The King of Faerie (Stariel Book 4)
Page 17
“You may plant it now.” Rakken sounded resigned.
Hetta instructed Stariel to form an appropriately sized hole in the centre of the circle. Maybe I should take up gardening as a hobby, she mused. Since I get to cheat at digging. “Is there some special trick to planting it?”
“I think it will work regardless,” Wyn offered, so Hetta plonked it ungracefully into the hole.
For a moment, nothing happened.
And then, like a candlewick catching, foreign magic blazed up. Stariel responded instantly, and Hetta had to push the land back.
Stariel subsided, and the dusken rose grew. The stunted black stick grew glossier and sent out shoots in all directions, forming thick, thorn-covered vines. They wound around the confines of the circle until they found the arch, speeding over it with startling rapidity. Leaves unfurled, huge and heart-shaped with jagged edges. Pale buds sprung up between the leaves, each the length of a finger but tightly furled. Through Stariel, Hetta could feel the dusken rose’s roots burrowing into the earth, and she hastily extended the containment circle downwards, containing the archway within a globe of wards.
When the astonishing growth ceased, the dusken rose covered the archway and ground around it with a thick mass of vines, leaves, and pale flower buds. It felt different. Hetta glanced at the others to see if they felt it too. Jack was glowering at the archway; Caro’s nose was wrinkled as if she smelled something unpleasant. Ivy had one hand pressed to her mouth, though it was unclear if this was in delight or alarm. Hetta felt somewhere between the two herself.
“How do we open the Gate?” she asked.
Wyn stepped forward, touched one of the buds, and drew a finger softly around the petals. The petals began to unfurl and grow at impossible speed, until the flower—the dusken rose—bloomed bigger than a person’s head. The petals had been a perfect unblemished white, but as they spread, they began to darken to a deep, glowing crimson, pulsing like the embers of a fire. The Gate shimmered to life, showing a view not of Stariel but a foreign garden full of vine-covered archways, where dusken roses glowed in the twilight.
Hetta gripped the invitation firmly in one hand and took hold of Wyn with the other. They stepped through.
The world turned over. She couldn’t feel anything, not even the breath in her lungs, and when they emerged, she sucked in air like a swimmer emerging from a dive. She caught a whiff of cherries and beeswax.
“Welcome to the Court of Dusken Roses.”
Part II
To Faerie
19
The Court of Dusken Roses
Hetta’s first impression was: green. Green everywhere. Plants and trees grew in profusion, bursting with life and colour. The air clung to her skin, and she smoothed her hair, feeling how the humidity was already making it fluff. Hastily she wound an illusion into it so it wouldn’t lose its sleek appearance.
Was this the rose garden Rakken had spoken of? There were more dusken roses here, pulsating like embers amongst the rampant greenery. The archway they’d emerged from was made of an iridescent blue stone she recognised as star indigo—a substance only found in the Indigo Mountains. Until now, she thought uneasily. Had the rock sprung into existence when they activated the Gate, or had this location been pre-prepared? More archways were hidden among the shifting shadows, all different in appearance, but she couldn’t examine them more closely with Princess Sunnika right in front of them. Which one was the Butterfly Gate?
“Your highness,” Hetta said in greeting.
Princess Sunnika sized her up; Hetta returned the scrutiny.
Sparkling gems hung from the princess’s cat ears, not totally dissimilar to Wyn’s horn-jewellery, and she wore a long-sleeved, high-necked gown the shimmering colour of starlight. Every small movement made the dress’s shining threads glitter. With a shock, Hetta realised the dress was made of a fine mesh of sparkling threads, the fabric flowing lovingly over every curve and making it extremely apparent that there wasn’t anything under it.
Was being provokingly under-dressed a common fae habit, she wondered, thinking of Rakken’s dressing gown? Not that Princess Sunnika could be said to be under-dressed, exactly. The dress was extravagant, if shocking, and with her normally sheet-straight black hair heaped into a waterfall of curls and adorned with twinkling gems a few shades paler than the cherry-pink tips of her hair, Sunnika looked exactly like a fairy-tale princess, if a very adult one.
Hetta smoothed her own dress self-consciously. Her own outfit—or at least, the illusion of it—was fashionable, but it certainly wasn’t made of magical stars, and she knew she was wearing practical everyday garb underneath it, even if no one else could see it. The next ball we go to, I’m wearing a proper gown, dash it, she decided.
“Princess,” Wyn said evenly, putting a proprietary hand on Hetta’s elbow. Princess Sunnika’s attention shifted to him, and Hetta didn’t appreciate the way her eyes lingered on the exposed skin at Wyn’s collarbone.
“You are bringing him as your Consort, Lord Valstar?”
Hetta nodded. She’d requested this, but the title still felt extremely odd. “I am. And no one will harm me or him, if we come to this party?” It was rude to question the invitation, but she found she wanted the reassurance more than she cared about giving offence.
Princess Sunnika’s eyes narrowed. “So long as you do not break guestright, I, on behalf of my aunt, Queen Tayarenn, grant you safe passage. DuskRose will not harm you tonight. Follow me.”
Despite the twilight hour, it was warm enough that Hetta unbuttoned her coat as they walked out of the rose garden and up a gentle slope. Huge leaves the size of her head swayed to either side of the path. String music played from somewhere out of sight, an instrument and melody she didn’t know, but not unpleasant. Tiny lanterns floated in the air above head height, each one glowing a different colour. They weren’t illusion.
“The Rose Palace,” Princess Sunnika indicated. Emerging from the jungle like a flower was an enormous palace painted in bold colours. It was built as a series of interconnected courtyards and buildings, each one rising higher than the last. The many roofs curved into steep points, and carvings lined their edges. Wound about the whole were vines blooming with enormous flowers in a symphony of colour.
Hetta caught her breath, enchanted despite her apprehension.
Princess Sunnika led them through an archway and into an open-roofed courtyard, which turned out to be a dance floor filled with an astonishing variety of fae. At one end sat a dais with an empty throne, but Princess Sunnika spared it only a single glance, though her tail switched. Giant leopard-like cats in every colour of the rainbow lounged on the piles of cushions lining the room’s edges. The nearest lifted its head, baring alarmingly sized canines. Hetta would’ve frozen except for the gentle pressure of Wyn’s hand on her elbow.
“Shadowcats,” he murmured, looking meaningfully from the leopards to the catlike fae amongst the dancers.
Oh. He’d told her that greater fae were shape changers, and she’d seen Princess Sunnika’s ears and tail, but she hadn’t realised… She swallowed. Well. What a good thing they’d come here with the intention of getting on DuskRose’s good side.
But even the shadowcats in full cat form were almost normal compared with some of the dancers. A pair of impossibly tall fae with fine blue fur, flat noses, and spindly gazelle-legs spun each other in long-limbed circles, their long necks a head and shoulders above the crowd.
Wings fluttered in wild abundance—bat-leather, dragonfly-glass, feathers of every colour and shape—alongside an equal variety of horns, claws, tails, fur, and pointed ears. Gender was impossible to discern in many instances and seemed to make little difference to who danced with who in any case. The strange shapes and colours were only eclipsed by the costumes—or in many instances, complete lack thereof.
Hetta blushed and looked away from a dark-haired man with scales around his eyes, who was dressed in little more than an artfully draped scarf that completely failed to cover any of his key areas. Confirmation—if she’d needed it at this point—that the fae held very different opinions on public nudity.
Wyn certainly managed to keep that under wraps, she thought wryly. Literally. More than a decade of starched shirts and waistcoats.
A fae the size of a child hovered in mid-air by the archway, bumblebee wings humming, but it was no child in truth, his features holding an adult’s awareness.
“You may announce us,” Princess Sunnika told the bumblebee fae. He stared at Wyn with wide, unblinking eyes that lacked whites. His irises were curiously shaped, like flower petals, and the sight was unsettlingly familiar—Gwendelfear’s eyes had had that same curious pattern.
“Her Royal Highness Princess Sunnika Meragii of the Court of Dusken Roses. Lord Henrietta Valstar of the Court of Falling Stars.” The bumblebee fae paused. “His Royal Highness Hallowyn Tempestren of the Court of Ten Thousand Spires.”
A susurration passed through the ballroom. The dancers didn’t stumble so much as ripple gracefully, as if each had swiftly adjusted their movements to compensate for their surprise.
Hetta knew what it felt like to hold a crowd’s unfriendly focus, but she’d never observed it from the outside—for this crowd’s attention wasn’t for her. Hundreds of heads turned towards Wyn, and the air grew thick with hostility. His wings pressed tight against his spine as he faced them, but his expression didn’t crack. She squeezed his arm.
These people were at war with Wyn’s. Why hadn’t she fully grasped the weight of that till now? So many eyes, glittering with malice. How many fae had died in the war with ThousandSpire?
And he would’ve lived in this court if he married Princess Sunnika. He’d told Hetta it would’ve been easy for his father to frame DuskRose for his murder. That was an understatement, if anything. Quite a lot of the fae looked like they wanted to slit Wyn’s throat there and then.
They can’t attack him without breaking guestright. Princess Sunnika invited him here; we’re under her protection. Hetta held the reassurances close, though they felt inadequate against so many people wishing Wyn ill. We only have to survive this for one evening. But how were they going to slip away from these predatory gazes to use DuskRose’s Gate? And could they really convince DuskRose to support their union, even in so roundabout a way as they planned?
Princess Sunnika held out a firm hand to Wyn without looking at him. “Dance with me, Prince Hallowyn.” It wasn’t a request.
Hetta appreciated that Princess Sunnika was showing public support and reminding her court that Wyn was an invited guest and not to be harmed. This in no way stopped the jealousy shooting through her, hot and humiliating. She pushed it down irritably. This was no time for such pettiness.
Wyn’s feathers shifted, and he raised an eyebrow at her.
“I’ll be fine,” she told him. But aren’t we supposed to be finding the Gate? She tried to communicate the latter with her own eyebrow raise.
“Later,” he said, which wasn’t a very satisfactory answer, but she supposed he couldn’t really say more in a ballroom full of eavesdroppers.
Hetta frowned as he and the princess joined the throng. She’d never considered herself particularly prone to jealousy, and it was silly to start now—Wyn didn’t want to marry Princess Sunnika, and Princess Sunnika had released him from their engagement. So why did watching them feel like she’d downed a bottle of vinegar?
Because he looks like he belongs with her more than he does with you.
She sucked in a breath at the thought. Despite the court’s hostility, Wyn was fae; everyone here was fae. Unlike her. Was this what Wyn felt like, at Stariel, this chasm of difference between him and everyone else?
My child will be fae. She stopped herself from resting a hand over him or her just in time. Would her and Wyn’s child be winged and horned? Would he or she belong here, in this court of strangely shaped people?
Does Wyn ever wish I had wings?
The thought had never occurred to her, and she wished it hadn’t now. Now wasn’t the time for this kind of introspection or insecurity, not when they needed to show this court a united, confident front. Besides, Wyn loved her and both of them would love this child, regardless of its features; she knew that, and even the sight of an irrefutably fae and beautiful Prince Hallowyn Tempestren dancing with an equally beautiful fae princess couldn’t shake that certainty.
She watched the pair until a low voice purred behind her, close enough that breath tickled in her ear.
“Lord Valstar, I take it?”
She spun, her pyromancy flaring up in alarm. She had to curl her nails into her palms to stop flames bursting forth, a sign of how on edge she was.
It was the dark-haired not-enough-scarf man, and Hetta’s eyes went, inevitably and regrettably, to the place that most lacked scarf. She yanked her gaze away, and scarf-man smirked and rested a hand on his hip. This didn’t improve matters. She fixed her attention firmly above chin level, on the pattern of scales that curved along his cheekbones.
He waved a hand towards the floor. “Would you like to dance?”
“Ah—” Would it offend him if she said no? Hetta decided she didn’t care. “No, thank you.”
Scarf-man—and now she couldn’t think of him by any other name—tilted his head. “Something more…intimate, then, perhaps? I have never been with a human.” His smile widened. He had unnaturally sharp teeth.
Hetta blinked. Did he mean what she thought he meant? Surely she’d misunderstood. But she hadn’t; the state of the scarf made that readily apparent. A laugh of sheer disbelief bubbled up, but she pressed her lips together to stop it from escaping. Fae men probably didn’t like being laughed at any better than mortal ones, and angering a random member of DuskRose wouldn’t help her find the Gate they needed.
Maybe I should suggest he show me his etchings in the rose garden, the more pragmatic part of her nature suggested. But no, that would probably not be wise. Better to slip off there alone when they reached Wyn’s nebulous later.
“Definitely not,” she said firmly.
Scarf-man shrugged, not at all offended. “As you like, then,” he said and wandered off.
Hetta stared after him, struggling with a sense of spluttering outrage. She’d never considered herself particularly prudish, so it was somewhat lowering to learn a bit of Aunt Sybil lurked in her own soul. There must be a drinks table about, surely? But no, she should keep a clear head even if her stomach didn’t rebel at the prospect.
Unfortunately, scarf-man’s approach broke the ice, and she found herself fending off increasing amounts of fae interest. Their fascinated gazes unsettled her, as did their remarks. Hetta had dealt with contempt and disapproval before but never…whatever this was. It wasn’t hostility, exactly—not like the way they’d looked at Wyn—but it wasn’t a warm reaction either.
It came to her in a burning fury that their attitudes were those of people prodding an exotic animal to see how it would react—as if she herself wasn’t quite a person to them. She curled her fingers into even tighter fists, and Stariel pulsed through the stone in her ring, a thin and weak connection. I am not going to set things on fire, she chanted to herself sternly.
Scarf-man’s was not the only proposition she received, nor even the most blatant, little gods save her. Despite the open air above, the ballroom began to feel claustrophobic, with fae pressing in on all sides, eyes glittering, asking impertinent questions about Stariel and the mortal world but mainly about her relationship with Wyn, probing for any weakness. When she answered as best she could, they tittered at off-kilter moments, for reasons she didn’t understand, and they made snide remarks to each other in languages she actually didn’t understand. Why hadn’t that occurred to her before now? It did seem unlikely that all fae would speak Prydinian, but she’d never questioned it
before. And yet, they all spoke Prydinian to her.
I’ll have to ask Wyn about it. She tried to find him in the mess of dancers—how long was this dashed dance going to go on for anyway? Her heart jerked when she failed to spot either him or Princess Sunnika. Sweat broke out on the back of her neck, and she let out a shaky breath, then made herself take a deeper one. Her stomach gave a worrisome roil.
Panicking wouldn’t help her, and nor would fainting in a ballroom full of hostile fae. There was no reason to assume the worst. Wyn was probably just temporarily screened from view—it was a large room, and there were a lot of people, even setting aside the luxurious greenery growing over the walls and making it hard to define the room’s edges.
Hetta pushed through the crowds, searching. Each glimpse of feathered wings or pale hair lifted her heart, only for it to come crashing down when she saw it wasn’t Wyn. The world began to spin in an alarming way. She let the tide of the crowd push her into a side-eddy through an archway, stumbling into a smaller and thankfully less populated courtyard with—thank Almighty Pyrania and all the little gods—seats. Seats thankfully not occupied by giant leopards.
Hetta sank down onto one of the benches and spread her fingers across the cool stone, focusing on her breathing and drawing on the thin line of connection to Stariel to steady herself. The nausea began to subside.
The bench she’d chosen was in the shadow of a fountain in the centre of the courtyard, upon which stood a larger-than-life statue of a male shadowcat. His stone face fiercely surveyed the courtyard, and he held a spear in one hand, his tail curled in an S.
Something about him was strangely familiar, and Hetta was staring at his stone features, puzzling at why she thought that when something moved atop the statue. A small paw appeared on the statue’s stone shoulder, followed by a muzzle as a leopard cub pulled itself up. It met her eyes and let out a mew of surprise, its grip slipping. It fell into the fountain with a splash.