“Here,” the female blue fae said, stopping before a door inlaid with stained glass. It depicted the Queen of Light surrounded by mortals busily creating art of all different forms. The light court was also known as the court of muses, so I assumed this depiction was of her inspiring them, though all the art the rendered mortals were creating seemed to be of the queen herself.
One of our guides pushed open the door and escorted us inside. There was the familiar swirl of uncertainty as the doorway took us where we were going, and then I stepped into an enormous throne room.
Fae thronged the sides of the room, leaving the path between door and throne unobstructed. The Queen of Light sat on a throne of gold, the metal glowing with the light emanating from her so that trying to stare at her was like gazing at the sun. I looked away, studying the room instead. There was less art here than in the halls, though the walls still sported several towering tapestries, most of which depicted the queen. The crowd murmured when we entered, but a hush fell around us at the appearance of the two winter guards carrying the stretcher with Lunabella’s body.
Falin and Dugan kept their heads lifted, their steps seemingly carefree and purposeful as they strode toward the golden throne. I tried to mimic them, rolling my shoulders back to prevent myself from cringing under the scrutiny as I walked.
The queen became easier to look upon as we approached, her radiant glow less blinding, which made no sense from a scientific standpoint but was perfectly logical for Faerie. She wanted her presence to cause awe, but she also wanted to be adored. We had to see her to marvel at her beauty.
And she was beautiful. Her golden hair cascaded over one shoulder in an intricate braid hanging all the way to the floor. Her gown was the color of sunset accented with gold. She smiled, and my breath caught in my throat. The urge to fall to the ground before her struck me so hard my knees buckled. I wanted to prostrate myself and beg to be allowed to remain in her presence and bask in her radiance.
Glamour.
I knew it was glamour, but that didn’t temper the urge. I forced my shields open, just a crack. Enough that I could pierce glamour, but hopefully not let more of it into my mind.
Her glow diminished significantly. She was still beautiful, still radiated power, but the urge to throw myself at her feet lifted. I let out the breath that I’d been holding; it tasted old and a little too nervous for my liking.
The queen gazed down at us benevolently, and yet, maybe it was only because she looked so much like her younger sister, I thought I caught a hint of cruelty in the curve of her smile, malice in her bright blue eyes. Falin bowed at the waist, not going down on one knee like he did for the Winter Queen, and then he straightened immediately, not waiting to be released. I wasn’t sure if that was because he didn’t owe the same level of respect to another monarch, or to show he wasn’t being cowed by her glamour that whispered that we should worship her. I followed his lead, dipping into a respectful, but short, curtsy.
A golden eyebrow arched at our actions, but the queen didn’t say anything until her gaze moved past us to the two winter guards with the body. Then her lips twisted as if she’d bitten something sour.
“Take that elsewhere,” she said, waving a dismissive hand. Then she seemed to remember she was supposed to be sad about her courtier’s death. “How very tragic for . . .” She searched for Lunabella’s name, but when it didn’t come to her, she finished with a simple, if delayed, “. . . her. I’m sure she will be missed.”
Not by the queen, obviously.
“Your Majesty, we were wondering if we could speak to some of her friends,” Falin said, keeping his words bland but his tone respectful.
“And why would you want to do that, knight of my sister?”
“Her death was of a most unnatural cause,” Falin said, and I gave him a look out of the corner of my eye because that was an understatement if I ever heard one.
“That seems like it would be my and my court’s concern. Why would you look into it?”
“Because she was involved in a murder in the winter court,” I said.
The queen’s golden eyebrow rose a little, and her mouth quirked in a maliciously pleased way that made me think I shouldn’t have said that.
“That sounds like an accusation, little planeweaver. Surely my sister did not send you here to challenge my court?” Her tone was mocking as she asked the question, and I fought the urge to cringe back. “Or perhaps it was you who put such ideas in her head, dark prince?”
“Oh, Lexi. Always dragging everyone around you into trouble,” an eerily familiar voice said behind me.
I whirled around. A yard behind me stood a gold-cloaked figure. The hood was low, obscuring the face hidden beneath it, but I knew that voice. Only two people called me “Lexi.” The Winter Queen, and her nephew, Ryese.
I knew it. Not that I could take any joy in being correct.
I opened my mouth, but Falin put a cautioning hand on my arm. Right. If the Queen of Light took an accusation against a fae whose name she couldn’t even remember as a slight against her court, she was unlikely to think too favorably of me accusing her son of masterminding all our recent troubles. I bit back what I wanted to say and instead gave Ryese a sickly sweet smile.
“You’re alive,” I said in a syrupy tone to match my smile.
The malice radiating off him made the air between us prickle. Then he gave a low laugh that cut at my skin.
“In a manner of speaking.” A hand emerged from the cloak, the skin grayer than any Sleagh Maith I’d ever seen. He pushed the cloak over his shoulders, leaving the hood, but exposing his other hand. At first I thought he wore a black glove, but then I realized that the skin was shriveled and dark. The flesh was black like char, not the purple black of a bruise like my own basmoarte-fouled hands. The arm attached to that hand was skeletally thin, atrophied.
Iron poisoning.
Ryese had smuggled an iron dart into Faerie with the intent of assassinating the Winter Queen. We’d barely thwarted that plan, I’d been injured, and the queen all but driven mad. When Ryese had been revealed, Falin had driven that iron dart into Ryese’s palm. And it had destroyed Ryese’s entire arm. It didn’t look like he had any movement in the dark, twisted fingers, and the arm certainly had no strength.
As if he’d been waiting for us to take in the condition of his arm first, he then lowered the hood of his cloak. The black veins of iron poison had reached all the way to his face. He’d always been a particularly vain man. I’d found him more pretty than handsome, and one side of his face still was. The other was a twisting mass of dark scars.
One dark scar reached the side of his lips, and they drooped on that side, giving him a perpetually lopsided frown. His eyes had always been pale, but now the one on the damaged side of his face had clouded over, the pupil lost in what was certainly enough damage to cause blindness in that eye. Even his hair, which used to glitter like cut crystal, was now dull and limp and had been sheared short.
I glanced at Falin and saw he was thinking the same thing I was: There was no way Ryese could have decapitated Lunabella and Jurin. Even if the two nobles had been incapacitated already because of the fouled magic in their system, their heads had been cleanly severed. Ryese’s dominant hand was mangled. He wore a dagger at his waist, but even if it was a magical blade that could cut through anything, I doubted it could have done the work in the clearing. Not in the amount of time between the shadow cat startling and Falin and Dugan reaching the bodies.
“Ryese!” The Light Queen hissed his name like an admonishment.
He ducked his head and pulled up his cloak, covering his face and ruined arm.
“My deformity disturbs the golden throne,” he whispered, the words hard but meant for me, not the light court.
I might have felt bad for him, except he’d poisoned me and made a damn good attempt to kill me. Twice. I held a grudge.
Also, he was still the best candidate for Lunabella’s scarred prince. Just because he couldn’t have been the one who held the blade didn’t mean he wasn’t the one who commanded it. But we were missing another conspirator in this party. I was guessing someone with a tie to the shadow court, as we’d already found our leak in winter. Someone had helped get murderers in and out of the shadow court with Kordon’s body and Dugan’s dagger. And then there was the shadow spy that had been watching my ritual. We were definitely still missing someone.
Of course, we still didn’t have proof that Ryese was involved with any of it. Him being alive wasn’t exactly condemning evidence. Though it did strike me that the poison he’d chosen this time mirrored his own scars. There were differences, and I bet he would have tried iron itself if he could find a way to control it, but the dark veining of basmoarte disfigured his victims in a similar way to his own scarring. That couldn’t be a coincidence.
“You fainted on the shortest day,” Ryese said, and the words held menace, not concern. The unasked question of How did you survive? hung in the air.
I smiled at him and rolled up my sleeves, leaving my untainted arms mostly bare. The fouled magic was completely concealed by my black gloves, so I looked unmarked. I could all but feel him scowl under his hood.
“Yes, planeweaver, I did hear that you collapsed during the revelry,” the queen said, drawing my attention back to her. “I sent my best healer, but she said you were dying of a wasting disease and there was nothing that could be done.” She made a face that came off as a pout, though I think it was meant to be sympathetic. “You seem much improved now.”
“I had to purge the poison in my magic,” I said, very aware of Ryese at my back. “I am much better now.”
It wasn’t a lie. I was far better. I just wasn’t cured.
“How very fortunate for you,” she said, flashing that beautiful smile with its cuttingly cruel edge. “And how unique your abilities.”
I bowed my head in acknowledgment, because what was I supposed to say to that?
“You are familiar with my son?” She asked the question pleasantly, but there was more under the current of her words, and I wasn’t sure what.
“We’ve met,” I said flatly. “He is an . . . accomplished alchemist.”
The queen frowned. “He dabbles. Now tell me why you really came to the court of light.” There was compulsion in her words, I could feel it. We had been invited to her court, so she couldn’t outright harm us without it being seen as an attack, but in the might-makes-right way of Faerie, she could use any magics against us that didn’t directly harm us.
No one answered. Dugan was old and a prince, Falin carried all the blood of the winter court and the magic from the knights who had come before him, and my own magic offered me a degree of protection. She was going to have to try a hell of a lot harder if she wanted to compel us.
She apparently realized that as well.
The compulsion flowing off her thickened, wrapping around us.
“You insisted,” Dugan said, and that was true enough; she had. But he wasn’t falling under the compulsion or he would have said more. We’d intended to visit the court of light, one way or another.
The compulsion grew stronger again, the queen clearly unsatisfied. If I squinted, I could almost see the golden threads.
What I could see, I could touch.
Reaching up, I exerted a small amount of magic and batted the tendril of compulsion away. The queen’s brows bunched for just a moment as I contacted the tendril, her small nostrils flaring in a microexpression of pain. The compulsion glamour drew back, but a small purple stain covered the place where I’d touched the tendril of magic.
I glanced at my hands where my basmoarte infection still raged under my gloves. An infection I’d just spread to the queen.
She’d asked about my health before she’d used magic on me. I’d indicated that I’d managed to cure myself. Had she known about the basmoarte? Had she been part of her son’s schemes?
Or had I just accidentally started the slow assassination of an uninvolved Faerie monarch?
Crap.
Chapter 20
If the queen realized she’d been infected, she gave no indication. She looked mildly annoyed, but that seemed to have more to do with the fact that we wouldn’t fall for her compulsions than anything else.
“Yes, I did insist,” she finally said, responding to Dugan’s earlier answer. “It was alarming to see you in my sister’s morning room. I was caught quite off guard.”
So she invited us all here?
I glanced at my companions. Both wore carefully blank faces. I tried to mimic them but knew mine still held a hint of my confused disbelief. Even if she wasn’t colluding with her son, she was definitely scheming. Of course, she was a Faerie queen. That was kind of like saying she was breathing.
She hadn’t asked any questions, so we didn’t answer. We’d gained about as much out of this trip as we were likely to get. She’d made it clear we couldn’t question her people—or even suggest it without giving offense—but we knew Ryese was alive and in the light court, making him our prime suspect. Anything else was gravy. We just needed to be dismissed and take our leave until we could put together enough evidence to force the queen to hand over her son for crimes against the winter and shadow courts.
The queen pouted prettily at our silence. “If you are looking for a new, stronger court, dark prince, I would gladly accept you here.” She gave him her best benevolent smile again. “And there is a place for your betrothed, as well. I could always use a planeweaver.”
“You are very well informed,” Dugan said, but I blanched at the words.
Very few people knew about my supposed betrothal. How had she learned of it?
To cover my reaction I said, “Your sister would be most displeased if I left her court.” Not that I had any particular loyalty to winter, but still.
The queen laughed, a soft tinkling sound that made Faerie itself laugh with her. “She is my younger sister. Younger siblings are used to their older siblings taking their things. It makes them good at sharing.”
Yeah. No. “Good at sharing” wasn’t something I’d ever use to describe the Winter Queen.
“So what say you, Cousin? Are you ready to come into the light? I could even offer you a council position,” the queen said, and the fae closest to her throne, who I guessed were her current council, looked among themselves nervously.
“I must humbly refuse your generous offer,” he said, bowing stiffly.
Her eyes narrowed. “I thought you were smarter than that. Your king’s plan to restore his court is doomed to fail. I will not make such a gracious offer twice.”
Again, he bowed. “The rumors of your generous offers are whispered throughout shadow. Many of my courtiers have left to take a place in your light, and yet I see so few of them here.” He looked around the assembled fae.
I looked around as well. I hadn’t really paid attention to the gathered fae individually, but only noted them as a group. Now that I looked, though, I noticed that the gathered fae were the least diverse I’d seen. All were what humans would call beautiful. None were of the monstrous or less humanoid variety.
There were a few wings, but all were feathered like what one might find in a Renaissance painting of angels; a very few were bright like giant butterfly wings. None were leathery, tattered, or membranous, though I spotted some fae that I could tell by height and facial structure should have had such wings. Instead they wore ornate cloaks, keeping them out of sight. Several fae wore elaborate wraps or headdresses that hid horns or hair that contained leaves or feathers. Fauns wore pants and skirts with their hooves shoved in shoes. There were no trolls or giants towering over their neighbors, or small goblins or noseless brownies. No one had extra limbs, or bodies twisted in unexpected ways. While there were fae with skin tones of
every shade of the rainbow, there were few who sported unusual textures to that skin. I did spot one fae who appeared to be made of living stone, but I could only tell by the pebbles surrounding her eyes—the rest of her face was obscured by a heavy veil. There were certainly none of the far more grotesque fae I’d encountered in the shadow court.
“Anyone or thing of beauty is welcomed in my halls,” the queen said magnanimously.
Dugan kept searching the crowd, his frown growing. I could almost see him counting how many faces he expected to find that were missing. Where are his former courtiers?
“You’re sure they were coming here?” I whispered the question as quietly as possible, and he gave me the smallest nod.
The queen didn’t seem to notice. She turned to me.
“And you, planeweaver? Will you join my court?”
“I am under contract to winter until my year and a day as an independent has expired.” It was an easy out that let me not answer the question.
“And I suppose you’ll go to the shadow court after that?”
I didn’t know what I’d do after, but I had nine more months to figure it out. I doubted I’d go to shadow, though. I liked my life in the mortal realm, and I needed to be tied to a seasonal court to remain outside Faerie. I didn’t say as much only because Dugan was at my side.
“I’m undecided.”
The queen pressed her full lips into a line. “I see. You’ll understand if I’m reluctant to allow you that choice.”
I frowned at her. It wasn’t her decision.
“Oh, don’t get me wrong, I have nothing in particular against shadow. But their loss is my gain, so you repairing the nightmare realm would impact me most severely. I would take it as a personal attack.”
Grave Destiny Page 29