. I smooth my face into a mask of calm and try to mirror the infuriating nothingness that Wolf probably came out of the womb mastering.
The High King points a gnarled finger at the line of us, letting it roam tauntingly. A thin sheen clings to the skin above his lips. He settles back into his throne, head tilting too far to look entirely natural, and narrows his eyes.
My heart hammers.
His crooked finger stops on the girl who barely looks old enough to be named an heir. The one who risked a smile at me, behind her grandmother’s back. Even though I know I should hate her, that she’d probably kill me the second she had to, something in me softens.
“Show us what skills make you worthy of our throne,” the High Queen orders then, and I’m not the only one who stiffens. Murmurs go up from the crowd—
She didn’t say this throne. Or the High King’s throne.
She said our throne.
As though she—a Cymrean—has a claim to any part of our isle.
The girl—Caitria—casts a frantic look over her shoulder to the older woman.
On the dais, the prince’s expression is cold—bored, even.
Finn’s familiar voice fills my mind.
Hesitate and die.
Caitria chokes, her throat working. “I… I don’t have any special skills.” Her voice cracks, her wild gaze flying back to her grandmother. “You said all I had to do was—”
From the crowd behind us, a single figure steps forward. Clad in a sweeping cloak of crimson so dark it blends into the shadows, the figure moves in an unimaginably fast blur and slashes a ser-rated knife across the young girl’s throat.
Caitria’s scream sputters.
Blood sprays out in a violent burst, streaking over the marble floors and slashing across the High King’s booted feet, curled up on his throne. He laughs, trails one finger through the blood on his toes.
The Lady of Shadows.
Ice runs through my veins.
The royal spymaster. The only name we whisper in the streets with as much fear as the High King’s.
She’s here.
The prince doesn’t show so much as a crack in his icy exterior as grim silence stretches over the crowd. His navy eyes find mine and freeze me in my place before moving back dispassionately to the first victim of the Assay.
The High Queen taps her heavy golden rings on the throne and nods to the crimson-cloaked figure.
The hood is drawn up over her head, but the hint of a sharp red smile is clear as she lets go of Caitria’s small body and melts back into the crowd.
The girl falls in a sickening smack, blood spilling in a pool over the floor in front of us.
None of us move.
Not even as the tendrils reach my toes, and I feel the hot dampness seep into my soles.
“Rulers do not get the luxury of preparations.” The High Queen rises, pale eyes merciless. “If you are not ready to adapt to each new threat at a moment’s notice, your throne will crumble from under you. Hesitation risks more than your life. It risks the entire realm.”
Her glare darkens. “And a queen who cannot adapt is a queen we cannot allow.”
I can only imagine the way the crowd must look behind me—eyes darting, shared warnings in the flashing of glances or tiny shakes of the head.
A new brush of fear fights to sneak in through any weak spot it can find in my armor.
I fight it back, inch by mental inch.
The High King’s watery eyes move over the rest of us. With a single finger, he points to the raven-haired noble daughter standing next to where Caitria’s body lies slumped in the slowing spread of her own blood.
Oona.
Hope skitters between my ribs.
The Lady of Shadows is in this crowd, probably no more than a few feet behind any of us—maybe Oona will be her next target.
Slowly, tauntingly—as though she wants to be seen, to be admired—Oona lifts the fine black-and-crimson silks of her skirts, drawing the hem up her ankle, then up the curve of her long leg.
A thin length of leather wraps around her thigh, and with eyes flashing to Prince Cashel, she reaches one hand up to draw out the four razor-thin knives lying flat against her sheath.
I risk a glance up to where the prince stands.
Arms crossed, he looks just as bored as ever.
Without a word, Oona tosses the thin blades up, and they slice menacingly, terrifyingly through the air, sparking in the flickering glow of candlelight.
Each of the knives flies between her hands as easily as a market trickster might juggle apples, higher and higher with every toss, until there’s nothing but a blur of steel and shadows.
Drop them, I whisper silently to whatever ghosts of the Old Ones might still linger.
As if she can hear my thoughts, Oona steps back—and lets the knives fall to the ground.
A chorus of gasps.
My gaze snaps to the dais, bracing for the swish of a dark cloak that will bring that dagger at Oona’s throat.
But there’s no hiss of steel, no sudden cry of pain. Only murmurs… of awe?
I force my eyes back to Oona—and to where all four knives stick embedded in barely visible cracks between the marble tiles.
Exactly where Oona had stood a second ago.
A shrill cackle erupts from the High King, followed by applause from the High Queen. The prince offers a quick, tight nod to Oona.
My hand finds Talon’s, and relief unfurls to feel that they’re shaking too.
Oona steps back into the line, and two other noble daughters follow in the test.
In a flash of wild red curls, one of the noble daughters—Aisling, I think—flips a courtier twice her size over her knee, pinning him to the ground and driving a knife toward the hollow of his neck, only to stop a hair’s width from his ruddy flesh.
Applause follows, but the man glares at her, an unmistakable dark stain spreading down the front of his pale blue leggings.
Another—Neve—with a narrow nose and tightly pursed lips, steps out of the line, striding for one of the grand vases of white roses.
A darkness stirs at the far edge of the crowd—the Lady of Shadows, finding her mark?
My throat goes dry. But the noble daughter draws eager laughs and an approving nod from the High Queen when she weaves each of the white roses into a crown and places it on her own head with a deep curtsy to the dais.
Eavan of Antrim is next.
She sings with a voice as rich as sweet cream, and for a single, haunting moment, the melody of the sound reminds me so much of my mother’s lullaby that tears inexplicably prick my eyes.
The words, though—they’re all wrong.
This is a song about the glory of the Crown. About the first High King, Berach the Cunning, and his heir, Fachtna the Unwise. About how they crushed the Old Ones.
My mother never would’ve sung me to sleep with this ballad of blood.
The High King picks at the tip of his bloodstained fingers, muttering.
At his side, the prince stiffens as his navy eyes jump to mine.
Then his father turns and points directly at me.
“Now you.”
The High King’s eyes rove over my skin.
I don’t have many options. No distinguished skills—Old Ones know no one here wants to hear me sing. I think the word Finn once used was caterwauling, and that won’t save me now. It might just get me murdered faster.
There’s no hand to play, except one—words whispered years ago when Finn first heard them, and then tricked me.
The armor around my heart trembles but holds.
“A thousand miles you may roam, and I will follow and not miss home,” I say with all the false confidence I can muster. I pause as a hush falls over the throne room. “No rain that falls or snow that blows, nor hunger and thirst will I bemoan. But when the sun sets, you’ll be alone. What am I?”
The High King’s stare locks me in place. His pupils are enormous—is he on some kind of drug?
Prince Cashel’s fists, his entire body, tighten at his father’s side.
“A riddle,” he says in a cool, easy voice.
But it’s too easy. One hand rests lightly on his father’s shoulder, and he leans in to whisper in his ear.
The High King nods, leaning back on his throne.
“Who here can prove they are worthy of my father’s presence?
” the prince asks the crowd. “Let’s hear your sharp minds, your cunning. ”
The first courtier throws out a guess.
“A compass!”
Others soon follow.
“Servant?”
All I’m aware of is that the Lady of Shadows is close—close enough to rip my throat apart if this doesn’t work. Then it’ll be my blood seeping across these marble tiles.
A faint swish seems to dust the floor somewhere behind me, and terror surges from deep within me—
Is it her?
The High King picks at the edge of his little finger. I see the blood beading where he tears off a thorn of hard skin and brings the crimson to his lips. He leans forward in a rush. “The sun!”
Talon tenses at my side.
Terror shoots through me again.
Because the High King is wrong. That’s not the answer, and there’s no way for me to lie and pretend like it is. But if I tell him he’s wrong in front of everyone…
The High King’s eyes lock on mine and narrow. My stomach lurches. There’s no emotion, no humanity, in his empty stare.
Talon’s stance shifts subtlety as one hand brushes the hilt of their sword.
Then a cool voice cuts in. “A shadow.” Prince Cashel steps in front of his father on the dais.
His gaze searches mine quickly, and he steps down to where I stand at the edge of the line of noble daughters, barely able to breathe.
The crisp, sharp scent of him surrounds me; his sapphire eyes seem to soften on mine. “That’s the answer, isn’t it?”
Murmurs rise from the crowd as he brushes his thumb along my chin and lifts my face, drawing me in close to speak so softly that his lips just barely brush the shell of my ear.
“Do not let them see your fear,” he warns, then pulls back to meet my eyes once more.
Sandy hair falls over his forehead, and he combs it back neatly with his fingers.
The sharp spice of his scent sets my teeth on edge.
I force myself to nod, to draw in enough breath to answer him aloud. “Yes,” I respond, steeling my spine. I lower my voice so only he can hear. “And I’m not afraid of you.”
His eyes linger on mine just long enough for a new shiver to rise from the base of my spine. “I didn’t mean me,” the Bloody Prince murmurs. “But good to know.”
Wary, scattered applause rises from the crowd around us.
Talon is stiff as a board beside me, though. And I can’t shake my unease, even as the prince steps back and raises both hands to the crowds, playing the glowing heir perfectly.
But the set of his shoulders beneath that midnight velvet tunic is tense despite the smile he pastes on his mouth. And his left hand stays empty, refusing cup after cup of wine offered his way and toying with the hilt of the broadsword at his waist.
As the court moves around him, Prince Cashel offers a bejeweled hand to each of the noble daughters down the line. Every one of them drops into a painfully deep curtsy, then presses her lips to the bloodred ruby set in gold on his middle finger.
Oona, Eavan, and Neve get only a cold, passing glance from him.
Only two does he grace with a short, chaste kiss to the cheek.
The first has the bright red hair traditional to the people of the east coast. Aisling, daughter of the Sea Snake, lord of the Inis Peninsula—the one who took down a nobleman twice her size.
Then, Saraid of Askeaton Abbey—the one with the golden hair and topaz-brown cat eyes.
A dangerous flicker of understanding ensnares me.
Prince Cashel might be the High King’s heir, but he’s also the one thing standing in his stepmother’s way if she plans to help her people annex us. I recognize the lethal tension pulsing in the feet between stepmother and stepson as the High King picks at his nails with a knife.
This prince might be in as much danger in this castle as I am.