“What I meant was,” she presses, “won’t it put you to sleep, too?”
The room falls silent, and the crackle of the fire feels almost deafening. I exchange a quick look with Basten—but I’m not sure what I read in his dark brown eyes.
“I’ll do what I have to,” I say quietly.
No one responds, and I can feel their doubts like mothwings beating against my face. Basten must sense my isolation, because he purposefully comes around to my side of the table, flipping through the book.
“Where did you find it?” he asks. “And where did you get the information about the fae court?”
I fidget with a loose thread on my dress sleeve, not meeting his eyes. This is a secret I’ve already kept too close, too long. Anyway, there’s no lie I could say that anyone would believe.
“It was given to me. By…Woudix.”
“Woudix?” Suri echoes with a gasp. “You saw him?”
I look away and nod.
The room goes still enough that my breathing rasps like dry autumn leaves. I’m acutely aware of everyone’s eyes on me, wavering with a million questions, but at the moment, the only person’s thoughts I care about are Basten’s.
I look up at him, my heart hammering, tugging so hard on the loose thread that I might unravel my whole sleeve. “I…should have told you. He’s…he’s visited me a few times.”
Instantly, I flinch. Maybe I should have lied.
After all, Basten lied to me too about knowing Matron White was alive.
Basten’s face is closed off to me, dark and cloudy like a night storm. The longer his silence stretches, the faster my pulse raps, setting off waves of panic that stab into my heart.
“You’ve been meeting secretly withWoudix?” He spits the last word with such vitriol that everyone in the room takes a step back.
“I only kept it secret because I knew it would upset you,” I rush to explain. “There are some things you don’t understand, that only fae can explain to other fae.”
“How many times?” he demands, his voice rising.
From the corner of my eye, I see Matron White exchange a look with Kendan that says“so much for wedded bliss”without needing to say anything at all.
“Only twice,” I blurt out, pulling harder at the thread. “He used the fae needle to come to me in the woods after our wedding, and?—”
“After our wedding!” Basten throws his hands up, pacing tightly in the small room.
“—and again, to give me this book,” I continue. “That’s it! We did nothing but discuss how to handle the fae court’s arrival. Woudix has as many doubts about my father as we do. He’s invested—if war breaks out, so much death upsets the balance of his realm. He came to me because he wants peace, too. That’s why he gave me the book. He risked everything to meet with me secretly.”
Basten stops short, trying to marshal his feelings. His chest rises and falls quickly. He closes his eyes, but when he opens them, there’s still the sting of betrayal there. “I accepted the role of your acolyte. Fully knowing that not a single acolyte has lived longer than a few months. If anyone bore a risk, it was me!”
“This is why I didn’t tell you,” I say, my own voice rising. “You don’t understand! You stand here telling me I have to work with Matron White, yet you hate the fae so much you can’t put it aside to see the benefit of working withthem.”
“No—that’s different.” He raises a finger.
“Is it? How? You’re the human king, why am I more interested in protecting your people than you?” I jab my finger into his chest.
Suri makes a small squeak.
Basten falls back as though struck by a battering ram, blinking hard at me. I close my mouth quickly.Did I go too far?
Suri’s gaze is glued to the carpet like a small child whose parents are fighting. Matron White is riveted, her arms folded as she stands by the fire and watches.
I shouldn’t have raised my voice.
Basten and I are king and queen—we should be presenting a united front.
