There, on the path out, stood Rhiannon.
She was dressedin brown leather, her bramble diadem no longer set on her head. Her pants and jerkin hugged her body, her boots ending at her knees. And this time she didn’t hold her scepter; she held a longbow as tall as me. Already nocked, and the tip of an arrow pointed directly at my left eye.
Her elbow didn’t shake. She had the strength to hold that bow for days.
“The trials aren’t done, pettifey.”
She was flanked by more than a dozen fae, all of them women. All of them with bows held ready.
Dorian was right: Rhiannon had known by morning. And though the wraiths had been fast, they hadn’t been fast enough. Someone had gotten to her and told her what had happened.
Was it Faun? I doubted it.
Dorian had been right, too, about Rhiannon and me. Just like that, I was a threat. Judging by the sharpness of that arrow’s head, I was now her enemy.
She actually believed I had used magic. That I was worthy of this ambush.
But if she was going to kill me, she’d have let loose that arrow themoment my face had appeared in her vision. Which meant she had other plans for me. I couldn’t conceive of what those might be, but some strange, masochistic part of me was glad for this.
Being forced to stay meant I wasn’t leaving Dorian behind.
It’s not just about him, and you know it,a voice said inside me.It’s power like you’ve never felt. Power in your hands.
I pushed it down, out of mind.
Rhiannon stared at me past the gutstring of her bow. “Turn around and walk.”
“I—”
The bow creaked as she drew the string tighter. “This isn’t a negotiation.”
I turned, and I walked. Back toward the citadel. Back toward Dorian. Back toward Feyreign.
Every ruthless queenmust have a dungeon, and the Sylvanwild Court had an extensive one.
After they stripped me of my weapons inside the citadel’s throne room, I was led through a door and down and down by two of Rhiannon’s handmaidens—as though I were dangerous enough to need two female fae guarding me—into the citadel’s deepest recesses, where stone steps gave way to simple earth.
They would not speak to me. They treated me like a prisoner.
The passages narrowed as we got into the dungeon, the root system pressing in on all sides. Bugs crawled everywhere, and I had never smelled the earth with such potency—humid and thick and overpowering.
Those purple crystals pulsed at sporadic intervals down here, barely enough light to see. I was led to an area where the root-mass thickened into a wall, and I watched as one of the handmaidensclosed her eyes and twisted her fingers through the air to force the roots aside.
Earth magic.
It was laborious work because the roots did not want to part. But a gap large enough for me to fit through eventually formed, revealing a hovel. And I was instructed inside with a silent gesture of the hands.
Once I had stepped through, the roots closed themselves behind me. I couldn’t tell if it was fae magic or the tree’s natural desire to retake its own shape, but they were impenetrable now. I tested them after the two fae left, tugging here and there, and the roots didn’t so much as rustle.
There were no windows, and not enough light to see by. I removed Dorian’s crystal from my belt pouch—they’d taken my knife but left me the light—and it illuminated a space barely large enough to lie down in.
There was no bed. A wooden bucket sat in the corner.
Truly, a dungeon.
I sat down, and for a time I listened. I heard nothing except the skittering of bugs, the whispers of worms moving through the earth. I was alone down here.
This was a maddening place. A place for a quick imprisonment or a quick death.
