“I was picturing a child’s bedroom,” I say.
“He was the child of Gregor and Elise, so technically, you’re correct.”
“Somehow I forgot he has only been king for a month.”
“He expands like that.”
“What do you mean?”
She shrugs. “He took over some of the governing years ago when his father started to decline, so it hasn’t been as big a transition as it seems on the outside.”
We wander to the weapon rack.
“He hasn’t spent time in this bedroom for years now?”
“No. King Gregor—may he wander well—moved to the royal chambers in the House of Healing, where he could receive the best care. He was there about a decade before he passed, and so Maxian moved into the Sun Salon.”
I do not comment on how strange that sounds—settling into his father’s space before he died. Running his father’s kingdom before he’s king.
Starlight washes the tapestry and its intricacies in a glittering waterfall. A meadow of an apple orchard that extends to the horizon. A little boy plays in a tree, an adult in a plain tunic looking up at him. A nursemaid. Several paces away is the dark-haired queen, adorned in a rich red-and-gold gown, patched to add a train behind her. My hand reaches up, strokes the fabric of a bronze-haired faerie nursemaid.
“They included her,” I utter. I have never seen a faerie captured in any art before, neither portrait nor sculpture nor official song. To see one of us up on a wall, even in an abandoned room, shifts the entire world. As if we are worth noting. As if we are worthy of preservation, of history.
“I’m sure the rumors have warped in the century since the fever took the queen, but…” My friend stops, glances at the royal.
I look at her. “But what?”
“Apparently, the queen adored her faerie. It’s why she was kind to all the servants. Supposedly they were friends.”
I laugh. “Were they truly friends or did the queen just think that?”
Lila tilts her head to the tapestry. “Enough to memorialize her.”
I look to the faerie again. “Perhaps they were lovers.”
Now Lila laughs.
We cross the chamber and enter a closet three times the size of my room, full of mismatched tunics and shoes of varying styles. Another key, anotherEtoles,and we enter the bathing chamber, the innermost part of the Pith.
Light still pours in from the sky above.
A looking glass lines one wall completely, doubling the image of the room. I catch my reflection and truly examine it for the first time in over a month.
The dark circles under my eyes have faded, and my irises—as the king observed—are brighter, like the color of sap. The appearance of my collarbone has now softened with another layer of muscle and weight, and my chestnut waves shine thick and lush thanks to the soaps from Lila and Fern. I stand a bit taller, skin clearer, like Lila’s. It’s as if even in my grief and the games of the fae, the shorter hours, the fresher food, the higher pay, the better soaps, and the more rigorous exercises have performed some sort of magic on my body. In the reflection, Lila comes up to me, leans her head on my good shoulder.
“You okay?”
The king was right. Kassandra was right. The stranger in the glass answers. “I look…different.”
Better.
“Rest, I have found, is the greatest resource of the fae.”
“Maybe there is another.”
Both of us glance at the large, empty bathing pool on the other side of the room. With no water, the floor slopes down, a large drain exposed at the bottom.
Lila’s account proves correct. The wall opposite the looking glass bows inward dramatically, cutting into the bathing pool, halving its potential.
