“It isn’t a phrase we use—mortality isn’t really a concern for fae. But now I understand. Katherine.” He said my name with a shiver, making my breath catch. “Katherine. Yesterday, I—”
The door opened and the silver-haired guard from yesterday entered with a tray of food. Another remained at the door, bow trained on us—though I suspected their aim was centred on me after what the princess had said.
“Your lunch,” the silver-haired woman said as she placed the tray on the table.
With a deep sigh, Bastian released me from his embrace. “Only one plate?”
“The human dines with Her Highness today.” She beckoned me with a jerk of her chin.
His jaw clenched, but I smiled and touched his arm. “Looks like it’s my turn for questions.”
He caught my fingers as I turned away. “Remember what I told you about Tenebris being different from Lunden.”
Different rules apply. Never reveal your heart.
“I’ll be careful.”
Wrists in manacles, I followed the guard on a different route from the one we’d taken yesterday. The iron was no worse than when we left it late in the day to touch and my awakening poison made me nauseous. Periods were more uncomfortable.
We passed through narrower corridors—this had to be a private area of the palace. Just as we stopped at a door, it opened, and a girl pulled up short as if leaving. Fourteen or fifteen years old, she had golden brown curls that wafted from the movement of the door. Her black, wide-set eyes narrowed as she gave me a long look. Not a cruel one, but curious, like I was a strange and unusual creature.
I knew those eyes—their match watched from the table further inside. She had to be Sura’s daughter.
Already taller than me, the girl craned to one side. “Are your ears really blunt?”
Sura cleared her throat. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”
The girl huffed a breath out of her nose and inclined her head. “Of course.” She passed us.
Before we entered, I glanced down the hallway and found her eyeing me.
“You’ll have to excuse her,” Sura said as I took a seat and the guard unfastened my manacles. “She’s never seen a human before.”
A pair of gloves waited with my table setting, and I pulled them on, glad to not have to look at the purple stain returning to my skin.
How many of her people had I killed? I didn’t dare ask.
I swallowed as the guard took up a position by the door. “Your daughter?”
“What gave it away? The eyes or the attitude?”
“The eyes—just like your mother’s. Though her hair isn’t a colour I’d expect from Dusk.”
A momentary stiffness flickered over her features and she looked away. With a quiet word and a tap on the table, she summoned a platter of meat and cheese with pickled vegetables, and a board laden with steaming bread and a pat of butter.
The scent had my mouth watering. Perhaps she hadn’t fed us last night so we’d be all the more eager to eat—and talk—today.
“Like my grandmother’s, too. My sister was the only one who didn’t have the same eyes. Hers were like starlight. A pale violet blue shade.”
Nothing about the golden brown hair. Sometimes what a person didn’t say revealed as much as what they did.
“Please”—she gestured to the platter—“eat. No poison. No ill intent.” As if to illustrate, she took a little of each item on her fork and ate it.
So, I loaded my plate and noted that the princess served herself rather than having someone wait on her. While we ate, she asked about Tenebris, seemingly innocuous questions, but I measured my answers. As Bastian had said—things you might hear on any street corner.
Once the table was cleared, she signalled to the guard, who ducked out. Sura sat back, swirling a glass of crystal clear wine, watching me.
I had chosen water—there was no telling how strong their wine was, and I needed a clear head if I was going to avoid spilling any secrets. Busying myself topping up my glass from the jug, I refused to take the bait and ask what she wanted.
A moment later, the guard returned with another fae. His shaved head was covered in celestial tattoos, with a thin crescent moon on his brow.
Something in the room changed—a subtle shift in the air. Magic.
I squeezed my glass and smiled at the princess, though inside, my heart beat harder.
“I’m trying to work out what kind of person you are,” she said at last. “Bastian is… what I expected. Loyal to my mother. Convinced of the virtue of the split courts. Committed to peace, no matter the cost.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You think peace costs as much as war?”
“It isn’t free. It costs whatever is sacrificed to maintain it. You must know some of what he’s done.”
Torture. Killing. He carried that price. I raised a shoulder and sipped my water.
“A cost to him,” she went on. “And a cost to those whom peace doesn’t serve. The ordinary folk caught in the crossfire between Dusk and Dawn. You must’ve heard about the executions.”
They didn’t execute people publicly as we did in Albion, but the fact they’d been killed based on such paltry evidence was bad enough. A dull headache hummed behind my eyes.
“The shapechangers shunned by both sides. Bastian’s peace requires the silence of all these people—their complicity in their own oppression. That doesn’t sound like much of a peace to me.”
“How noble.” I smiled sweetly. “You missed out the princesses desperate to take the throne. I’m sure whatever plan you’re trying to convince me of will help them a great deal.”
She snorted—a genuine sound of amusement and surprise. “I think I understand why Bastian likes you enough to become an oathbreaker. I knew it wasn’t only the hair.”
So she’d picked up that piece of information from the capital, but she didn’t know about the attack. There was a delay in her lines of communication. Another note for Bastian.
“The system is broken, and I had hoped Bastian would help me fix it now he’s grown up, but…” She sighed into her glass, shoulders sinking before she took a long draught of wine. “He’s too convinced by the pretty picture my mother paints—that she wants Dusk to be powerful and not only herself. That she’s committed to the balance of the courts. It would be lovely if it wasn’t bullshit.”
She had ordered him to focus on the Circle of Ashes rather than Hydra Ascendant. He seemed to believe it was so Dawn couldn’t get their hands on the relic and use it first, but… what if it was purely for her own benefit? The woman who’d used the story of her daughter’s death to warn me away from Bastian—I could believe she would do that.
But I rolled my eyes as though unconvinced. “And don’t tell me—Your Highness knows the truth and has evidence of how evil the Night Queen really is.”
“Not evil so much as… self-interested.”
I cocked my head. “Isn’t that what evil really is?”
“A little self-interest is no bad thing. But it comes down to the lines you’re willing to cross. The price you’re willing to pay.”