Wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I wind my ribbons back around my wrists and meet Chrys’ eyes gravely. “Put your pixies to work containing the gossip. Remind the sirens and the blasted winter wind who their true king is. Pan isdeadand any talk of an heir is treason. I’ll have Marina meet you with payment.”
“Long live the Carrion King,” she intones with a respectful dip of her head.
Chrys pours two full glasses and hands them to me, before nodding to the rickety staircase leading to the small rooms upstairs. “Adira is already waiting for you.” She cedes a sly smile at the look on my face, and simpers with a wink, “I’m sure you can handle it.”
I’m struck with the absurd urge to laugh which is preferable to what I should probably be feeling—fear. Adira is not one to be‘handled’. Ever. She is a storm to weather on your best days, and one that drowns you on your worst.
Her and Willa in the same room will be a tempest that probably isn’t survivable. But what made me a good captain, and an even better king, is that surviving has never been one of my goals.
“Keep the drinks coming,” I tell Chrys with a mad grin, and head upstairs to face my fate.
Chapter nine
Istomp up the stairs of the tavern, my breath coming easier with every step of space I put between myself and the king. As much as I’d been looking forward to the opportunity to see this world beyond the palace, if only to find an escape route, the short carriage ride here had been nearly unbearable. He’d been far too close, and it hadn’t even been the way he’d sprawled his long, lean body lazily over the seat like a man waiting for a woman to crawl to him—like a manusedto being crawled to.
Rather, it was the icy scent of him in my lungs, the eerie calm of death against my skin. His very presenceseemed to consume every inch of space so fully that no matter how I moved, there was no relief from the feel of him. I was dizzyingly aware of how the air formed around him, the heat of his body, the swaggered slant of his cruel smile. The lilt of his accent, which I now realize is vaguely English. All of it was magnetic, like something about him anchored into my bones and lured me toward him.
It fucking terrifies me. I’ve endured enough pain for a thousand lifetimes, and I’ve learned enough to stay far awayfrom anything that feels like the Carrion King does—like a bottomless chasm to fall headfirst into.
The top level of the tavern is far cozier than the floor below. A fire roars in a hearth set along the far wall, heating the frigid air and casting soft shadows over the small sitting room. The sticky wooden chairs of the main level have been traded for deep armchairs with plush cushions, grouped together in various configurations.
The room is empty but for one woman tucked into the chair nearest the fire, a book spread open in her lap. She doesn’t acknowledge me lingering awkwardly on the top stair, nor does she look up when I inadvertently let out a soft sound of pleasure at the numerous paintings hung in tarnished frames along the walls. Drawing deeper into the room, I drink in the lavish colors, the wide brush strokes and the delicate ones.
Most are of the sea outside this tavern—giant, purple waves crashing against majestic ships, just like the ones anchored in the harbor—but a few depict weaving forests, streaks of sunlight peppering the leaves, delicate pixies with wings like the bartender’s dancing mischievously between the trunks. Immense longing fills me as I examine them: their spills of color, their precise shadows and highlights.
No one paints in my world anymore. Anything beautiful that still exists was created before the plague, and most of those pieces have been moved to storage or lost to time as there’s hardly anyone left to appreciate them. And here, in the Carrion King’s world, despite the seemingly endless night and the brutality, beauty existseverywhere.
And no one seems to notice.
Hot anger spikes through me at the king—at every citizen of this terrible world—for the apathy with which they treat such things. As if they’re commonplace. As if they’ll always be here.
They won’t,I want to scream.They’ll disappear and hope will disappear along with them.
“I don’t think paintings of pixies inspire much hope,” the girl says from behind me, her voice startling me so fully from my thoughts, I jerk in surprise. “Vicious and petty as they are.”
Spinning, I watch warily as the girl closes her book and unfurls from the chair, stretching to her full height, which is hardly taller than my shoulder. She’s dressed in an assortment of silks and wraps, each intricately braided and draped to make an odd, but beautiful, dress. Her dark hair hangs in a shining curtain down her back, and her umber skin is painted with elaborate swirls of electric blues, deep violets and moss greens.
Stormy gray eyes peer out from behind a blue mask, painted with the same curling designs as the rest of her skin. Despite her small size, something about her haunting gaze keeps me from deeming her a child, and I shiver against the deep chill of it.
The girl tilts her head, her frown deepening as she studies me. “Though what would someone who hides in the shadows know about hope?”
I bristle, baring my teeth. “Excuse me?”
The girl—woman—fits me with an unapologetic look. “You lament the loss of beauty and hope like you did not have the chance to stop it.” My heart stumbles over itself, and my breath freezes in my chest. If she notices my sudden horror, she doesn’t acknowledge it. Rather, she wrinkles her nose and says with no small amount of disdain, “You and Niko deserve each other.”
I’m so unsettled by the woman’s pervasive words—by her entire eerie presence—that I only vaguely wonder who the hell Niko is.
“You don’t know anything about me.” I mean it to come out strong, but in the still of the room, the words are a whispered hush.
A small smile quirks the woman’s lower lip, pulling at the small, studded jewel sparkling beneath it. “Ah, but you shouted everything I needed to know as soon as you entered the room.”
“Is everyone here insane? Isn’t there one person in this entire kingdom who speaks like a normal human being instead of in riddles and limericks like we’re all living in a goddamn acid trip?” I demand hotly, frustration chafing at my skin.
The woman laughs, her gray eyes twinkling. “But what is an acid trip if not a dream, Willa? And what is Letum if not the progeny of every sort of dream?” She laughs again, an ethereal, twinkling sound, that heightens the cold rush of blood past my ears.
She knows my name. Which must mean this girl, with her diminutive size and strange presence,is the princess King Ass brought me here to meet. Her laughter stops, and though she cocks her head in a pitying manner, her turbulent gaze is no less ominous.
“There is no need to worry. He has only brought us together so that I may determine something about you.”
