The gentleness lulled me. I fell into a half-sleep under his hands, and only woke when I heard water moving in the washroom—the sound of him cleaning himself.
Soon he was back. When he got into the bed he kissed me one more time, slow and searing. Then he pulled me into his arms, his chest at my back.
I fell asleep like that, with the warmth of him wrapped around me.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
A rapon the door pulled me awake. I jerked, eyes opening.
The bed was bare beside me. Rumpled, slept-in,empty.
I sat up, pulling the blanket over my chest. The door remained shut. “Dorian?”
“It’s Eleyrie,” said a muffled woman’s voice through the door. I didn’t know that name. When I didn’t answer, she said, “I escorted you up here yesterday.”
One of Rhiannon’s handmaidens. My gaze traveled, but Dorian didn’t emerge from either of the doorways around me. “What is it?”
A pause. “I’m to escort you to the throne room.”
The throne room. Now.
Dorian was gone, I was alone, and Rhiannon wanted to meet me in the throne room. Too much a coincidence.
Everything about this felt orchestrated, wrong. But I had no choice.
I nodded, slipped from the bed, and dressed myself while the handmaiden waited outside. I cleaned my face and fixed my hair in Dorian’s washroom and tried not to look at the tub.
When I left his room, she escorted me through the hallways anddown toward the central throne room in silence. In my head I practiced what I would say, how I would say it. But the sharp, sure words I’d had for Rhiannon felt far more distant than they had when I’d emerged from the dungeon.
I didn’t want to win any fights against her. I only wanted to protect him.
The two of us walked down the staircase, our steps echoing into silence until we came to the base of the stairs and Eleyrie turned the corner.
I took a breath, deep and quick, and turned toward the throne.
There she was.
No—theretheywere.
Rhiannon and Dorian.
He stood beside the throne, and she sat in it in her queenly furs and resplendence. But I hardly saw her; she could have been dressed in a thousand gemstones glittering under the sun and I wouldn’t have noticed.
Dorian’s eyes were brighter, more faceted than any stone. And when they fixed on me, as they did now, I felt like the only creature who existed in the world.
He was in pain. Glorious, aching pain.
Something was very wrong.
He saw me, and his throat moved. His chest rose under his leather jerkin. I sensed he wanted to speak, but he didn’t. He only stood.
“Welcome, Eurydice of the Kingdom of Storms,” Rhiannon said into the echoing throne room. “It has been some time since I saw you last. You look somewhatbetterfor wear.”
With effort, I ripped my gaze from Dorian. Before me, Rhiannon sat ensconced and entirely unpractical. Her diadem rested on her head, her hair parted at the dead center and flowing in tight curls into which some fae had been tasked with twining white flowers for hours and hours. Her furs, also white, draped so far they touched thedais. I could not see her feet beneath the bottom, which pooled atop the floor. That scepter lay across her lap.
Beside her, Dorian was dressed in the same simple black armor he had worn in the second trial. Clean now, fresh, but austere. They were a pair of opposites. The closer I got, the greater the effect.
The handmaidens led me to stand directly in front of the dais, and then they dispersed to take seats on the floor at either side of the throne. They watched me.
