He’d sent the mirror wraith not to kill Eurydice, but to test me. How well I could protect her. How sharp I’d stayed overthe years.
Of course he would be here. Liora was no idiot; an alliance with Maeronyx was worth more than anything. No one was better at sussing out truths and weak points than her prized spymaster.
When noise sounded from elsewhere in the dungeon, I went still. Listening, waiting?—
Footsteps materialized, drawing nearer. I approached the cell door.
Half a minute later, an unfamiliar fae’s face appeared. “Step back.” One of the queen’s personal handmaidens, no doubt. Her voice brooked not a word of argument.
I did so. She unlocked it, and the door creaked inward. On the other side stood Queen Liora. She had traded her ballgown for simple fare—a silky robe that gleamed lavender under the crystal light. As though she’d prepared for bed and then thought to visit me down here.
“Touch her, and—” the young handmaiden began.
Liora raised a hand, and silence fell. The ancient queen’s gaze was on me. “Leave us.”
Of course I was no threat to her; I might be able to overpower her if I were feeling insane, but she could blind me in an instant. Any light source was a source of power, and even the low-light crystal here was more than enough.
The handmaiden disappeared from view.
“Taking a tour of your citadel?” I swept a hand out. “The dungeons are most becoming.”
She tilted her head, studying me. “So you are the one Gawain took.”
The instinct rose to throttle her. Liora knew the whole history between me and Gawain; probably Maeronyx had shared it all with her. And then the Black Frost had sent Gawain on his destrier down the North Road ahead of the Festival of the First Light.
Plotting. Always plotting, these queens.
“And now here you are, aveyre.” Liora’s gaze dropped to mychest. “I wonder what the stag saw in you. Do you feel the pull toward her like a painful thing, here in the dungeon?”
I did. I had suppressed the feeling so well, it only resurfaced when Liora mentioned it. Eury was somewhere above me, further away than I ever wanted.
I set a hand to my ribs. Liora’s eyes followed it. “What is it you want of me?” I asked.
Her hand came out. I almost swatted it away, but she was already touching the edge of my doublet where I’d untied it at the neck. She pressed it aside to reveal the stag’s brand.
“So it’s true,” she said. “The stag thinks you and she will bring it power.”
“The stag is a god.” I pushed her hand aside. “What greater power is there?”
She let out a silent one-note scoff; the edge of her mouth curled. “Don’t play like you don’t know the gods’ desires, Historian.”True.“Are you prepared to kill the girl, if she should become like Carys?”
Heat flared in my chest. “She’s nothing of what Carys was.”
“Such a delicate balance”—Liora’s hand lowered to her side—“between the fervency of your adoration for her and seeing her true.”
I said nothing. Fuck her and her twisted perspective of Feyreign and all who lived in it. For one called the Dawnmaker, she was no less capable of mind games.
"I’m sending her to the Kingdom of Storms," Liora said, as though she’d come to a decision. “To retrieve the dagger. And you will go with her.”
I blinked. Of all the outcomes I’d imagined rotting in this cell—execution, exile, an indefinite stay in Highmark’s dungeons—Liora letting me go wasn’t among them.
The stag had been right from the start:She will give her the key. She’d dangled the Festival of the First Light like bait, reeled us in, evaluated us in a thousand different ways—and now, just before the Killing Fields, she was giving us exactly what we’d come for.
Liora wanted the dagger.Every-fucking-body wanted thatdagger. Might as well callitthe queenslayer, for the power it granted. Wherever that dagger was, however Drystan had hidden it, even the Dawnmaker didn’t dare crawl down into that hole. Better to send the upstart changeling queen and herveyre.
“The sol key,” I said. “It’s real.”
Her expression didn’t change, but something flickered behind her eyes. "Old Haskel couldn’t keep his maw shut, could he?” She smoothed a fold of her robe. “It’s real, but it isn’t for you."