Her lips curled. “The dawn hawk’s wings are most powerful.”
I paused with a piece of ham halfway to my mouth.
“No exaggeration, young queen.” She took a sip from her glass. “Have you been much to see the spiritstag in his grove?”
“Once or twice.” Or three or four times.
“And did the antlered autumn god provide you with cryptic guidance?”
She knew. She knew exactly why I had made my choice. Perhaps she knew about my promise, and the desperation behind it.
She lowered the glass. Her lips were stained a beautiful plum. “You do know that the rest of us silly court queens will now have to meet your challenge.”
I bit into my rasher, chewed. Fear had been with me so long, the tightness of my chest almost felt like a friend. And truth felt like its companion. “That’s why the mirror wraith came for me last night.”
“Perhaps, or simply to test you. A proper mirror wraith isn’t even seen until the job is done.” She stabbed at her meat. “That won’t be your last tangle with death before the fortnight is through.”
No softening, no apology. Just a queen cutting her meat and informing me that people would try to kill me again, as if remarking on the weather. And that bluntness was more comforting than any reassurance.
“You have a terrible dining mask,” Liora said. “I can see the processing written all over your face.”
I focused on her. “Why help me?”
She let out that delightful laugh. “Oh, young queen. Do youknow how many times I’ve nearly met with death in the last six centuries?”
I didn’t answer. Didn’t even know how to.
Liora sat forward, pulling the neck of her dress aside. A terrible scar ran along her shoulder, up toward her ear. The sight felt intimate, almost obscene.
“This is one of thirteen marks.” Her voice was low, gaze level on me. “The others are in more indecent places.Of coursethere’ll be more attempts where all four queens are gathered, and one of them is a fresh-from-the-mud changeling whoslit her predecessor’s throat.”
Only one question rose to mind. I set my fork on my plate.
“How are you still here?”
She let go of the neck of her dress and sat back. “We Highmark fae may not have fangs, but we’re no less capable. Patience bears its own sharp edge.”
“Meaning?"
“If I accused everyone who tried to kill me, I’d have spent my entire reign at war with the other three courts.” Liora’s voice was light, but her eyes were not. “Great queens don’t confront would-be murderers over breakfast. We smile. We let them think they’re clever. And when the time is right, we act—decisively, without a word spoken.”
Rhiannon had tried to play a great queen. She’d had the right idea: destroy the other courts’ changelings in one night, thwart them without lifting a finger inside Feyreign. Yet she’d been too showy, wanted too much glory; she’d knocked down a wall and turned the sky green.
Liora nodded at me. “I see it in you, too, little blue eyes.”
She adjusted her posture until we were mirrors of each other, her hand hovering over the forks set beside her dish.
“That’s right,” Liora said. “You noticed it, didn’t you, the moment you entered this court? How alike we are. I could be your mother, your grandmother, your aunt, your cousin.”
She’d prompted a question that now rang through my mind?—
“I’m afraid I’m not any of those things to you,” she said, her voice sober. “Even though changelings are chosen from among the lowborn. My village was destroyed by the reigning winter queen. Every last one of my family, except for me.”
I stiffened, rapt. “Why?”
“A petty dispute.” She lifted her fingers as though to inspect her nails. “We were a border village, easy to fuck with. Our destruction wasn’t even a footnote in history. I suppose that was why I rose to power in the first place.”
My throat had gone thick. How long ago had she swallowed down the grief, rendered it a footnote in her own long memory? If she were anything like me, she preferred not to dwell. “Why are changelings chosen from the lowborn?”