“Excuseyou.I’m her master-at-arms.” Haskel shouldered his way in. His face lit on me like he’d spotted his own child. “Bloody queen of old. Brilliant.”
Faun shut the door again, enclosing the three of us. “I thoughtveyrewas just a story.”
Haskel dropped into the chair near my dresser. “Most stories have a hard seed of truth.”
The crown snagged in my hair as I dragged it off. Speaking of blood; I was sure those thorns had pierced skin. I set it on my bed, where it rested on the animal skin with grotesque grandeur. “Will one of my inner court please tell me what’s just happened?”
Faun and Haskel met eyes. The two of them had a conversation without speaking, because Haskel nodded and crossed his large arms. “You know about how Carys died?”
“Queen Carys?” I said.
“The one and only.”
I knew how she’d lived—I had been inside her head—but died? “In war.”
Haskel’s mouth twitched. “Yes, a war. But death in war happens in a thousand different ways. And Carys wasn’t the type to be dropped in the battlefield by any old soldier’s blade.”
I sat on the edge of the bed. My corset felt like a cage; I couldn’t get a real breath. “How, then?”
“Herveyre.” His tone had gone from boastful to sober. “Killed her with her own dagger. A terrible day.”
My gaze had unfocused. Now it sharpened on him. “Where?”
“Right in the Killing Fields,” Haskel said, “under sunlight.”
The Killing Fields. Where the queens’ champions faced off. “But why was Carys there?”
Faun crossed to the tapestry on my wall and pointed at the center, where the white spire rose. “Where the four courts converge. It’s the only place she could have become the Courtbreaker.”
“Cursed is what it is,” Haskel said. “The blood never dries on the grass.”
Faun’s finger circled the spire. “The convergence at the center is said to be a terrible soup of four magics.”
I glanced between them. Questions piled up in my throat, but only one seemed truly important tonight. “What does this mean for me?” I raised a hand before Haskel could speak. “Be blunt.”
He let out a noise like a hum or a chuckle. “Blunt’s all I can be. Means the stag thinks you’re a danger.”
I let out a bitter laugh. “To who?”
“Everyone,” Faun said. “Sylvanwild, Feyreign—yourself.”
That was ridiculous. It was inconceivable. It was…
I stood. “Dorian told me Carys tapped into two forms of magic just once.”
Haskel inclined his head toward the tapestry. “At the convergence, with that bloody dagger only she could hold without coming apart.”
My gaze darted to the hanging, where red spread around the central spire. I had always taken it for autumn leaves, but that felt naïve now. Blood. It was blood.
“Why?” I whispered. “Why did herveyrekill her?” But I already suspected. Maybe I already knew.
“Carys was a good queen,” Haskel said. “She was a good queen, if not a power-hungry one. But she kept the balance for a long time.”
“The balance?” I asked.
“There’s always a balance must be kept.” Haskel gestured to the crown on my bed. “Between empathy and love of power.”
Faun’s arms wrapped around herself like she’d gotten a chill. “When I was a girl, my mother told me the dagger corrupted her.”