Even as this thought rages through my mind, I fight once again that unwanted swirling regret.
I push it away, reminding myself that I have no choice. I must parade Thyra along this street for all to see. The more fae who know she’s here, the less chance Mother can harm her.
Clear as a bell, a new voice sounds, this one spoken with authority and a lilting harmony. “She smells like roses.”
The female speaker rises from her kneeling position several steps ahead of us and glides onto the street.
She’s followed by no less than five lowborn servants, all of whom fuss around her, straightening her silken dress and brushing the slightest specks of dust from the material beforeshuffling backward and waiting in a row beside her, their heads bowed.
Thyra doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to reach her, and neither am I. The newcomer’s comment sounds like a rebuke of the insults being slung at Thyra, but I know this highborn woman too well to mistake her for an ally.
“Lady Delphina,” I say, applying pressure to the ruby circlet so that Thyra stops where I want her to.
Lady Delphina sinks into a deep bow, drawing out her greeting, her harmonious voice wafting across the air between us. “My king.”
Her face is painted with the pure white paste allowed only to ladies in Mother’s inner circle, and her cheeks are decorated with finely drawn golden stars depicting the constellation so revered by our people.
She catches hold of her flowing sleeve to gesture daintily at Thyra. “And who, may I ask, is this?”
I take my time answering her, waiting a moment for the silence to thicken before I raise my voice. “The Oracle is mine.”
A hum builds within the onlookers, and now the whispers are far more urgent, a growing cascade that spreads more intensely among the lowborn in the crowd.
“The Oracle!” the lowborn whisper.
“We have the Oracle!”
“Our king has saved us.”
Then, so quietly I would have missed it if I wasn’t specifically waiting and listening for it…
“She looks like us.”
“The Oracle is lowborn.”
“Hush now.”
I raise my voice. “The Oracle’s name is Thyra,” I pronounce it clearly. A name that makes Lady Delphina andevery other highborn wince. “She will serve my will, and only mine.”
Lady Delphina can’t seem to stop her eyebrows from rising before she blinks and straightens out her features. No doubt with difficulty.
“Let that message get back to my mother,” I mutter, finally stepping up beside Thyra and commanding her. “Walk, Thyra.”
Thyra’s gaze rises to mine, her now-faded-blue eyes boring into me as surely as daggers.
Inside the forge, her facial features had transformed just like they did at the village. Golden light had streamed from the blade up her arm, at which her hair had shone black, darker even than the valleys in the bloodlands, her lips turned crimson as if she’d dipped them in paint, and the color of her damn eyes had shifted to a glistening brown.
She’d reached for me, and I couldn’t let her touch me.
If she touched me then…
So help me, I would have torn her apart, taking what I needed from her.
Now, she looks up at me with all her faded anger, and I’m fucking happy to see it. The hollow is gone.
She’s furious again.
My relief is short-lived, swamped with unwanted fear because, for a moment, I consider the possibility that she’s going to rebel.
