Her eyes narrowed. She knew my bluff.
Truth was, I couldn’t. What little sleep I did get felt feverish.
“Don’t ask me to sleep tonight,” I said. “Not here.” In the home of the Dawnmaker. In the court of the oldest queen alive. There was a reason she was the oldest.
Her hip touched the doorframe. “You wish I hadn’t named myself my own champion.”
I loved and hated her directness. I didn’t know where to begin, how to explain my feelings.
No queen had ever been her own champion, not since Carys. When Eurydice had announced it, her words sank like stones in my stomach. All of us there in that throne room knew what this choice meant.
Four queens would step into the bloody grass, draw their weapons, summon their magic…
Best to be simple about it. “Yes, I wish you’d refused the stag. I wish three queens didn’t want you dead.”
“They would have wanted me dead for slitting Rhiannon’s throat under acid rain.”
I shook my head. “Rhiannon was a pale simulacrum of a queen.They’d have been grateful to have her gone. You’re asking three queens tokneelin the blood like servants.”
“You think it was the wrong decision,” she said. “But a decision implies I had a choice.”
I turned fully toward her. “Youdid.You could have let yourself become a wraith in that grove.” I didn’t want that—not one fiber in me wanted it. But shedidhave a choice, and she hadn’t once acknowledged it.
Her lip curled, teeth appearing. “You think more innocents should die to the wheel. What about boots on necks and fucking diadems?”
A deflection, and an attack. “I didn’t say that. Not the first part.”
“And the second?”
I worked my jaw, averted my eyes toward the fountain.
“Well, Dorian? Are you a part of the wheel, or aren’t you?”
Every time she said my name, I felt it from crown to toe. Perhaps because it was in that accent, the one pervasive through the Kingdom of Storms. She had that lilt I’d hardly heard in twelve years.
No matter how much history I doused myself in, no matter how well I learned the fae language, how high I rose in the Sylvanwild Court… it was there. It was there on her tongue, and in my chest.
“I can’t see you be ripped apart,” I said, finally, so quiet I could barely hear my own voice. “That’s what they’ll do, Eury.”
“You think I’m already dead.”
I shifted my gaze back up to her. Beautiful, miraculous under the moonlight through the stained glass. Liora’s announcement about the trials hadn’t yet come, not until the other queens arrived for the festival. But it would, as sure as the sun would peek through the glass above us.
Once again I heard the stag’s voice:She will give her the key. Liora, the sol key. But what ifshewasn’t Liora at all? What if the key wasn’tthekey? What if the stag was full of shit?
My unease stretched between us.
Eury’s breath came slow, even. She said, “In case you’ve forgotten,I killed one queen already.” She turned away, disappeared from view. Her footsteps padded over the rug, and the bed creaked as she climbed into it.
She was right, but that was Rhiannon, and this was… the entire monarchy. And I was just supposed to trust in a god’s cryptic words andwait.
For tonight, all I could do was stay awake. Stay awake and watch.
The night deepened. Haskel snored. Eury and Faun slept, their breathing rhythmic. All was still, quiet?—
Until it wasn’t.
The hairs rose on my nape. Goosebumps on my arms. The rims of my eyes pulsed. I heard nothing, and yet my fingers tightened around my sword.