“We’ve got your back, Princess Astrid,” Fionn says.
“That’s much more encouraging; thank you, Fionn.” She aims this at Jessa, and her friend rolls her eyes. “Shall we get this over with?”
Astrid pushes her shoulders back, lifts her chin, and strides through the doors and into the welcome feast. Ulvene line the huge room, their tall silhouettes hard to miss even in a crowd.
The ballroom is a long rectangular hall, glowing with the low light of hundreds of candles, every inch of the walls draped in paintings and tapestries. There’s a spectacular vaulted ceiling, half of which is missing; instead, the east side of the hall is completely exposed, and a giant viewing platform is there in place of a roof. Her jaw goes slack. A platform big enough for dragons to sit and oversee the festivities below. Thank the Stars there are no dragons here tonight.
Despite the name, the welcome feast is more of a dance than a dinner, though there’s plenty of food on offer. Long slate tables heave under the weight of sparkling wine and golden mead, platters of baked figs stuffed with cheese and glistening with brown sugar, roasted red pepper and walnut dip, garnished with pomegranate seeds that shine like jewels, and realize spiced flatbread sprinkled generously with fat flakes of salt. The centerpiece is an entire pig, spit-roasted and honey-glazed, that has Quincy’s nose twitching.
The room is packed with people gossiping, eating, and listening to the string quartet that plays in the minstrels’ gallery above the dais. Below them, the king sits on his throne beside a woman who must be Queen Ottilie, his hand resting on her knee. She’s wearing a finely tailored white and gold evening suit in the southern style, the gossamer material light to combat the heat. Her hair is true black, slightly darker than her son’s, pinned back with twin cherry-red combs. The mate mark on her brow is more prominent than the king’s—a barbed crown, ice blue in color, which, Astrid thinks, now she’s met the king, seems appropriate.
Astrid will have to join them on the dais when it’s time for the king’s speech. She’d rather shave off a toe.
Zryan is notably absent.
“Find a table close to the doors,” Jessa says.
“We’ll take up positions on either side of them,” Fionn suggests, and Jessa gives her approval.
Muttering breaks out from the group near them as they perch at one of the many tables dotted around the room. They’re all staring atAstrid, a mixture of hostility and curiosity warping their faces, though they soon lose interest when Quincy starts prowling toward them.
Astrid needs a drink, and a strong one. It’s the only way she’ll make it through this infernal event. When a waiter passes, she plucks two sparkling wines from the tray and downs one immediately. The light fizz counteracts the bubbling sensation in her stomach, settling the feeling that the organ is about to crawl up her throat and choke her.
Jessa raises her brows at the empty flute in Astrid’s hand. “I’m getting you some food. Do not drink anything else until you’ve eaten. Quince, stay here.”
OF COURSE. BUT BRING ME BACK SOME OF THAT SUCCULENT-LOOKING HOG.
Astrid surveys the room, while avoiding the eyes of the courtiers nearest, who are staring again. The last time she attended an event like this was for her seventeenth birthday at the Moon Palace. That was seven years ago, but it could have been another life, given how much has changed. At the time, she didn’t that night would be one of her final evenings of normality—offun. That mere months later her father would be dead, and she’d be isolated in a mountain fort with a selection of highly trained, and far too unwashed, Ulvene.
The birthday party was a wild one, like every witch and witchkin in the queendom had shown up for the celebrations. It was the night Astrid met the first boy she ever slept with, a young lord from Esloe, a territory known for its abundance of lakes. He’d shyly asked her to dance, his wavy copper hair almost apologetic in the way it covered half his face, but he was handsome and sweet and a great dancer, so she’d said yes and then spent the rest of the night with him. She’d never seen him again.
One of the violinists hits a bum note, and Astrid breaks from her reverie. While the room is still full of chatter, there’s been a shift in the atmosphere. Everyone distracted by something and pretending not to be. She can guess why, given the reaction in the entrance hall yesterday. Prince Zryan has arrived.
She spots him with his parents on the dais, and while his mother and father wear the colors of their house, he’s wearing a fitted dark blue brocade jacket with black pants and black shoes, the jacket accented with silver buttons and delicate silver embroidery along the lapels. Blueand silver. The colors of Arturea. She’s not entirely sure whether she’s reading into his sartorial choices or whether it’s meant in mockery.
Even from this distance, she can tell his eyes are on her, and she meets them briefly before he slowly turns away, his attention diverted by a blond man in a moss-green jacket with a stern expression upon his face.
Astrid watches the prince—she couldn’t look away if she wanted to, and neither, it seems, can anyone else. The man wasn’t born, he was forged. He can’t be mistaken for anything other than what he is: a weapon. Her pulse stutters at the thought of being locked inside that cage in the arena with him. Goddess, how is he able to make her feel this pitiful without even trying?
“You’re staring.” Astrid jumps at Jessa’s voice.
“I’m not staring, I’m observing.”
Jessa sets a plate piled with food on the table. Astrid picks at rosemary flatbread, forcing herself to eat it while worrying it could come back up at any moment.
“I wouldn’t stress about it, everyone else is staring at him, too. He’s freakishly good-looking.”
“Really? I hadn’t noticed,” Astrid says. She has of course noticed, but that’s not why she’s staring. This is the man she has to duel, and she doesn’t stand a hope in Hel.
Jessa scoffs. “Sure. And I’m a fucking ice kraken.”
“You’re worse than an ice kraken. Scarier.”
“Thank you, that means a lot to me.”
WHERE IS MY PIG, WITCH?
Jessa chucks a leg of the pork underneath the table, and a few people near them draw back at the ferocity with which Quincy gnaws it. “Call it an anniversary present, my beloved familiar.”
