Past Iseris, Maeronyx’s red lips curled.
“And so we three must answer.” Liora’s glass rose higher. “As is our right. As is our duty. In a fortnight’s time, we four will meet on the Killing Fields. There will be no champions. No seconds.” She paused. “Only us. The defeated will kneel, and the victorious will reign for a hundred splendid years.”
The silence was absolute.
Liora’s gaze swept the room, then settled back on me. “To Queen Eurydice of Sylvanwild. The first queen since Carys to stand for herself on the Killing Fields. May we all prove worthy of the fight she has given us.”
Around the room, glasses rose, my name in the mouths of a hundred, two hundred fae. Some spoke with admiration, some with pity, some with hunger, as though they couldn’t wait to see me on my knees.
By now, Eurydice had sunk deep inside. I was Mirek’s teaching and only that. My movements were his; my smile was his instruction.
I rose from my chair. I lifted my own glass.
Liora’s eyes glittered, waiting.
“To the Killing Fields.” I held her gaze and didn’t blink. “May the strongest queen rule.”
I sat down, my pulse quick. The ballroom had resumed its chatter, the musicians picking up their cheerful tune as though Liora had toasted to health instead of battle.
Iseris leaned toward me, her gloved hand finding my arm. “A fine addition at the end.” Her eyes sparkled behind her mask. “Your boldness is quite the gambit. You might reign someday.”
“Someday?”
“Once you’ve grown into your crown. This time you shall kneel, but in the future…” Her slender shoulder rose, and she winked. “Every court has its turn at the wheel.”
As though I’d made a brazen move with no real consequence. Perhaps, to her, that was so. Maybe she didn’t intend to kill me at all.
“Iseris,” I said. “I haven’t asked your age.”
“Two hundred and nine by the next moon’s turn.” She inclined her head toward me. “You must come to my birthday celebration. My master of confections is unparalleled.”
Two hundred and nine. I sat back in my chair and finally understood: every voice, every eye, every beating heart in this room believed in its own eternal cadence, except?—
The changelings. Three of them, besides me. Young women, easy to spy in the crowd; they stood uneasily near the walls, holding goblets and “wearing lowborn all over them,” as Liora might say. I didn’t recognize their faces—maybe they’d been plucked from the western or northern districts—but I knew their expressions.
Fear, torment, the wide-eyed knowledge of what they’d done or been made to do in the trials.
“What will happen”—I leaned toward Iseris—“to your changeling?”
She blinked at me, as though she didn’t understand. Then herface opened up. “Oh, my champion.” She picked up her drink and swirled it. “A fine home in Aurelia, with all the cheese and meat she can stand.”
She had spoken the words as they’d entered her head. An entire fate decided by Iseris’s imagination as she sat half-drunk next to me.
The musicians set off into a new song, and Iseris let out a delighted laugh, too bright, too easy. “I love a fast dance. Who should you like to take a turn with? You have your pick of noblemen, since you haven’t declared a consort. Oh, there’s Valerian; he’s the best dancer in Noctere.”
Her finger went out. The dancing had resumed, the room in lively motion. At least twenty couples danced, and I could barely differentiate one fae from another. Certainly not Valerian from Noctere. To me, each man was as dangerous as the next.
If I could help it, I wouldn’t even dance. I could imagine Mirek cringing from the corner of the room and drowning himself in drink if I took the floor. As it was, he’d stayed in his chamber so as not to horrify himself with all the poor lacework from the other courts.
When the dance had ended, the musicians went briefly silent. The fae parted from the center of the room, breathing fast.
“Oh, or perhaps Kane,” Iseris went on. “Now that I’ve pointed, he’s approaching. Put on your queen face.”
Queen face? Where I came from, a queen face was what you wore to ward off a man. I suspected Iseris meant something softer—regal, inviting, untouchable in the way that made men want to try. But I only had the one face, and it was made of ice.
My attention crystallized as a tall, slender man materialized from the crowd. He approached our table in a black suit with a pink kerchief tucked into the breast pocket and gave a low bow.
The other three queens nodded their heads at him.