“If I find out you’ve fucked me over,” she said, almost tenderly, “I will rip your flaxen head from your neck with my own hands.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Back in my room,I shut the door hard and leaned against it. My eyes closed as my head bumped the wood behind me. I was alive, but shoved so deep between thorns and claws that I could barely breathe.
Even if I survived this next trial, I would still have to survive Rhiannon.
A knock came almost at once.
“It’s me,” Dorian said through the door.
I opened it. His face was pale, his hair long and mussed like he’d wrestled sleep and lost.
“I’m not dead,” I said. “Though apparently I’m at risk of having my head rent from my neck by your queen.”
He closed his eyes slowly, heaving a breath. “I’ve been told that at least a dozen times over the decades. She’s bluster until she isn’t. She’s keeping you around.”
“Why?”
He hesitated. Then, “That, I couldn’t say. The whole court thought we’d be dead in the first trial. Maybe we’re a spectacle now.”
A spectacle was good. A spectacle meant I was still underestimated.
“She told me to prepare.” My hand fell on the doorframe as I stepped closer. “The next trial begins in a few hours.”
“Irin’s breath.” Dorian’s fist hit the door. “Of course it would be now.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’ll be night when the trial begins. The Sylvanwild forests are most dangerous at night, and…”
The wraiths.
“You’re with a human.”
He didn’t nod, but I could see the acknowledgment in his eyes. I was blind at night, twice as helpless. His hand came out and touched my shoulder. This time, his touch wasn’t a shock. “Meet me in my quarters in an hour.” His fingers squeezed. “Be prepared for anything.”
I wondered at the Dorian standing before me. The first trial had changed him, and I could see it had changed me in his eyes. He bore a light there now, just for me.
I couldn’t say exactly when that change had happened. It was tucked somewhere between the morning I’d found dew collected on my sword and the night I’d sutured his wounds.
And his features seemed changed. The ghastliness of his eyes, the heavy brow, his slanted lips—none of them seemed so terrible as they had that first time I’d looked at him under daylight, from the wagon’s bed. He seemed to have a synchrony, every part of him designed by nature’s care. His irises and pupils, which had seemed to me like pits, now gleamed like onyx jewels. They saw me.
We were partners. At least for now.
I nodded. “One hour.”
Over the next hour, I prepared myself with slow care. I cleaned my body and then, piece by piece, put on my armor—my jerkin, my pants, my boots, my cloak. I braided my hair and wound that braid into a bun at the nape of my neck. I belted on my short sword, my knife, and slung my bow and quiver on.
My mother’s journal took up its spot inside my jerkin, near myheart. Finally, I stood staring at Thalassa’s unopened pouch. It was small enough to bring with me without weighing me down. I attached it to my jerkin. Even unopened, the thought of having the elder fae with me in some form felt like a promise kept.
The door to Dorian’s quarters was open when I arrived. Inside, he was armored and pacing. His hair had been pulled tight and low at the back of his head, just like mine, and his eyes were on the floor.
He saw me, crossed the space in two strides, then stopped hard. He slid a small canteen and a familiar-looking leather pouch from inside his cloak. “You’ll need provisions if we’re separated.”
I took both and found space for them on my belt. “Dried rabbit meat?”
“The finest in the court.”
