She turned away and stepped to her door, paused with her hand on it, half-turned her face. “You’re wrong about one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Carys didn’t best three queens because she held the dagger. She bested them because she was Carys, and no one else could hold it. Isn’t that so, Historian?”
Already the pull toward her was growing. No doubt she felt it, too. “It’s so.”
That night, sleep was as ephemeral as a wraith. The pull toward Eury was stronger than ever; I wondered if the aching pain of it would ever ease. Every time I touched my bedsheets, I remembered with greedy clarity the night we’d been together, her silky skin under my fingers. The way she’d looked at me like we existed in a world made for us.
Those eyes were intoxicating. Behind them lay depth, power, calculating intelligence.
Eventually I would have to tell her about the darkness I’d been shown in the stag’s vision. She would like that even less. But if I knew her at all, she would submit to what it meant. That hunger for power pulsed through her veins as it did mine.
I left my chambers not long before dawn. Tonight would be Rhiannon’s funeral, a sendoff of the bloody, impulsive queen of the last century. And a chance for me to see Eurydice.
Down in the depths of the tree, the citadel’s larders offered endless foodstores imported from all over our lands and the other courts—fruits, meats, cheeses, preserved jams and pickled vegetables. I stood in the dark empty space, rooting through an assortment of apples when a voice said, “Poisoning the queen’s fruit? If you were a better spy, you’d know she hates apples.”
Faun appeared at my side, a pear clutched in one hand. She brought it to her face and took out a large bite. She chewed, staring at me in the dark.
She reminded me of Liese. She always had. The two of them were always poking, prodding, as sharp as tacks. The sight of Faun always brought on the memory, and a jag of grief.
I plucked a green apple from the bushel and rubbed it on my shirt. “You’ve come a long way from restocking the larders, yet here you are in the gray dawn.”
“Once a servant, always a servant.” She swallowed. “You haven’t slept.”
“Sure I have.”
“Writhing in your bed doesn’t count.”
I bit into my apple. The tang spread over my tongue. “You’re down here rooting in the stores at the wrong hour, same as me.”
“Fair.” She took another bite, and the two of us came out of the larder and leaned against the scullery counter. “The spiritstag’s mark. What does it mean?”
“It means I’m the queen’sveyre.”
She punched me in the shoulder. It actually hurt a little. “Stop being a shit.”
“It means…” I rolled the apple between my fingers. “I don’t know what it means, Faun. The stag showed me a vision.”
Her eyes gleamed in the dark. “Tell me.”
“A darkness. An underground vastness. And in the middle of it…”
“Yes?”
“The dagger.” My voice had gone soft, almost reverent. “Carys’s dagger, gleaming like a jagged blue candle’s flame.”
She stopped chewing. The silence felt holy, maybe even fearful.
“Where?” she finally asked. “Where is it?”
“I don’t know.” No one knew that. Carys’sveyrehad hidden the dagger so deep, so well, it was thought lost. When I’d first read about it, I had thought it a myth. “But it’s real, Faun. And I’m meant to help her find it.”
“You sure the answer isn’t in one of your books?”
I rolled my eyes. “You don’t think I’d have remembered?”
“There are a lot of fucking books in that library of yours.”