“Drink thedeath of a hundred queens?”
Her lips curled. “Maybe. One of these is just water.”
“Which?”
She set the cup into my hands. “Doesn’t matter. Drink.”
It mattered to me. I stared into the clear liquid. Not a hint of pink. I brought it up to my lips, hesitated, then upturned it. Cool, crystalline water flowed over my tongue. I swallowed it. “Nothing.”
She swiped the cup from me and exchanged it for the other. “Now this one.”
In my hands, this one seemed as clear. Maybe this was a ruse, a way of gaining my trust. Maybe neither cup was poisoned.
I lifted it to my lips?—
The liquid touched my tongue?—
My stomach lurched, all my insides constricting as thoughyanked by a stone hand. I gasped, the world pitching, my fingers slipping.
Faun caught the cup before any of it spilled. “Gods, you don’t have the reflexes of a fae, do you?”
I wrapped my hands over my roiling belly, all my consciousness shrunk to one tight grip on my innards. “Vaelen’s bleeding sky?—”
“Bleeding’s what would have happened if you’d taken a sip.” She set the cup down on the table with two hands. “As is, that’s just the knot tightening. It only works on what will kill you. If you feel that drop in Highmark… you smile, you nod, and you find a way to get rid of the food. If you swallow even a few drops while the knot is tight, the spores will try to purge it. You’ll retch blood on the table. It saves your life, but it ruins your day.”
Sweat had broken out on my temples. “Myday?”
“More like the next six hours. The first time is always the worst.”
I groaned. “Feels like I’m…”
“Dying? Or just want to die?”
I curled over myself on the stool. “Both.”
“Welcome to being a queen. Not all tit-sucking and toe-washing, I’m afraid.” She leaned against the table. “Best you get to your chamber bed before you drop on my floor.”
I staggered through the citadel like a man fresh from a pub, my insides clenching so hard I thought I’d be pulled inside out. I’d take the Gossamer Drifts over this. I’d even take the underworld.
By some miracle I found my chamber door. I briefly expected to find Dorian standing in the hall as he had been in the days after I’d defeated Rhiannon. Somewhere around. And yet he was not; he hadn’t lingered since he’d been declared myveyre. I didn’t know how to feel about his absence, the lack of his irritating face.
I stumbled into my chamber and dropped into the bed. Spent the afternoon in a feverish half-sleep, the pain of the knot slowlyreleasing itself. In the third hour I began to wonder if Faun had actually set me on the path toward death.
In the fourth hour, I called out to Caelara, the nightmother.
In the fifth hour, I lapsed into half-consciousness.
And in that unconsciousness, the phrase came back to me.Kairen vor thynar.You can find her among her friends. The meaning was obvious, as some meanings are only when half-awake.
A beautiful phrase. A tragic one.
Who we were rippled out. Our beliefs, our actions, our goodness and badness. I was in some part my mother and my almost-father and Elisabet and Theo and even Isa the nurse. If someone were to seek out Isa, gone now, they might find some part of her in me.
But Rhiannon… she’d had no friends.
The pain carried me on its bier toward unawareness, and all thought left me.
Darkness greeted me when I woke. The pain had ebbed away, and so had the sun.