by Bec McMaster
He’s the one mystery I haven’t been able to solve.
He reaches one of the final turns of the maze and glances over his shoulder. A lock of raven-dark hair tumbles over his brow, and I catch my first glimpse of alpine-blue eyes. They’re amazing eyes. Even with a veil of shadow between us, they make my breath catch.
Okay, maybe it was the eyes that caught Soraya’s attention.
She’s always had a thing for pretty fae lords with sulky mouths and dangerous intensity. Or lords who are clearly up to no good, because Mistmark is obviously meeting someone here. Someone he shouldn’t be.
Maybe someone female?
I wonder what your dearest Belladonna will think of this….
We slip through the maze, and Mistmark clearly knows where he’s going, because within minutes he paces into a clearing where a hundred oak trees stand apace, clipped into uniform precision. It’s not the heart of the maze, but one of the “rooms” inside. We passed dozens of them: a fountain carved of alabaster—shockingly white against the reddened leaves of the maze—stood alone on a field of lawn carefully mown into checkered squares akin to a chessboard; a water garden edged by hedging caught my eye; a dozen cascading pools babbled like a brook in another; a folly; a grotto; even a spun-glass butterfly house, with dozens of tiny winged fey trapped inside.
“Where are you?” he calls softly.
A figure appears from around the trunk of one of the mighty oaks. I start, because although I’d scanned the garden the second I approached, I didn’t see him there.
It’s a fae male I don’t know.
Someone fairly prominent, judging by the dark green velvet coat and the diamond earring stabbed through his ear. It glitters like a star. Despite the clean lines and cut of his clothes, the way he wears them tells me he likes to look good. His cheeks are so smooth I want to run my hands over them just to check if he even grows stubble, and the way his hair is raked back looks like he’s spent a decent allotment of time soothing it into place.
Mistmark, on the other hand, is simple good taste.
Black velvet. Black leather gloves. Slightly scuffed boots. Careless hair.
It’s all expensive—and I’m fairly certain I recognize a glint of demorari silk embroidered into elegant roses in the weft of his coat, which is the latest of fashions in the southern courts—but Mistmark looks as though he paid good money to a tailor or three, and simply let them loose on his wardrobe.
Something simple. Something fashionable. Make me look like a groom who’s comfortable in his own power, and not someone forced to bend knee before another court…. Nothing too fussy….
Whereas the blond looks as though he made half a dozen tailors and their assistants sweat as he pored over every scrap of fabric, and then fingered the seams before sniffing and insisting they did them again.
My eye lingers on the newcomer. Even from the shadows, his hair gleams like spun moonbeams. There’s an uneasy sensation within my breast—a feeling I know this stranger, when I could swear we’ve never met in our lives.
I study his face, but no recognition dawns.
I’ve never seen him before. I’m sure of it.
“Well?” Mistmark tugs his leather gloves from his hands, finger by finger.
“It is done,” the stranger says. He tosses Mistmark a scroll of paper. “You’re playing dangerous games. Malechus won’t appreciate it.”
“Malechus started the game,” Mistmark says coldly. “If he doesn’t like my rules, then he shouldn’t have challenged me.”
Ooh, interesting.
The stranger laughs under his breath. “I admire your brashness, Alaric. Very few seek to take on the Prince of Knives, and few do it out in the open like this.”
Mistmark unfurls the scroll, a faint smile edging his lips as he examines it. “You found the questing beast.”
“It found me.” The stranger flicks a speck of dust from his sleeve. “It could scent me, even if it couldn’t see me.”
“You look none the worse for wear, Falion.”
“Tell that to my hunting leathers,” Falion drawls. “The bitch can breathe fire. It took me all morning to lure it into the maze and then I had to make a hasty retreat into one of the ponds, where I managed to finally lose her.”
A questing beast? In the maze? A little shiver runs through me. They’re usually monsters formed of several different animals and viciously dangerous. Some say they were fae who were cursed or betrayed by former lovers, and now they seek to take their vengeance on all fae.
Or maybe they lose the part of themselves that retains any sense of identity and become merely rage-driven beasts hungry for fae flesh, consumed with an unwitting fury for all of my mother’s kind.
Rule number twenty-six in the unwritten Codex of Thieves: Do not try to steal from a questing beast, unless there’s a knife to your throat.
“What’s it going to eat?” Mistmark murmurs.
“Hopefully the bride.”
They exchange a long, steady look.
“Unkind,” Mistmark says, his lips quirking in a smile. “I don’t want her dead.”
“Who? The questing beast? Or Belladonna?”
Mistmark laughs. “You’re in a rare foul mood, my friend.”
Falion pushes past him, running a hand through his hair. “My boots are ruined, I’ve lost my best knife, and I’m not allowed to kill Malechus. You promised this would be fun. So far, your description of the word doesn’t seem to match mine.”
“What’s not to enjoy?” Mistmark spreads his hands wide. “There are beautiful women everywhere you look, and weddings are prone to make them sentimental. You might get lucky and have someone take pity upon you.”
“Ha, ha.” Falion crosses his arms, flicking lint off his sleeve. “I’d laugh if I wasn’t so certain you were going to end up with your heart cut out of your chest.”
“Belladonna’s no more allowed to renege upon this bargain than I am—”
“I wasn’t talking about your intended,” Falion drawls.
That cuts through Mistmark’s smile. “Yes, well. Allow me to worry about that. First we have to find her. And my bridal tithe?”
“Safely guarded by that fire-breathing bitch.”
“Excellent.”
“I was talking about the beast, not the woman who’s going to cut your throat. Nobody’s getting near it until this ceremony is over, and I can retrieve it but—"
“Play nicely.” Mistmark taps the scroll against his lips. “We’re one step closer to getting this noose from around my throat and rescuing her. You can afford to smile for once in your life.”
“I wouldn’t want to steal all those ladies from their lords.”
Mistmark contains a laugh in his fist.
What noose?
A little quiver runs through me. This marriage has never made sense, but if Malechus is blackmailing Mistmark into joining his house….
But how?
Or rather, what?
And this bridal tithe…. I was right. It has to be the horn.
It’s always expected—when marriages are conducted between courts of unequal power—that the lesser of the courts is the one to provide a bridal tithe to the more powerful court.
But why would Mistmark give it to the questing beast to protect?
Is he planning to double cross Malechus?
I Sift closer, slipping from shadow to shadow. It’s easy here, where the hedges cast large banks of shade.
I can see their faces better now.
Mistmark is still gorgeous, his features cut from the mold of the Blessed courts. But I can’t stop my attention from shifting to Falion’s face. There’s something… ethereal about his features. Finer, sharper, more dangerous than any other fae I’ve ever met. His cheekbones are cliffs, and his mouth is as soft and full as mine. Light gleams off the angles of his face as if it suffuses him.
The thought sets off a slow-burning twist of anxiety deep within me.
He looks a little like me.
> I turn and press my back to the oak I’m hiding behind as my heart erupts into a stampede. I can’t stop myself from grabbing a twist of my moonbeam-pale hair.
I have my mother’s eyes and hair.
It’s a rare combination among the fae courts. They’re comprised of all the colors of the rainbow, and I’ve always considered my pale skin to be a curse my father’s bloodline afflicted me with.
But what if it’s not from my father?
My fingers tremble. There’s a pearlescent glow beneath my skin if I let my glamor slip. I haven’t let it show through in years, indeed, keeping it locked away within me is more natural to me than breathing these days.
I steal another glance at this Falion, at the ripples of light playing over his features. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say his glamor was relaxed in the presence of his friend, and he wasn’t bothering to hide the gleam within him.
“Captured starlight,” my wet nurse once told me. Then her face had twisted in a rare moment of warning. “You shouldn’t let your father see it.”
I’ve never known who my mother was or where she came from.
“You could simply refuse to marry Belladonna,” Falion says. “Or I could cut her throat and end this before it’s begun.”
Mistmark turns toward his friend sharply. “You know what happens if I refuse the marriage. I will not let it happen. No. We bide our time. We make the exchange. And then we turn this all on its head and—”
The stranger suddenly looks up, and his head turns, as if he’s scenting the air.
“Falion?” Mistmark tenses in response. “What is it?”
“There’s someone here,” the stranger whispers, and his gaze locks right on me, as if he can penetrate my veil of shadows. “Someone watching us.”
“Who?” Mistmark draws steel, turning toward me.
I’ve seen enough.
I clench my fingers shut, obliterating that faint gleam, and vanish in a whirl of darkness. It takes a half dozen leaps before I feel there’s enough distance between me and the pair in the heart of the maze, but my heart keeps skittering like a rabbit’s.
He knew I was there.
He turned and looked right at me.
Falion.
I don’t know who he is. I don’t know his face. But I know him, deep in my heart.
I finally clear the maze, the landscape rushing by, and then I stumble out of the shadows just in time to snatch a glass of wine from a servant’s platter. I steal a little acorn cake from a different servant, and press close enough to a group of fae women that I might be considered part of the group if anyone was to look.
Just in time.
Two seconds later, Falion appears at the entrance to the maze, his hands in his pockets as he surveys the gathering on the lawns.
He cleared the maze impossibly fast.
I throw my head back and titter as one of the ladies makes a ridiculous joke, and then sip my wine, stealing glances of him out of the corner of my eye.
Pasting a smile on his face, he prowls into the gathering, but he’s clearly looking for someone.
Now I know who is he is.
He’s the Lord of Mistmark’s assassin. He has to be.
Every court has one, and while they’re usually less… visible, Mistmark would want to keep his well in hand in an enemy court.
And he somehow saw right through my shadows.
8
Two hours later, there’s no sign of Keir.
What is he doing?
I pace the party, trying to hold my own with people I don’t care about and trying to avoid both Falion and Mistmark. Someone laughs about how “Malechus is keeping such a close eye on dear Anissa,” and the group I’m passing all exchange secret smiles. I slip among them, hoping for more information, but the only other thing I glean is that with Belladonna marrying, Malechus’s stakes as a bachelor just increased.
And that’s when I finally see Keir, surrounded by a flock of pretty fae woman.
Our eyes meet across the garden.
This was my idea. But I hate the way it feels to see him with a pair of handsome blondes practically perched on his knees.
Stop it, I tell myself. They’re hardly perched upon him. And they’re gigglers. He hates gigglers….
It doesn’t matter if he hates gigglers or not, because he’s doing exactly what you asked of him.
“Stop staring at him. Stop staring at him. Stop staring at him,” I whisper under my breath, and turn to intercept another servant with a tray of iced lemons.
I’ve eaten three already.
But I should have been watching my back, instead of Keir.
“The Lady Merisel of Greenslieves,” Belladonna purrs, linking her forearm through mine as she slips out of nowhere. “Walk with me.”
Clearly, there’s little choice. “An honor, Your Highness, though are you not busy with your forthcoming wedding?”
“For you, I’ll make time.” She cuts me a smile and leads me toward the maze.
What is with this maze?
If I were Malechus, I’d send a dozen dryads into it to hide, and I’d have every secret that’s available at this bloody court.
The thought makes me look closely at every tree in the row. Not a single face is revealed in any of the trunks, but a shiver runs down my spine regardless.
And then my mind helpfully conjures a recap of Mistmark and Falion’s conversation.
Not helpful.
It’s a big maze. It’s not as though the beast will be lurking near the party….
You can always throw Belladonna at it….
“The wedding celebrations have been lovely thus far,” I say, though I’m terrible at small talk.
And who needs to make it right now?
Clearly, she’s not dragging me in here because she thinks I’m a stimulating conversationalist.
I can get away, I remind myself. She can’t chase me through the shadows.
“Then thank Malechus.” Is there an edge to her voice? “He’s the one who’s hosting this entire mockery.”
Mockery? I cut her a look. “You care not for the Lord of Mistmark?”
“I care not for marriage.” Belladonna turns directly toward the wall of trees on our right and whispers something to them. The trees shift apart—they actually uproot themselves and walk—and then we’re facing a low stone wall, a little secret garden in the middle of the maze.
There’s even a door with a brass knob.
Belladonna pricks her finger on a needle she has tucked in her belt, and then presses the welling bead of blood to the handle. The door swings open, and she shoves me through into a walled garden filled with dozens of nocturnal flowers.
A circular pool dominates the little garden. The moon’s reflection shimmers there, and though gorgeous night-blooming blood lilies decorate its surface, I catch a glimpse of little foxfire lights dancing among their red petals.
I don’t dare go closer, just in case the flowers ensorcel me.
This is the Court of Blood, after all, and something has to feed them. Beneath the surface are bound to be yards of tangled vines. Hungry, strangling vines. It’s what gives the plants their name.
I face the princess. “What is going on? What do you want?”
“Poor, sweet Merisel,” she says, watching me with her back pressed against the door. “I’ve had my eye on you from the moment you arrived, did you know?”
I arch a brow. “Me?”
“I wondered what sort of woman had stolen his heart,” she says coldly. “I wondered what sort of woman had survived the plot that saw my sister killed.”
Ah. She wants to know how Narcissa died. “It was a terrible thing—”
“A terrible thing indeed,” Belladonna cuts me off. “I saw the horror in her eyes when Prince Keir had her body returned to us. And I know my sister. Narcissa feared nothing. And yet some sort of dream-forged monster stains her corpse with terror? I think not.”
I can see the wall again and those hands c
lutching for safety.
Narcissa was entombed alive and by the time Keir had her chiseled free of the marble, she was long dead.
I very nearly suffered the same fate.
The horror of that moment lingers still, like a phantom fright within my heart that needs only receive a single thought of remembrance in order to rear itself again.
“Your sister was brave,” I say softly. “But Calliope was… a monster.”
I don’t even know if that was the truth. I liked her. Until she decided to kill me, I thought we were friends. But from what she’d said, her mother had poisoned her mind. She spent years telling Calliope she was special, and that if she ate Keir’s heart she would be able to transform into “what she was meant to become.”
“You’re a liar.” Pushing closer, Belladonna suddenly digs her fingers into the barely-healed wound across my hip.
Despite years of conditioning, I hiss and grab her wrist.
Her green eyes light up. “Ah. Then I was right. What were you doing in Anissa’s maid’s room last night? Come to finish the job?”
“The job?” I push her hand away from me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. And Anissa? The Lady of Withenwold? I barely even know her. Why would I be in her rooms?”
Belladonna’s lip curls. “I know you’re up to something, you poisonous little toadstool. I don’t deem it coincidence that you were there when my sister died, and last night I just happened to cut an intruder in Lady Anissa’s rooms with my magic. Show me your right side and prove it wasn’t you.”
Protest dies on my lips. If I refuse her, she’ll know for certain it was me. “Would I not still be bleeding if it was me that you’d cut?” The dress I’m wearing is a confection of black silk, with ample amounts of flesh showing. The fabric drapes around my throat, crosses in the front over my breasts, and then flows into my skirts. My lower back and navel are bare and there’s a gold collar around my throat that holds it all together. It took me two maids and a lot of guesswork to get into it.
And some inventive cursing toward Keir.
I tug one of the pieces of material aside, revealing the curve of my right flank. The skin there is pink and tender. “See? No cut. I bumped into the corner of the vanity this morning though, so I daresay I’ll expect a bruise.”