I would take every lesson Liora had to teach me. I would be her sunlit protégé.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Eurydice
Liora stood exactlywhere she’d promised she would be: in the interior courtyard, slathered in midday sun. She wore brown leathers and stared up into the brightness of day with her back to me, her blond hair tied off in a low bun.
When my boot touched the sandy gravel, only her head turned. “I didn’t think you’d come.”
Around me, the courtyard spread in a wide rectangle. The center of it was nothing but gravel and elegant trees pruned to stay small.
“No?” My voice echoed off the interior walls lining the courtyard.
She turned toward me. “For one thing, I didn’t think you had the memory to find it.”
At breakfast, the queen had told me the exact set of turns that would take me from my guest quarters to this courtyard. She’d also told me about another secret door off mybedchamber—one none of my inner court had found in their search. It was so well hidden in my washroom, I hadn’t believed it existed until I’d spoken the Faerish phrase and my bathtub had slid aside to reveal stairs down.
She’d only spoken the instructions once. The way here had taken twelve turns; more than enough for me to get it wrong.
She stepped toward me. “And for another thing, I didn’t think you’d make it unnoticed.”
“Now you know how much I prefer to avoid my tailor’s dance lessons.”
She came closer, a small smile appearing. “It’s not your dancing you’ll be evaluated on at tonight’s ball. Nor your prettiness—though it does work in your favor.”
“Mirek will be very disappointed.”
“You have wit. That will serve you, too.” She stopped in front of me. “But what you’ll need tomorrow night, when the other queens arrive—when the three of us stand together and announce our intent to fight you in the trial—is none of those things.”
“What will I need?”
Her chin lowered. “The power of Carys. That alone saved her from three monarchs.”
She stepped right, and instinct stepped me left. We circled one another, our boots crunching over the gravel. “No one possesses that power. But the stag placed me inside her mind.”
Liora’s eyebrow rose. “A Sylvanwild trial? Clever. The stag birthed the longing in you, even if in memory.”
“Surely you want Carys’s power for yourself.”
Liora laughed. “No, young queen. She was destroyed by that power.”
The gambit was coming clear to me. If I succeeded in finding the dagger, I was as likely to be destroyed by it as I was to die without it. “Why offer it to me?”
“You’re just like her. And I liked Carys far better than I’ve liked any other queen.” One eyebrow rose. “And you’re a summer child where Carys was not.”
Those might be lies. They might also be truths. “I won’t very well be wielding her dagger at the ball.”Not without the sol key.
She tapped her temple. “The dagger is only one part. The other resides up here.”
I cross-stepped, still circling. “That kind of power takes a lifetime to earn.”
“I can give you enough of it. Enough to make them pause.”
Goosebumps rose on my arms, my legs. “My inner court ignores me.”
She paced slowly, methodically. “They don’t respect you.”
“I killed Rhiannon. I was crowned.”