I think of the Roach’s offer, to go with them to another court. To start over in Faerie. Both feel like giving up, but what else is there to do? I thought that once I was home, I’d come up with a plan, but so far I haven’t.
“I couldn’t leave tonight,” I say hesitatingly.
She gasps, hand to her heart. “You’re seriously thinking about it.”
“There are some things I need to finish. Give me a day.” I keep bargaining for the same thing over and over: time. But in a day I will have squared things with the Court of Shadows. Arrangements will be made for Cardan. One way or another, everything will be settled. I will wring whatever payment I can from Faerie. And if I still don’t have a plan, it will be too late to make one. “What’s a single day in your eternal, everlasting, interminable life?”
“One day to decide or one day to pack your bags?”
I take another bite of sandwich. “Both.”
Vivi rolls her eyes. “Just remember, in the mortal world, it won’t be the way it is here.” She goes to the door. “You wouldn’t have to be the way you are here.”
I hear Vivi’s steps in the hall. I take another bite of my sandwich. I chew and swallow it, but I don’t taste anything.
What if the way I am is the way I am? What if, when everything else is different, I’m not?
I take Cardan’s royal ring out of my pocket and hold it in the center of my palm. I shouldn’t have this. Mortal hands shouldn’t hold it. Even looking closely seems wrong, yet I do anyway. The gold is full of a deep rich redness, and the edges are smoothed by constant wear. There is a little bit of wax stuck in the impression, and I try to root it out with the edge of my nail. I wonder how much the ring would be worth out in the world.
Before I can persuade myself not to, I slip it onto my unworthy finger.
I wake up the next afternoon with the taste of poison in my mouth. I had gone to sleep in my clothes, curled around Nightfell’s scabbard.
Although I don’t really want to, I pad down to Taryn’s door and knock on it. I have to say something to her before the world turns upside down again. I have to make things right between us. But no one answers, and when I turn the knob and enter, I find her chamber is empty.
I head down to Oriana’s rooms, hoping she might know where I can find Taryn. I peek in through the open door and find her out on her balcony, looking at the trees and the lake beyond. The wind whips her hair behind her like a pale banner. It balloons her filmy dress.
“What are you doing?” I ask, coming in.
She turns, surprised. And well she might be. I am not sure that I have ever sought her out before. “My people had wings once,” she says, the longing clear in her voice. “And though I’ve never had a pair of my own, sometimes I feel the lack of them.”
I wonder if, when she imagines having wings, she pictures herself flying up into the sky and away from all this.
“Have you seen Taryn?” Vines curl around the posts of Oriana’s bed, their stems a vivid green. Blue flowers hang down in clumps over where she sleeps, making for a richly perfumed bower. There is nowhere to sit that doesn’t seem crawling with plants. It’s hard for me to picture Madoc comfortable here.
“She’s gone to the house of her betrothed, but they’ll be at the High King Balekin’s manor tomorrow. You will be there, too. He’s throwing a feast for your father and some of the Seelie and Unseelie rulers. You’ll be expected to be less hostile to each other.”
I cannot even imagine the horror, the awkwardness, of being dressed in gossamer, the smell of faerie fruit heavy in the air, while I am supposed to pretend that Balekin is anything but a murdering monster.
“Will Oak go?” I ask her, and feel the first real pang of regret. If I leave, I won’t get to see Oak grow up.