When we came out of the barracks yard, Dorian stopped in the middle of the street, turned, and stared at the high middle walllike a tapestry. And for so long, it had been that to me: an impossible dream, an entry into highborn life none of us would ever know.
The street lay empty. Even so, we were exposed out here, potentially recognized. I stood close beside him. “I don’t suppose there are handholds up this one, too?”
He turned to me, sudden and breathless. “We don’t have to go on. You could stay here.”
I dragged my gaze off the wall. “What?”
His face was half-hidden in the shadow of his hood; only his mouth and jaw were visible. He gestured back, toward the southern district and the Dip. “You could stay. Live your life.”
“As what? Everyone thinks I’m dead.”
“Be anything you want. Go to another district, if you like. One of the inner districts. Be a highborn. You’ve been part of the Sylvanwild Court long enough to know how it goes.”
A jag of irritation tightened my chest. “We’ve been sent here by Liora. Someone will come looking for me.”
“I’ll tell them I killed you,” he said. “They’d believe that, from me. Far more likely a story than letting you go.”
“You’re myveyre. That doesn’t just end?—”
He took hold of my arm, backed us toward the side of a building. “Didn’t you notice when we left Feyreign?” He let out a small noise like a laugh or a scoff. “The thread is gone.”
My hand came up to my breastbone. He was right; I hadn’t felt it since the moment we’d stepped through that mirror into the cave.
The stag’s spell was gone. We were free from one another.
“I’m not yourveyrehere,” he said. “That was why I agreed to bring you home, Eury. To give you a chance.”
Home. This was my home.
And yet…
My mother was dead. They were all dead. Should I live my life beside that crater?
I stepped closer to him, fingers clenching. “A chance atwhat? What is there for me here, exactly? Don’t say a life. You destroyed that.”
His lips pressed together. Good. Let it hurt.
His hand on my arm was gentle. His voice was even gentler. “Back that way is death. Not kneeling—dying.Three queens waiting to dismember you in the Killing Fields. Don’t think Liora has your best interests in mind because you’re flaxen and Seelie.”
“I’ve never been so stupid as to think any of you fae would have my best interests in mind.”
“And yet you’ve played into her wishes.”
“I’ve played intomywishes, Dorian.”
He stepped closer, chin lowering. “Is that it, then? Is that why?”
“Why what?”
“You could have a sweet life. You could have a husband, children. You could die in your bed whenever you so choose—or never, if you choose that. Don’t you know what you’re giving up?”
Fool. Fae fool. So he’d sat in the pub and walked the streets a few times, smelled the afternoon rains and thought he understood.
I bent, grabbed up a handful of dirt where the street was broken up and unrepaired and the acid had eaten through the stone. “Would you choose this?”
“Dirt?”
I squeezed my fist until the dust poured through my fingers. “Acid pouring from the sky. The green haze, the sting in your nostrils, the long stretch of barrenness as far as you can see.”