I had two pillars inside me. One was the hand that had slain the Dawnmaker; it hadn’t hesitated, had known what must be done.
The other pillar was Dorian. Just him, and everything about him. All my life I’d loved fearfully, hopefully, surrounded by almost-love or sometimes-love. But I felt no fear of Dorian.
“Yes,” I said. “I see her.”
Across the water, the stag’s head moved. Down, down, until the tip of its great antlers touched the earth. Even I, barely of this court, knew this deep gesture of respect.
I lowered my chin and closed my eyes. Around us, the forests of Sylvanwild breathed with the life of centuries past and centuries to come.
In her bed, Faun stared at me with the same hardness she’d offered the first time we’d met in the citadel. An outward gaze, one meant to create space.
I didn’t take it personally.
I fluffed one of the three pillows stacked behind her. “You haven’t touched your whipped butter.”
Her gaze broke to the tray at her bedside. There, a barely eaten breakfast and an untouched rosette of butter gleamed under light from her window. “It’s impossible to butter bread with one hand. Keeps sliding around.”
“You could always ask someone for help. Me, for instance.”
She scoffed, turned her face away. Silence fell, and I didn’t dare break it. I knew if I said a word into this thick silence, she was likely to send me away and not see me for days.
“Lately,” she said, still faced away, “I’ve fantasized about the hours I used to spend scrubbing floors. On my knees, bracingmyself on one hand to squeeze the towel into the bucket with the other.”
I didn’t speak.
“It was Rhiannon’s punishment for my father’s choices. He was her spymaster, and he’d betrayed her. She took off his head, as you can imagine. But not before she told him I would spend the rest of eternity on my knees.”
Her father, Rhiannon’s spymaster. What a fraught role; the hairs raised on my arms. But I wouldn’t dare stop her, because here it was, Faun’s story. The one I’d caught the edges of over time, but every time it had been tugged away from me. I wondered if she’d ever have told it to me if she hadn’t lost her arm and nearly her life.
“I hated it,” she said. “My father dead by her hand. An eternal punishment for a crime I hadn’t even committed. It put a bitterness in me I didn’t know was possible, and every time I saw her pass by, that bitterness deepened.”
I slid my fingers over the duvet and touched her wrist. She jerked it away.
Her face turned toward me, eyes big and wet. “I thought I’d lost everything. Now I’d give anything to be on my knees and both hands again, just to know the feel of it.”
I couldn’t presume to understand the pain in her eyes—not the exact shape of it. But I did understand some part of it. The feeling of powerlessness. Of grief. Of the redefinition of a body you thought you understood.
And just as I had known the day I’d met her, I recognized that she and I were kin. I loved Dorian, and he was my heart, but Faun was my sister.
I moved from my chair to the edge of her bed. This time, I gripped her hand tightly with both of mine. “Tomorrow, I’m meeting with my inner court. We’re appointing a spymaster, and I need your voice in the room.”
Her eyes rolled, and the tears fell down her cheeks. Quick, angry. “Your inner court. Convening with the dead, are we?”
She wanted me mad—as mad as she felt. “You’re not dead.”
“Oh, fuck off.” She tried to jerk her hand away. I held on. “Who wants a second-in-command with one arm? Maeronyx will laugh.”
“So let her laugh in her sad, echoing castle. She dare not in my presence.”
Her eyebrows lowered. “You can’t be serious. I lost mygoodarm, Eury. I can’t even hold a fork right.”
“So learn to feed yourself with the other arm. It’s not your hand I need, Faun.”
Her face contorted; her cheeks reddened. The grief had broken through, sudden and whole. Her fingers squeezed mine. “Why are you fluffing my pillows? I tried to kill you.”
Faun with a shell like iron. Faun with a mess of emotions on the inside.
Yes, we were sisters. Perhaps our lineages were entwined through time, and at some point a Seelie had loved an Unseelie. But our natures remained, and the knowledge that we were more alike than unalike.