She lowered her nails. “Because most will die. If not as children in the human kingdom, then in the trials that follow.”
She lifted her glass, swirled it, gazed into the liquid center. “You should have died long ago,” she said, her voice distant. “You’re small for even a Highmark fae. You’re fine but not remarkable with a bow or a sword?—”
Well, I had only had twenty years to Liora’s six hundred?—
“—and you managed to piss Rhiannon the fuck off. Which should have been your true death sentence.”
“I—”
“And yet,” she went on, blue eyes meeting mine, “here you are. The first changeling queen since Carys. You from Highmark, she from Sylvanwild. It’s been four hundred years since I last spoke to that bitch, and still I hear her rasping voice. Do you know what you have in common?”
I thought maybe I did, but I only shook my head.
She leaned forward, set the glass down. Her hands went to the table as though she would climb onto it. “You both crave power. You crave it like yourveyrecraves your love. You would claw until your nails fell off if it meant touching the edges of it.”
Her words were like blows, all three sentences. She had only metDorian once; how could she possibly know? But that was lost under the waves of everything else.
I found myself sitting bolt upright, part offended, but also…
Part seen. Part understood.
We were more than just mirrors of each other. Liora—Mira—and I were orphans. We were sacrifices to a great violent wheel that went on rolling and churning no matter who reigned.
She must have registered an expression on my face, because her lips parted into a wolf’s grin.
“I shall make you an exchange, young queen. It’s one you’ll want to consider carefully, because it will very likely mean the difference between your life and the loss of it.”
Hours later, Mirek’s fingers tightened on mine, his opposite hand cold at my waist. He’d insisted I wear my sleeping slip, to better feel my partner’s hand on my body. He moved me around the fountain in our guest quarters with frustrated, workmanlike grace. Every time I stepped on his fine leather shoes, he grimaced.
In one corner, Finch played a flute with several chambers. Haskel sat beside him, arms crossed and eyes shut. In another corner, Faun leaned against the wall, running a whetstone down the length of her rapier in long, unhurried strokes.
“What do you mean,” she said, coming into view as Mirek spun me around, “Liora willshow you the way?”
It didn’t matter now if Theia overheard our conversation from outside the door. What could she take back to Liora that Liora hadn’t already shared with me herself?
I spun back into Mirek’s grip, and this time he moved his foot before I stepped on it. “She’ll show me the way to the dagger,” I said, half dizzy. “Carys’s dagger.”
“Eyes on me,” Mirek said. “The eyes are where the seduction lies.”
I forced my attention onto my tailor. I didn’t want to seduce anyone, least of all the young fae men at the Festival of the First Light’s opening ball, but apparently, like fighting, it was the only way to dance.
“How kind of her. Breaks her fast with you and offers you Carys’s dagger,” Faun scoffed. “Why doesn’tshehold it, then?”
Mirek jerked me along with the broken notes of Finch’s flute, and I decided dancing was more violent than sparring. “I expect she can’t retrieve it herself,” Mirek said.
“And Eury can?” Faun scraped the whetstone again. “Why her and not the six-hundred-year-old monarch?”
Haskel made Finch lower the flute. “Isn’t it obvious?”
Mirek’s hand left my waist. He snapped his fingers. “Music, please!”
“The boy’s lips tire.” Haskel sat back. “And the girl does, too. You’ve twirled her so many times, her head’s on backward.”
We came to a stop, and when Mirek let me go I dropped to a seat on the lip of the fountain as the world dipped and spun.
Mirek yanked a handkerchief from his breast pocket and patted his brow. “I pity the man who requests a dance with her.”
“Perhaps I’ll just go around with my canines out,” I said. “That should fix the problem.”