Chapter Eighteen
EIGHTEEN
I know where the noble daughters train.
I shouldn’t, but I do—thanks to Aoife.
Irritation from the temple still needles at me. And even though I should stay inside and not risk any danger before the Test of Wisdom tomorrow, my muscles vibrate with tension.
I need to get outside.
I need to see what I’m up against.
The path Aoife told me about twines past the back of the rose gardens—or what’s left of them. The prince wasn’t lying; every last one of them has been ripped out of the earth, though there are tiny, crumpled patches of white petals browning in the mist-slick grass.
A clear message, or else he’s as mad as his father.
The problem is, I can’t begin to figure out what the message is.
Weak golden light cuts thin shafts through the mist, brightening the flash of steel from the training yard tucked behind the old garden.
I watch from a distance at first, behind a thick pile of ruined vines.
Grass makes my approach almost silent.
The noble daughters here wield steel in a blur of grace and power. My stomach curls at the sight of them. All of them wear training leathers, pierced through with pinholes in intricate patterns that let air through and detail flowers and fauna that must be native to their estates.
Dark-haired Oona mock battles with Aisling, the daughter of the Sea Snake on the eastern peninsula. She’s the same one who flipped a much larger man over her at the Test of Cunning—and who tried to poison me at the dinner just days ago.
Loathing rushes up my throat, but I force myself to focus on her technique. To observe every muscle tremor, every slow bit of footwork.
Every blow Oona deals is an assault. She’s pure grace—and power. Even Finn doesn’t move like her.
Could I hope to beat her, if it came to blows?
Aisling stumbles, and Oona seizes the opportunity.
She brings the sword hurtling down for the other girl’s throat—then stops an inch from her skin. As if they aren’t all going to kill each other eventually anyway.
But apparently, they give each other the dignity of not killing their kind outside the tests, at least for now.
If they came across me alone at any point, none of them would hesitate. I count them in my head—Oona, obviously. Aisling. Neve was the one who wove the crown of white roses, then threw a knife at my head.
And Eavan.
I tap at my lip.
What am I going to do about Eavan?
She doesn’t use a sword. Instead, her weapon of choice is a small crossbow she aims again and again at a straw person at the far edge of the training yard. Her aim is flawless. She hits the bull’s-eye in the middle of its chest every single time.
Despite the deal I heard Eavan agree to with Oona, if Aoife is right, it wasn’t done willingly. Her family despises the High Queen for not sending help to stop the burning harvests.
I guess she doesn’t realize who’s really behind the fires.
Neve swaps with Aisling, leaving the sandbags she lifts as weights to take up a battle spear that Oona throws into the sand at her feet.
“You ready this time?” Oona snaps at her.
“Like it matters if I say no.”
Neve lunges, but it’s all brute force and no grace. Her foot-work is clumsy, and it takes Oona all of a second to spot the weakness and hook her boot behind the other girl’s ankle, shoving her back—hard.
Oof.
I hear the wind slam out of Neve from here. Her back smacks into the ground, and her chest seizes, gasping for air.
No one offers her a hand up. Aisling just laughs. And Oona… Oona looks at the girl lying on the ground like she’s easy prey.
“Even the peasant must be better than that,” Oona mocks the other noble daughter.
My blood races. But I refuse to be ashamed of where I come from—what I’ve survived, and what got me here.
Wait. I count the noble daughters in the training yard.
Oona, Aisling, Neve, Eavan.
But there are five of them left.
Saraid of Askeaton Abbey isn’t here.
Neve staggers up from the ground of the training yard, wheezing. Her cheeks burn red, and the spear she shoves at Oona’s feet misses. I file the note away for the future. She has shitty aim.
Neve grabs a small bag from the edge of the yard and waves off the servant waiting at the edge who tries to follow her. Exhilaration sings through my blood.
I can do this.
I can’t be afraid to get my hands bloody, if it’s for a greater good.
Not if I want the Whisperers to see me as someone worth letting into their ranks, if I survive this bargain. If I can find and kill the High King, and show them that I’m willing to fight for Eireann.
Hands shaking, I follow Neve through the shadowed path leading from the training yard back to the castle.
She takes the long way around, like she prefers the quieter side doors to the main ones, and I suppose it’s no wonder.
Her hair hangs in sweaty locks, the bright burn of lingering frustration keeping the color high up the length of her neck. Her clothes are soaked with sweat.
I match my footsteps to hers to cover the sound.
My pulse hammering, I draw the long blade that Wolf gave me, the perfect steel swirling in the moonlight.
One thin arm hooks around my waist and another clamps down over my mouth. A thin voice whispers: “You really don’t want to do that.”
A voice like shards of honey—sweet, but sharp.
Her hand is cool, the very beginnings of calluses just starting to form behind her knuckles.
Aoife.
I break her hold with a quick pivot and a silent slash of my right hand.
Without hesitating, I hold the long blade toward her and risk a glance back over my shoulder to where Neve steps out of the path and into the pool of flickering light cast by the castle’s torches.
She wears no blades on her—none I can see, at least—but in the bright glow of the torches, a glint of thread-thin wire flashes in a coil around her wrist.
My stomach twists. In the darkness, with only the moonlight, I hadn’t seen it.
“That’s a necklace of thorns.”
Aoife’s voice sharpens on the last word.
Shit.
“You know what they do, right?” Her blue eyes narrow in a way that reminds me of her cousin—the prince.
“Of course I do.”
I just haven’t seen one until now.
The Cymrean version of a garotte, only… worse.
Under pressure and a jerk at just the right angle, the thread-thin steel splinters along almost invisible lines. Normally, the thorns lie flat against the thread of metal. They’re impossible to see—until they tighten around your throat and pierce into your flesh.
A necklace of thorns will rip your jugular to shreds with one precise twist by the attacker.
Finn’s been trying to source them for our stall for a year, without luck. Cymrea bans the export, and no one else knows how to get the thorns to lie right.
So, Neve does have ties to the High Queen’s people. This proves it.
And Aoife… I swallow hard. Aoife probably just saved my life. Still, suspicion grates at me beneath the gratitude. “You followed me?”
Her sandy hair flutters as a cool breeze skitters.
“Yes,” she admits, fingers worrying the worn hem of her purplecloak.
“Why?” There’s a creeping feeling that comes with realizing she didn’t make a single sound as she must’ve followed me out of the castle. I never sensed a thing.
“I was in the garden when you came back this morning. I saw you pacing. You seemed…” She frowns. “Restless. Given those girls already tried to kill you twice, I figured we probably shouldn’t give them a third opportunity.”
My palm slicks around the hilt of the blade. “Are you going to tell anyone?”
Even if it’s allowed, I doubt the High Queen would take kindly to a peasant trying to kill one of her favorites, if that’s what Neve is.
Aoife holds my hard stare with one of her own. “Why would I do that?”
“Don’t nobles stick together?”
“Maybe.” Aoife shrugs, but there’s a bitterness behind the pain flashing across her pale face. “But none of those girls ever stuck with me.”
I remember the whispers.
The sharp, narrowed eyes of every noble in that room before the first test. I remember the eyes like needles in the baths—and how they weren’t just aimed at me. Every hiss, every viperous sneer: They were aimed at Aoife, too.
The clang and clash of weapons from the training yard twists with sharp laughter, and the kind of hiss that leaves no doubt one of the noble daughters just drew blood.
Aoife takes a step past me, nodding toward the castle.
“Still.” I arch one brow, following her. “Why keep a secret for a peasant?”
In the dim glow of the castle lanterns, I can’t make her out clearly, but I hear the seam of pain threading through her answer.
“Peasants can kill nobles just as easily as we kill you,” Aoife says softly. “Maybe I want to see some of those girls dead too.”