Mirek’s words echoed:Eyes forward. Never drop your chin.
Haskel had advised me to bat my eyes at all the men. Faun had told me to tuck a dagger into the bodice of my dress with the grip atmy cleavage. But it was Liora’s words from yesterday in the courtyard that rang loudest:Make the queens see you in front of the court. Make them doubt their own power.
At the end of the room sat the three queens: Liora, Iseris, and Maeronyx.
Only they mattered. Only they would face me in the Killing Fields.
So I didn’t cut around the edges of the ballroom. I didn’t veer toward the rest of my inner court, whom I glimpsed nursing goblets at the fringes.
I cut straight through the center, under the night sky.
Fae spread for me like fish in the spiritstag’s pond, their gowns flashing, their heels tapping. The musicians went on playing, and I approached the long table where the three queens sat.
They watched me like the Fates from the tale my mother used to tell as I fell asleep. Liora in yellow, Iseris in pink, and Maeronyx in black. Beautiful, straight-backed, their eyes and cheeks gleaming under their masks.
My mother used to say the Fates controlled the lives of humans, plucking and cutting strands like thread. Perhaps the Fates were, and always had been, Feyreign’s queens.
I arrived at the table, close enough that my gaze shifted down, and theirs up. I stood above each of them, and I didn’t hurry to speak. In politics, Liora had said, a queen never hurried.
I met each of their eyes—blue irises, green, and black. I spread my lips in a smile. “Queen Liora.” I nodded my head to her. “Queen Iseris.” Turn. Nod. “Queen Maeronyx.” Turn. Nod.
Each of them nodded back.
“A delight to see you all again.” I let my gaze settle on Maeronyx. “Lovely to be reunited. I’ve thought of little else since our tea.”
Her red lips parted, white teeth appearing on that pale face. She might have smiled or grimaced; it didn’t matter much which.
Her hand went out, the oxblood fingernailsglinting above a sleeve of black lace. She touched fingers across the table. "We must do it again sometime."
“Sit.” Liora gestured to the empty chair next to Iseris. “Let us show our unity.”
I came around the table, and a handmaiden pulled out the high-backed chair for me. I stepped in front of it, and she pushed it behind me as I sat down beside Iseris.Why in the gods’ name must it always be Iseris?
Tonight her curly hair sat bountiful atop her head and spilled over her small shoulders. She turned glinting eyes on me from behind a carnation-pink mask. “You are exquisite.” Her gloved hand fell atop mine in my lap. “I’m most envious. Do you know Mirek trained our court’s tailor? Yet there are none like him. My kingdom for a proper blind hem.”
Her kingdom for a blind hem. She actuallyhada kingdom to trade.
She tapped my hand. “You must lend me him soon.”
This was easy; this was banter. “Send me whoever did your hair and we’ll talk. Though I warn you, Mirek will weep when he sees what I look like without him.”
She let out a sparkling laugh and turned fully toward me the way Elisabet used to when we were girls. When we would gossip with one another on a pub’s stoop. “Deal. But if Mirek defects to my court willingly, that’s not my fault.”
How had this fae risen to the crown? But power didn’t always look the way you expected. My mother used to say it was the laughing ones you watched closest—the ones who made you forget they had teeth.
Iseris’s laugh tinkled on, but my attention had shifted. Across the table, Liora rose from her chair and lifted her glass. The crystal caught the light of a thousand candles as she tapped a spoon on it.
The musicians faltered. Conversations died in waves, spreading outward from the queens’ table until the whole of the ballroom had gone silent. Even the stars above seemed to dim their shine.
“My lords and ladies of the four courts.” Her voice carried without strain, that perfect melodic pitch. “We gather tonight not merely to dance and drink, but to honor an ancient tradition. The Queen’s Trial.”
She turned, and her gaze found mine.
“The newly crowned Queen Eurydice of Sylvanwild has declared herself her own champion on the Killing Fields.”
A murmur rippled through the crowd. I kept my face still, my hands tight in my lap. Iseris’s fingers squeezed mine, her shoulder pressing, as though we would not stand opposite each other in the Fields. Or maybe because we would.
“For the first time in four hundred years,” Liora continued, “a queen will step onto the Killing Fields not to watch her champion fight, but to fight herself.”