“No good reason, with no one around to witness the show.”
“They might get a glimpse of her. What do you think Liora expects?”
He shrugged. “I think they’ve no idea what to expect. It’ll be all poking and prodding until they understand the shape of the littlechangeling queen. And you know the Dawnmaker—she does nothing in haste.”
For all her glamour, Queen Liora was caution tucked away in pastels. No doubt a grand festival awaited—sometimes, the best disguise was peacocking.
Beyond the camp, the velvet plains ran on and on. “All that matters is keeping her alive.”
“Actually, that’s not all that matters,veyre.” Haskel sat back, suddenly sober. “Between the two of us, I’m the only one old enough to remember the end of Carys’s reign. It was?—”
“Terrible, I know. But Eury’s different.”
How many times had he spoken of Carys’s reign? Ever since I was a boy. Always with that haunted look. But I had never known he was a squire in the citadel while she reigned.Drystan’ssquire.
Haskel’s eyes narrowed as he considered me. “Drystan said the same of Carys. In the end, he stabbed her in the heart.”
“She was paranoid. Out of control.”
He was uncommonly silent. In the lull, the plains’ wind blew over us, singing its soft song. And I drew on the pipe like it could give me answers. Once more I shifted my gaze to the sky.
Haskel finally stood. His shadowed form appeared in my vision, and his voice was low when he said, “I like the girl just as much as you. But I hope, for all our sakes, that you aren’t so blind if the time should come.”
He stepped away, toward one of the tents. And I was alone again.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Eurydice
Mirek had spentthe morning reshaping me. He wove careful plaits, adorned my hair with canary blossoms, set the bramble diadem tight against my scalp. The dress did the rest—corseted, low-necked, green and beaded at the bodice, with a train long enough to kiss the grass. When I stepped out of the tent, the camp went silent. Haskel crossed his arms. The handmaidens turned. Dorian and Finch rose from where they sat, their eyes wide, almost reverent.
Mirek stepped out from behind me. “The queen is ready to meet the summer court.”
“More like the summer court is meeting her.” Haskel clicked his tongue. “They’d hate her even if she weren’t a changeling.”
Mirek leaned close to me. “The summer court relishes and hates beauty in equal measure.”
“Why is that?” I whispered back.
He touched my braid. “In Highmark, beauty is power.”
If that were so, then I would wear every dress he stitched for me.
We soon departed, and the carriage delivered us to Highmark before midday.
The wheels changed first. The soft rumble of the Queen’s Road gave way to something smoother, harder—courtyard stone, maybe, or marble. The carriage slowed even as something reached me through the walls. Faint, almost imagined, like a sound carried on wind from very far away. Strings. High and bright and layered over one another in a way I’d never heard. Then a harp, and another, and the music thickened until it pressed through every crack in the wood and filled the small space around me.
Through the narrow window, shadows passed over us in intervals, tall and regular, and I understood we were moving between walls.
The harps swelled. Other instruments joined—high, cascading, layered in a way I couldn’t follow. Voices, too, rising in unison. A welcome song, or a hymn, or a warning dressed as beauty. I couldn’t tell.
I pressed my eye to the window and caught a sliver: white stone, rising and rising. A banner, gold on blue, snapping in wind I couldn’t feel. A flash of blond hair in a crowd. Then the carriage turned and I lost it.
The air through the cracks had changed. Warm, sweet, heavy with something floral I didn’t recognize. Nothing in the Dip had ever smelled like this. Nothing in Sylvanwild, either.
The carriage slowed again, and stopped. Outside, the music softened but didn’t cease. Individual voices floated between the carriage cracks—murmurs, a laugh, the shuffle of many feet arranging themselves.
My heart slammed. I’d experienced this whole place through a slit.