A tap of wood on the dais. Once, twice, three times, until my attention was drawn to Rhiannon. Her eyes were two crystals on me. “What did youdoin there, rabbit?Why isn’t he blind?”
I blinked at her. My mouth opened, and I hesitated.Tell the truth, Dorian had said of talking to Rhiannon. I hated that I heard his voice now. “I don’t know.”
“Liar.” Rhiannon stood, her furs rippling. “Deceiving changeling bitch.”
Dorian appeared beside me, stepped partially in front of me. “Enough, Rhiannon. It’s done.”
She stalked forward; the other fae made way for her like parting fish. “No fae comes out of that trial with her partner sighted. Never, not once. And now this.” A dagger slid from her robes, obsidian under the crystal light. Not cobalt like the one from the trial.
My blood coursed; would she kill me right here?
Dorian’s hand went to the grip of his sword, but Rhiannonstopped before she reached him. She thrust the dagger out, its point directed at the tip of my nose from six paces away.
“You’ll duel her,” Rhiannon snarled. “You’ll duel her for champion.”
Her?Who?
“That’s not how it’s done, Rhiannon,” Dorian said. “She cannot duel Faun.”
She would have me duel Faun for champion? If I had to duel the only other female survivor, that meant the third trial had been meant to produce only one champion pair. And if the partner was supposed to have been blinded, then that meant there was really no pair at all.
One champion. Just one. A female.
Rhiannon’s words from before the trial echoed in my head:I never said champions, my dear. I saidchampion.
Rhiannon’s dagger didn’t move, her hand unshaking. “I’ll have it done. Tonight?—”
A creaking resounded through the throne room. A sudden, jagged noise, ongoing as the double doors opened behind us. All eyes shifted to somewhere behind me.
A strange, brilliant light appeared on the walls, on the faces around me, gleamed in Rhiannon’s eyes. But I felt wary of taking mine off her. If I did, she might gut me.
Her eyes narrowed. She slowly lowered the dagger.
Dorian turned. At once, he dropped to a knee. All the fae around me did the same—even Rhiannon, slowly, her furs pooling around her. The obsidian dagger touched the ground, and only then did I dare to turn.
I shielded my eyes against the light. In the double doorway, cast in moonlight, stood a creature of gemlike, multifaceted brilliance. I could recognize nothing except the familiar lichen-covered horns rising like a tall, many-pronged crown.
The spiritstag.
I stood staring.I could not do anything but stare, because the spiritstag was already speaking to me. Its voice came into my ears like far-off bells, faint but carrying.
“It was a terrible choice you made, Eurydice of the Kingdom of Storms.”
I gazed into the light, unblinking.Terrible?I thought.I survived.
“You, yes. But the acid is sacrilege against nature. It poisons the land, the trees, corrodes all it touches…”
The acid. The spiritstag spoke of the rain I had called.The acid rain… Is it the same rain that falls over my kingdom?
The spiritstag did not speak, but its head inclined a degree, the horns shifting, and with them fractals of moonlight issuing into the throne room. That was a yes.
My chest tightened. So did my fingers against my palms, the nails pressing as I fisted my hands. My eyes closed, and I saw the green battlefield once more. If it was the same rain, then the Kingdom of the Plains had been verdant with grass and trees and abundance. And yet the shape of the land was the same as my own barren kingdom. I knew the geography like I knew my mother’s face.
There was no question. It was my kingdom, and Carys had been real.
Her curse had been real—and it had persisted four hundred years.
Questions rolled through me. First amongst them should have been the last: How did she obtain such power? Power to change the rain. Power to curse a kingdom.
