“This is a trick.” I sounded ill, hoarse. “Another lie. You?—”
When I came to the doorway, I found him sitting, hunched, on a narrow bed in the corner. The bedspread had a rip through the center; his fingers ran over the hole.
“I was twelve when he came into my home at night.” Dorian’s fingers kept moving over the rip. “First he killed my mother—ran her through with his sword while she slept in the other room. He stabbed my father in the neck with his short blade.”
I didn’t know whohewas. I didn’t dare ask.
“I woke to the sound of my father dying,” he went on. “Like he was choking on water. Found him with his hands at his bloody throat in the hall, on his knees. I heard footsteps and ran to my sister’s room. A man stood over her bed. He set both hands around the grip of his sword, and?—”
His fingers stopped moving over the tear. That was when I noticed the stain, what I had thought in the low light was some kind of bloom or pattern on the bedcover.
Old blood. So much of it. Like an overturned inkpot.
I didn’t hesitate. Maybe it was because I was back here, inside the walls. Maybe it was the spirit of my mother moving me. I still didn’t understand, not nearly, but I did know one thing:
Dorian wasn’t lying. The tremble of his shoulders wasn’t a lie.
Nobody could call me the comforting type. That had always been Elisabet. She was the one who’d hold you, who’d stroke your hair, who’d let you cry as long as you needed without a word spoken.
I wasn’t her. But I knew the language of pain, and of need.
I crossed the room until I stood in front of him. I set my hands on his head, fingers moving automatically into his hair.
He reached out, arms wrapping around my legs. He pressed hisface into me, inhaling and shuddering out a breath. A sound broke out of him, strangled, almost like the boy he’d been.
It felt like the most honest thing he’d ever said, and it hadn’t even been in words.
I’d never seen this kind of vulnerability from him, could hardly have imagined it. Had he ever been back here? Ever told anyone this story?
I remained silent, stroking his thick hair, the night punctuated by his noises. Not because I should, but because I wanted to. My hands kept moving, gentle and careful. My mind kept working.
When he stilled and his breathing became more regular against my belly, I said, “You called my mother’s death a mercy.”
He swallowed against his plugged nose. “I meant it.”
“‘I am like you, but I am not you.’ Do you know that riddle?”
He breathed out, long and slow. When he leaned back, a stroke of moonlight illuminated one eye and a wet cheekbone.
“Of course I do, Eury.”
“Then—”
“Changeling.” The word like a stone in a deep, deep pond. “It means changeling.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Eurydice
The old house was a tomb.It was Dorian’s home.
We retreated from the bedroom and his sister’s blood into the sitting room. We sat on creaking chairs, facing one another. He leaned forward, elbows on knees, hands clasped, eyes down.
“That night, Gawain took me.” Gawain. Cyrus. Maeronyx’s spymaster. “After he killed my sister, I attacked him. You can imagine how little that did—a twelve-year-old boy attacking Maeronyx’s best henchman. Gawain shoved an herb from the winter court into my mouth, and I remember nothing until days later. I woke up on the back of his horse, already in Noctere.”
“Gawain.” The name now felt like a curse. I wanted to wipe my fingers of his touch. “But you’re of Sylvanwild. And you were aboy.” Changelings were never boys.
“Rhiannon wanted to see if it was possible.” He rubbed histhumbs together. “A powerful male changeling would be its own kind of weapon.”