He approached Carys with the dagger low at his side, his footsteps silent in the grass. He stepped over the upper half of the Noctere queen, slow, slow, then all at once. His last six steps were so quick, the steel flashing upward so fast, I could have blinked and missed the piercing of her leathers.
The blade’s six inches slid into the center of her back, right up to the grip. Carys’sveyreheld the weapon steady, his hand burning and hissing louder with the tightness of his grip.
And Carys didn’t fall, didn’t scream, didn’t even gasp—she just went rigid. Her sword fell to the grass. Her fingers splayed, chin lifting.
Then he jerked the dagger sideways.
She dropped. He yanked the dagger free and tossed it aside, caught her as she went down, gathering her against him like a lover, both hands around her bowed back as he lowered her to the ground. His mouth bent to her ear; I couldn’t make out the words, and I didn’t dare approach.
Whatever herveyresaid, it wasn’t meant for me.
She didn’t live a minute, or even thirty seconds more. Carys died there in the grass among the other queens. A simple death, her last sight herveyreand the sky.
Did she feel rage? Remorse? Maybe—probably—both.
When she was gone, herveyreset his forehead to her breast. Not the cruel indifference of a murderer, but the visual language of a man who cared. He stayed that way for a time, until finally he rose, his burned hand clutched to his body. The dagger lay in the blackened grass. He crossed to it and without letting skin meet the metal, swept it up into the folds of his cloak.
Where did you take it, veyre?
He strode through me. I spun after him and stalked in his wake. I thought he would pass out of the Killing Fields entirely, but he stopped at the edge and spoke to a young, light-haired man.
A man whose face I knew. Bright blue eyes, a big beard?—
Haskel.
Carys’sveyrewhispered sharp words I couldn’t hear, and then he stepped out of the Killing Fields. He disappeared with the dagger still hidden in his cloak.
And Haskel strode after him. No,followed.Stayed on his heel like he had done so a thousand times. And though I had always imagined my mentor as the eight-hundred-year-old fae with wrinkles around his eyes and white in his beard, he wasn’t always so. Of course he wasn’t, though he’d never shared this part of his history with me.
Haskel was once a squire. And he had watched Carys’sveyremurder her in the Killing Fields.
By the time I staggered back to the Andalusian by the tree, the sun had long since set. I didn’t know how much time had passed, only that the moon and stars shone above. My head swam, my vision blurry. I either had to sleep under the sky or fall off my horse on the way back to the citadel.
I slept the uneasiest sleep of my life. And I thought only of returning to her side.
CHAPTER FIVE
Eurydice
The morningafter the hollow pool, I sat on a stool in Faun’s chamber while she pestled wraith roots in a shallow mortar. The room smelled of wet wool and upturned grave dirt, a thick, loamy funk that coated the back of my throat.
She had explained the whole business to me—something about a fungal network and my vagus nerve—but the only truth I’d truly absorbed was thatIwould have to be the one to drink. It was the only way, or perhaps Faun thought I hadn’t suffered enough yesterday.
With hummed approval she sat back and set down the pestle. In one easy motion, she upturned the mortar into a small pot of hot water. Steam rose, and the scent wafted in thick waves through the room. I turned away on the stool.
She snorted. “Surely you smelled worse than this growing up.”
I jerked my head around, breathing through my mouth. “Even in the Dip we had the decency to pour it into the gutter, not serve it in a teacup.”
“‘The Dip.’” Faun lowered a slender glass stirrer into the pot and rotated it until the whole mixture spun like a tiny hellish whirlpool. “No wonder you’ve got such an enormous bone to pick with the world. Best get used to the smell; this will take a few minutes to brew.”
Faun’s chamber was utilitarian and unexpected. From one angle, totally ordinary: an unadorned bed, an empty nightstand, clean floors. From another angle, a herbalist’s workshop. She’d devoted a whole section of her chambers to roots and flowers and alchemy; one wall she’d lined with jars on shelves, herbs hanging upside down from hooks over the long table at which she now sat. She seemed capable enough, but my skepticism ran hot.
Better to change the subject. Maybe she’d forget about the whole wraith roots business. “Tonight. Rhiannon’s funeral. What should I say?”
“Rhiannon wasn’t much beloved.” Faun’s movement slowed. “And from what I’m told, she didn’t even hold a funeral for the queen before her.”
“Oh?” Yet I already suspected.