Chapter Twenty-Three
TWENTY-THREE
The next few mornings arrive with rain so hazy, the mist stretches up into the clouds.
Tiny beads of it cling to the fine hairs around my face, and my braid would be frizzing if I didn’t have the hood of my worn cloak up to keep the damp off my head.
Talon doesn’t bother—the rain gathers in droplets down the cropped copper of their head as they rummage through their satchel and wave for me to sit on the grass at the edge of a path winding behind the castle.
Small crowds of nobles pass us, clearly heading the same way we are—back toward the field where I almost died.
Some deign to glance down at me, maybe wondering what I’m doing down here. Others don’t acknowledge us.
“Any word on where he is?”
I grit the words out past the needling pain in my hands and lift my gaze to theirs.
For five days, Talon has barely been able to meet my eyes.
Ever since Wolf practically dropped me into their arms and the nerve pain all through my hands and arms came back with a ferocity that makes my eyes water remembering the first surge of it.
It was so intense that just the act of unfurling the maps Wolf brought for me has been agony.
The sharp tingling is a whisper of the High Queen’s poison, as if it managed to seep down into my bones—a reminder as sharp as any knife at my throat that time is running out.
I have to find a way to kill the High King.
But first I have to find him and make up for the days of training I’ve missed while being curled in a heap from the pain in my hands.
For days, I pleaded off every dinner banquet, expecting the gardai to show up and force me there.
Instead, there was only sneering silence from each letter Talon carried from me to the High Queen’s secretaries.
Aoife was the one who told me that Aisling and Oona weren’t at any of the banquets, either.
Indis-posed, she said the servants whispered.
Only Eavan and Saraid were there, and I chew at the inside of my cheek as the rain on the grass seeps through my cloak, wondering for the dozenth time whether either Aisling or Oona are in as much pain from whatever poison they drank in the Test of Wisdom as I am.
There are now four noble daughters left—and me.
And only the Test of Strength still ahead, whatever it will be. Anticipation shudders along the undersides of my ribs. I survived the first and second tests, not to mention the time between. Already, I’ve made it farther than anyone from Quayside ever has before.
What if I do it? An insidious voice slips along the edges of my mind. What if I’m the one who survives this?
Slivers of pain prick over the nerves running across my palms, and even though I’m trying to control my reactions, I wince sharply. Every brush of wind or the touch of my cloak feels like razor blades across my hands.
Talon digs out the bandages they’ve carried ever since I told them what the poison was. I catch the flash of their brown eyes on my palms and wrists, their jaw tight.
“Not even a whisper,” they answer me finally. “No one’s seen the High King.”
The wind is cold outside the castle walls, despite it being the middle of the day, but it’s too late to turn back now.
Aoife’s waiting for us at the festival set up in the same fencing yard where I nearly died a week ago.
She’s kept me company in the quiet garden connecting our rooms when Talon can’t be with me, while I talk her through the lunges and twists of a knife that dislodge a larger opponent’s grip—the same ones Finn first taught me.
Old Ones, I need my sister.
It’s nearly my birthday—and I should be spending it with her and with the short sword she promised me, and Keeva right beside us while we laugh and drink ourselves silly on cheap tavern wine. We should be dreaming of escaping this city together, once and for all.
Missing my sister hurts. The ache of it twists around my heart, squeezing until I almost can’t breathe.
A thin sheen of sweat clings to the back of my neck. I can’t tell whether the sensation is from missing my sister, the lingering nerve pain from the High Queen’s poison, or the panic at the thought of walking back into that fencing yard where I almost died.
Maybe it’s all of it.
Gently, Talon binds the soft bandages around my hands—securely enough so I can pull the cloak around me without the wool scratching at my palms and inflaming the furious nerves there, but not tight enough to restrict my movement.
A handful of gardai stride past us on the path, likely also heading toward the festival.
One is clearly tipsy, if not well on her way to drunk, so I’m guessing they’re not on duty.
They seem to always wear their uniforms, all the same.
And a shiver comes over me at the memory of what Cashel said to Wolf…
that the High King made sure every one of the gardai could recognize Wolf on sight.
No wonder he wore his hood up the first time I saw him in the gardai market massacre.
Once the uniforms blend into the crowd ahead and we’re alone again on the mist-strewn path, I ask softly, “What would the gardai do if they catch him?”
Talon’s hands freeze on the bandaging, a deep furrow between their brows. “Nothing good.”
I tuck the edges of the bandages into the folds wrapped around the backs of my hands so they don’t dangle, and draw in a tight breath. “Why does he take the risk? Coming back here.”
For a long moment, there’s nothing but the rustle of the wind.
Talon purses their lips—and I know that look by now.
Somewhere in the blur of nearly dying and the intense, never-ending pain of the last week, Talon’s begun to feel more like a friend than a guard, someone I would want to know even if Wolf hadn’t ordered them to keep an eye on me.
They’re thinking through how much to tell me.
“What makes you think he has a choice?” Talon finally says.
The thought never even occurred to me.
All this time, I always thought he was just doing whatever he wanted, taking the risks he chose. But what if the risks he’s taken by coming to the castle haven’t been his choice at all, any more than me being here is my choice?
But who could force his hand?
Wolf is so… guarded. And controlled, in a way that I’m sure only comes from having known the sharp slice of loss and vowing never to feel that again.
You don’t know a damn thing, Maeve.
The sound of my name in Wolf’s haggard, rough voice has played in my head on a loop for the last week—and I can’t get it out.
His hand, curling at the small of my back so naturally.
Those green eyes, tangling with so much conflict and guilt. Even though I know what he’s hidden from me, the knowledge of what we’ve both lost feels like a fragile tether between us.
“He’s not who I thought he was, is he?”
Talon chuckles, and the sound is warm enough to ease some of the heaviness in my chest. “I promise that you’re not what he thought you were either.”
I swat at their arm. For the first time in days, I feel the weight of fear and worry and exhaustion shift in my chest. It all feels a little lighter when I’m not alone.
“I still hate that none of you told me the truth.”
“Yeah.” Talon neatly folds all the bandages and bindings back into their satchel and offers me a hand back up to my feet. A bead of mist trails down their nose. “I would too.”
There’s no apology. No I promise it won’t happen again.
We both know saying either of those things would be a lie.
The Whisperers might be the best hope for our isle, but every tendril I untangle about them seems to be some new shade of gray. We might share the same goals, but they don’t see people like me as an equal in this fight yet.
I stagger up, testing my hands. The bindings help keep the worst of the pain at bay.
Talon steadies me, their eyes fixing me in place. “Try to understand. No one is owed all the information here. Knowing too much only puts us at risk—and the stakes are too high.”
A cluster of nobles gallivants around us, whispering and pulling their thick furs tight around their shoulders as the summer wind bites, chill and damp with thick mist.
We let them pass, then start back up the path toward the festival.
“You realize that’s the second time you’ve mentioned that,” I say softly to Talon.
The muscles lining their forearms tighten, their hands freezing on the fasteners of their sack. “Mentioned what?”
“The stakes of all this,” I whisper with a quick check to make sure no one is near enough to overhear us. “I remember what you said at the First Look. ‘You’re not the only one with lives on the line if you fail.’ ”
Talon’s eyes are tight, but flicker to mine.
I choose to take it as a good sign, and push. “My sister was dying,” I confess quietly. “Sword wound. I don’t know where she got it, but her partner—a poison dealer—thought there was something on the blade. Keeva couldn’t heal her.”
Talon’s expression grows guarded at the mention of her name, all but confirming a suspicion that’s been growing at the back of my mind since Fang almost shut the door in Keeva’s face.
Since I saw the High King for the first time and suspected the signs.
Not just madness, but something more. Something darker and more insidious. Something that would connect my sister and Keeva and that mage Fang’s fury at her with the Whisperers’ deciding to act, to kill the High King now. A High King who’s always been brutal, but now seems to have snapped entirely.
I can’t prove it—yet—but I just know.
The High King is being poisoned—by poison from Keeva’s stall. That’s why the Whisperers were so furious with her. That’s why they forced me into the Assay now. That’s why they want him dead quickly.
A tyrant on the throne is bad enough, but a volatile, paranoid, unpredictable tyrant whose mind is broken by poison?
That’s a danger no one can allow.
I know it’s my fault. Keeva’s words to Fang when the mage tried to shut the door in our faces. I hear them again, circling in my head, even weeks later.
And secrets might be a shield, but they’re starting to feel like a cage.