His words washed over me. She couldn’t hold me. No, of course not—the spiritstag had placed me in the trials, not Rhiannon. And a god’s power always superseded a queen’s.
She’dhadto release me.
I drew back, looked into his eyes. “I don’t know how long it’s been.”
“Three days.” He seemed to flinch at his own words. “I would have got you out sooner, but?—”
Three days. Only three. Without the sun and moon, it had felt like a whole life. In only three days, everything had changed.
The band around my chest finally loosened. I was here, with Dorian, and no Rhiannon. No trick, no mind-game.
Finally, I allowed myself to be with him.
“So we’re still in the trials.”
He rubbed his thumb over my cheek and his eyes searched mine. I saw relief, hope,something else.Something I couldn’t understand—pain or fear. “We’re still in.”
Of course he felt pain. Of course he felt fear. “You look like shit.”
His brows drew briefly together. Then he broke into a crooked smile. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” My eyes dropped to his lips. I remembered the shape, the feel of his mouth on mine. That night in the cave felt so long ago. “Tell me you’ve slept.”
He pulled his thumb from my cheek, and it came away dirty under the light. “Don’t ask me that. You’ve been sleeping on dirt.”
Sleeping on dirt. Reading on dirt.
My journal suddenly felt like a fresh weight against my chest.
I stepped back. “Dorian. When you came that night, to the southern district—did you know?”
His hands dropped to his sides, his face shifting to seriousness. “Know what?”
“My mother kept a journal. About me.” I reached up, slid it out from my jerkin. “When I was six months old, she woke up in the night and discovered a different baby in the bassinet.”
His brows lowered, gaze flicking to the journal and back to me. Then everything softened, opened up. His lips parted. He said, so low I could hardly hear, “Your mother was a perceptive woman.”
A stone sankin my gut. I had thought he might deny it, might say that was impossible. Some part of me hadn’t fully believed her narrative, had clung to the idea that I was Eurydice Waters, her daughter—her human daughter.
But the magic in the cave, the journal, and now this…
“Did you know?” I whispered again. “When you came to the southern district that night?”
His face remained soft. “Yes.”
I turned toward the bed, toward a stool set low next to it. I dropped onto the stool and set my fingers at the clasp of my cloak, pulling it away from my neck to breathe.
He had known. He knew I was a changeling, that I was fae all along. I wasn’t a human who had been entered into these trials—I wasfae. Dorian knew it, no doubt Rhiannon knew it, the spiritstag certainly knew it.
Dorian appeared before me, dropping to his knees. His hands came up to my arms, touching there lightly. “Eury?—”
I jerked away, nearly hissing. The last thing I wanted now was to be touched. Not by anyone, and not by him.
His hands fell, but he remained kneeling in front of me.
I had so many questions. So many, my one stream of thought felt insufficient. I said only, “Why?”
“Why did I come?”
