“Before you leave this room, there’s something I need you to understand.” His voice was a rasp.
Not now. Not here. “Dorian…”
“I came to your kingdom to find you. I came to kill you.”
Cold anger wrenched at my chest. “I already understood that.”
His lips twitched. “I hated you. I hated you before I’d ever laid eyes on you. And then I hated you more when we were paired. You were my burden, my death. I didn’t want you yoked to me?—”
A face appeared in the doorway behind Dorian. Faun. “You’re out of time.” Her voice was deep, reproachful.
I stepped back from Dorian. “Thank you,” I said. “Thank you for helping me understand.”
He turned as I stepped around him. “Eurydice…”
He was the queen’s liar. He had looked into my eyes, slid his hand between my thighs, and told me again and again he didn’t want tohurt me. He was one of them, a Sylvanwild fae, as ruthless and as cunning as he needed to be.
No matter if she’d forced him into silence. No matter if she’d forced him to speak.
Even now, his words were part of some scheme. Even if they weren’t, I didn’t trust anything he had to say.
“I’ll walk with Faun,” I said. “You can follow, if you must.”
The part of me that had chewed on the numbing herbs had taken control. She could not feel pain, could not allow it to pierce through.
Even when that pain wasn’t an arrow, wasn’t a sword.
Even when there was no obvious wound.
I couldn’t trust him. I couldn’t.
Dorian walkedbehind us to the meadow, his broad form limned by moonlight when I glanced back. We went silently, following a narrow path between the trees. Bushes reached out, snagging and scraping at our legs—until the trees stopped and my face lifted and my mouth opened on the scene.
The meadow was swathed in moonlight, all the grass silvered and gleaming. It looked like water in its smoothness, like the largest lake I had ever seen. I had not even imagined the trees broke this far and wide in any part of the Sylvanwild Court’s lands.
At the far side, torchlight gleamed. Ten torches flickering in the night, so far away they were the size of candles. The night was almost still, without a breeze.
I started toward the light, but Faun caught my shoulder with her fingertips. She nodded to the left, where more torchlight gleamed much closer by. “Over there is Rhiannon’s camp. This is yours.”
Her camp. My camp.
As though we were in a battle. Or maybe even a war.
We approached the nearby torchlight, and there stood Haskel with crossed arms and eyes on me.
“I can’t say I expected this,” he said, the golden light casting moving shadows on his face.
“Nor I,” Dorian said as he approached. “Nor I.”
Haskel swept an arm out once I’d come close. “I hope you don’t mind, but I claimed the position of your weaponsmaster.” He gestured to a rack of bows and one of swords. “I made sure to pick your favorites.”
I stared at him, my eyes softening. I had more allies than I’d known. “I don’t… I…”
“None of that.” He reached down and hefted a bow twice as large as the one I’d practiced with. Its dark wood bore no reflection in the torchlight. “I think you’ll want this one. You need range. It’s light, though—good for a woman. Have a feel.”
I accepted the bow. It was surprisingly light for a longbow, but still an unfamiliar weight in my hands. “How far am I shooting?”
Haskel pointed toward the far camp. “About twenty paces short of that is where she’ll be standing.”
