I went into the study, pulledA History of the Killing Fieldsfrom the shelf. I held a crystal over the passage about Carys’s death, read again about herveyre, how he hid the dagger after he’d killed her.
But where?
When the spiritstag named meveyre, he’d shown me a vision ofendless dark. But it didn’t feel like dark—it felt likedeath. And deep in the darkness, a blue pulse.
It was said the spiritstag could enter the mind of any fae who bore Sylvanwild blood. Drystan had been of this court through and through, but nothing certain was written about him after Carys’s death.
One bard wrote a ballad about Drystan’s grief over his betrayal, how he’d thrown himself off the highest precipice over Virellan Falls. A poet had penned an epic about the wandering Drystan, who took the story of the Courtbreaker beyond Feyreign and to far, unknown lands.
All were speculation, stories spun about the unknowable past. Now, thanks to Haskel, I knew why.
But what the spiritstag had shown me felt real. A vision from Drystan’s head—maybe the last thing he’d ever seen. The resting place of the dagger.
I closed the book. In the almost-darkness, Eury appeared over me in the meadow. Dripping with acid, fist raised, lips parted.
I settled into my chair and kept reading.
The morning came with a gray, slow dawn. I stepped onto my balcony to the sounds of horses and the sight of the Sylvanwild carriage being wheeled from the stables. The thing was barely bigger than a wardrobe—lacquered green, with windows no wider than my hand and a driver’s bench perched on top. It looked like something built to transport a crown, not a queen.
Rhiannon had called it a torture box.
I’d already prepared everything I needed last night. By the time I’d dressed and opened my door, Finch already stood on the other side. He’d clearly washed his hair and donned his finestleathers.
“Morning, ser.”
I grunted and stepped past him. He followed, keeping pace beside me. “Broken your fast?” I asked.
“At dawn, ser.” He placed an apple in my hand. “Haskel bade me bring you this.”
I bit into it. For the first time, having a squire didn’t seem wholly a burden.
We came down the stairs into the throne room to the bustle of servants in and out of the open double doors. They carried trunks no doubt full of Mirek’s impossible creations. Past the gardens and the moat, the carriage stood waiting, doors thrown wide, and two roan horses in harness. Roan, for Sylvanwild.
For the Festival of the First Light, all must be according to color and tradition.
Before I could nod at Finch, he’d already struck off to retrieve my horse from the stables. Haskel stood beside his already, petting its nose. When I came over the bridge, he nodded once at me and I at him.
“Queen’s to be out in fifteen,” he said. “Somehow you look more like shit.”
I stood beside him, shoulder-to-shoulder. Before us, the whole of the citadel seemed in motion. Mirek came out pointing and yelling. Faun struck out from the other side of the horses, arguing back about how they couldn’t bring so many trunks.
“I feel it, too,” I said to Haskel. “All night I sat with the sense we’re at the precipice of a door we can’t return through.”
“That’s because we are, my boy.” Haskel set a hand on my shoulder. “All of this is just a prelude to three queens swinging steel, and if we’re lucky, one standing under acid.”
Cold premonition flowed through my chest. I closed my eyes.
“But that’s the joy of life,” Haskel murmured into my ear. “The unrelenting eagerness of death, and the thrill of rebuffing it. Ah, here she comes now.”
I opened my eyes to Eury emerging from the citadel, dressed in a fitted leather coat the color of scorched oak, riding trousers,and boots laced to her knees. The only adornment: a bronze clasp at her throat, shaped like a curling leaf.
Thirteen handmaidens appeared behind her. Together they passed through the gardens with her leading. She walked the same way she’d practiced in the throne room, except this time Mirek wasn’t guiding her, and she wasn’t practicing.
Wrists straight, chin up, gaze level. A queen crossed the bridge, stepped up to the carriage. Haskel extended his hand—what I longed to do—and she took it as she stepped up and in.
She disappeared, the small door shut, and I breathed out for the first time since she’d emerged from the citadel.
“Ser,” Finch said from behind me. He stood with my horse’s bridle in hand, the saddle perfectly positioned on its spine and girth tight. In his other hand, his own horse’s bridle. “Your mount.”