Her blue eyes flashed on it. Emotions passed across her face so quickly, I could barely pick them out. Shock, wonder, something thatmade her brows draw together. Of all the faces I’d seen Liora wear, I’d never seen her taken so off guard.
She released a sharp breath. “I didn’t fully believe it was real. After Carys killed the last Highmark queen on the Killing Fields and I was crowned, Drystan bade me craft a lock no one could open. He wouldn’t say why, only that the dagger had to go back, and it could never be allowed to surface again.” Her eyes studied the blade in my hand. “Yet here it is.”
My fingers tightened on the reins. “I don’t want to use it on you, Liora.”
Her gaze lifted to me, as though realizing a real person was attached to the hand holding the tooth. “You needn’t. You’re a daughter of my court—and the Sylvanwild queen.”
“What does that?—”
“Highmark is with you.” A cloud passed over the sun, briefly casting us both in shadow. “Here, and in the Killing Fields. I shall blind Mae and Iseris, and you call upon your famed rain.”
“I can only make it rain in my court’s land. You know that.”
She eyed me from head to boot. “Do I? I think you underestimate the dagger, Eurydice.”
“Maybe. But if I can’t make the rain spread?”
“Then we drive them onto Sylvanwild ground. Blinded, disoriented—they’ll stumble where I push them. And you’ll be waiting.”
The plan was too pat. Or maybe it truly was as simple as that; I had no precedent for any of this. “And they’ll kneel.”
“They shall.” Liora’s face lifted toward the cloud-obscured sun. “We haven’t much time.” All her attention shifted to me, the full weight of an ancient fae’s gaze. “You’re not stupid. You know Maeronyx and Iseris will try to kill you out there.Kneelingis child’s play.”
I nodded.
“You’re Carys’s inheritor. A changeling. Nothing presents a greater threat to the courts.”
“Then why are you with me?”
She stepped her horse closer to the dividing line. “The courts are broken. The trials are cruel. I’ve lived six hundred years, seen change. We were weak before Carys, but we weren’t ruthless.”
I rubbed my thumb down the dagger’s grip. My fingers tingled; I almost felt the dragon coiled in my mind. “Ruthless is better than weak.”
“It doesn’t have to be one or the other, Eurydice.”
A strange concept. Not one I’d encountered, even as a child. You were either trodden on or the one doing the trodding. “Then, what?”
“Bring the dagger into the trial. It’s the only way. I’ll signal you when the trial begins, and together we’ll force Maeronyx and Iseris to their knees. We’ll abolish the trials entirely.”
Abolish the trials. I had made a promise to the spiritstag. It felt so long ago now, but distance didn’t change its truth.
I had sworn to break the wheel. To end all of this.
I became suddenly aware of the magic around me, of the spiritstag’s ever-presence. Even if it weren’t standing behind me, no doubt it could hear me, feel me, see me.
Right now, Liora looked so much more a queen than me. I clung to my crown with my fingertips; she’d worn hers for centuries. “And you’ll reign?”
“No queen shall reign over another. Each queen will rule her court, the trials will end, and Feyreign will have no more bloodshed.”
No more trials. No more bloodshed. No reigning queen. No boots on necks.
The concept washed over me, foreign and almost incomprehensible. And I almost laughed. In vowing to end the trials, I had made a promise to give the stag something I didn’t even understand.
Amongst humans and fae, bloodshed felt inevitable. Violence was its own language, the first one I’d learned. My earliest memory was of walking through the street in the Dip with my mother and seeing a brawl spill from a pub. I’d gotten into my first fight when I was four. Theo and I practiced punching each otherjust to make the other scream. I’d joined the guard hoping to wield a sword, to fight monsters.
Peace had led to Feyreign’s weakness and subjugation. Carys had brought magic back to the world. I had survived three trials to become a queen. I had stood in dragon’s flames to hold this dagger. And now Liora was asking me to set it aside after all this, to set aside blood and power and take up sweet rolls and wine, to lounge bent-backed in a throne.
Strange. Almost ridiculous.