“Yes, I see.” Haskel dropped onto the bench next to her. “The stag set in motion the necessity of four queens stepping onto the bloody fields. And then, of course, you must have the dagger to defeat them.”
He met my gaze. A certain defeat hung at his mouth and the corners of his eyes. “It is a bitter thing to know the player and the strategy, yet remain nothing but the piece.”
“Haskel—” I began.
The old fae’s voice had always been more resonant than mine. “Drystan took the dagger back to its home, deep beneath the Kingdom of Storms. He ensured the way would be sealed with magic after him, and there is only one way down.”
The insect-call seemed to quiet, the breeze to die away.
Haskel pointed out over the moat, to what lay beyond. “Queen Liora. She holds the sol key in her pretty clutches. And she’s unlikely to give it up.”
I stiffened.She will give her the key.“The sol key is real?”
In my reading about Highmark, it’d been described as the “bright key to the eternal cell.” I’d never known any more than that—what lay behind the bars, or how large the cell was, or why it existed at all. Now, Haskel had given away the secret.A dragon.
“All of what you read holds truth, boy.” Haskel slumped on the bench. “Stories and songs just make the truth prettier or more gruesome.”
“If she’s unlikely to give it up,” Eury said, “then what chance do I have?”
“She will,” I whispered.
Eury’s piercing gaze locked on me. “What?”
My fingers touched the brand on my chest. “She will give you the key.” The words didn’t feel like mine at all.
Liora, the Highmark queen. The Dawnmaker. The oldest queen in Feyreign. And she had beckoned Eurydice to her court with an unignorable invitation.
We had to go. For the festival, for the key, for the dagger—for Eury’s life.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Eurydice
Light rain fellover the meadow. Not a blowing, cruel rain—the kind that reminded you of beauty, of growth, of life.
I’d slit Rhiannon’s throat in this meadow.
Twenty paces away, Haskel lifted his face toward the sky and squinted. “Feels bloody nice.” Droplets slipped down his beard, fell to the grass. “Make it hurt, girl.”
I stood shivering, soaked through. We’d been in this meadow an hour, as soon as the rain had started, and I hadn’t felt a flicker of magic. No storms, no acid, no pain.
Over at the tree line, Dorian sat against a dry trunk while his squire stood at attention beside him. Finch, a coltish boy who was no doubt fascinated by the fact thatthiswas his queen. I, who’d spent an hour standing uselessly under rain.
I couldn’t control the acid, just like I couldn’t stop Dorian from watching on. Just like I couldn’t please Haskel.
“If you stare at yourveyremuch longer,” Haskel rumbled, “he might think you aren’t as averse to him as your words suggest.”
I twisted back toward Haskel. “It’s not working. I can’t do it without?—”
“Fear of death?”
I flicked my sodden braid off my shoulder. “A midday shower doesn’t put that in me.”
“And an eight-hundred-year-old fae warrior doesn’t either, I suppose?”
“Perhaps when we first met.”
He ran a hand through his wet hair. “That’s your first problem. You think fear of the underworld is the only way to call on your magic.”