We rode horseback, all of us who didn’t fit in the carriage. Only Eury and Faun rode inside, and the rest of the party followed.
Down the forest path. Down, down, to where the Queen’s Road widened and the wheels clattered on stone.
“I think I can see it,” Finch said from his horse, riding beside me on the road. “The green plains.”
We were still deep in Sylvanwild. It would be at least a day before we emerged from the forest.
But Finch wasn’t wrong. I could see the plains, too. They loomed in my mind’s eye—not green, but red.
CHAPTER NINE
Eurydice
The carriage wheelsrode the rutted road like an ex-lover. Every divot kicked the seat cushion up, and Faun let loose a fresh curse from the bench opposite me.
The Sylvanwild royal carriage was a jewel box, the benches only long enough for two fae hip to hip, or one queen in all her regalia. I’d ride horseback, but I didn’t have that luxury like the others. The carriage hid my face from the hawks I’d seen circling overhead on the hour, every hour, since we’d crossed from Sylvanwild into Highmark.
And I’d felt that crossing in my fingers and toes. The spiritstag’s magic released like passing through a gauze curtain, and something new flooded in. Brighter, warmer. In Sylvanwild, magic sparked like rain. Here, it glowed—the grass, the sky, everything suffused with light, as if the sun had soaked into the land and never left.
It should have felt welcoming. It felt like a staked claim.
The road had taken us through three villages since crossing into Highmark—proper ones, with stone buildings and market squares and washing hung between windows. Fae who stopped their work to watch the carriage pass, and didn’t bow, just watched. Highmark fae. Even their curiosity felt like sunlight.
“Every day we spend outside Sylvanwild you’re at risk,” Faun said, shuffling the sheaf of papers in her lap—a history of the Festival of the First Light, every detail I could want about the other three queens. We’d spent weeks memorizing. Apparently she thought I hadn’t done enough recitation.
I was sick of letters and ink.
“The other queens hate me. I know.”
“Not hate. Distrust.”
“Distrust doesn’t inspire queen-slaying.”
Faun’s lips curled. “In Feyreign it does.”
A roan horse’s head appeared outside the small window, bobbing low. The man on its back rode easily, staring ahead. Black hair loose, cloak splayed wide, the tip of a sheathed sword peeking from under the edge.
Dorian, queenslayer.
He didn’t meet my eyes. He only rode alongside the carriage with his squire, as he had since we’d departed. Protecting me, observing me?—
“It’s impressive, actually,” Faun said, “how good you are at avoiding yourveyre.”
I snapped the window shut. “Now that I’m queen, I could in theory forbid you from saying that word.”
“You could. But you’d despise yourself for your pettiness.” She tapped the top sheet. “Tell me the Faerish phrase spoken to the summer queen after you hand her your gift.”
“For fuck’s sake, you’ve heard it a thousand times.”
Her head tilted sidelong like my mother’s used to when she was being patient. “Then make this a thousand and one.”
“Sol’veris, queth’ana.”I offer this beneath your sun.
“Abysmal pronunciation. Say it twenty more times before we make camp.”
The carriage jumped, and we both cursed.
That night we camped on the plains within sight of Highmark’s white citadel, its spire a needle against the moon. No ancient tree, no moat. Just a flat expanse and a road leading up to their castle.