We walkedthe hallway we had passed through last night. At the wide landing at the top of the staircase, I peered over the banister to the central room below. It was empty. No jeering men, no Rhiannon on her throne.
Our footsteps echoed as we passed down the staircase. The room seemed almost bigger, grander, or maybe I felt smaller.
Periodically I stole a look at the man ahead of me. I had tried to kill him, and still he walked with his back to me, like he didn’t fear me at all. And why should he? I’d only embarrassed myself.
Small, fragile…
The old voice slid in like a blade. I had heard it so much throughout my life, it had become a part of me—the part that emerged when shame rose up from my belly and into my chest and heated my neck and cheeks.
I squeezed my eyes shut, pressing the voice away, no matter how much its words resonated. Shame was useless to me.
We came to the double doors we’d entered by last night. Dorian stopped here and swept a hand toward the room at large, his eyes lifting. “This is our citadel.”
I’d never heard of a citadel. But the less he knew of my ignorance, the better.“All of it?”
“Right up to the tip of the spire.”
So it was like a castle. We had one of those at the center of our kingdom, visible from atop the wall. My eyes darted to the empty throne where so many had stood last night. “Why is your citadel empty?”
He scoffed and turned toward the doors. He set his palm to one and stepped back as it swung inward. “Missed those fuckers, have you? Well, you’re in luck.” Light streamed in—as did voices. Familiar, deep ones.
Dorian stepped out and disappeared into the glare.
I came into the doorway, shielding my eyes. Before me lay the same gardens and trellises, but in this canopied daylight they took on a beauty I could not have imagined. All around the flowers were in technicolor, dappled by shafts of sunlight through the trees.
The empty benches were occupied. Some faces I recognized, and some I did not. Men and women, all of them tall and lithe and wild-haired sat and strolled through the grounds. A child’s laughter surprised me, and my eyes darted after it.
There on the bank of the moat, a little girl splashed at the water like it wasn’t as precious as gold.
“There she is,” a male voice said; it was one of the jeering men from last night, but this time with his arm around a grown woman. He reclined on one of the benches. “The pettifey off to see the stag.”
Beside him, the woman with black hair as bountiful as a bouquet gazed at me with pure curiosity. She was heavily pregnant.
“This way,” Dorian called back to me, already halfway to the bridge.
I sensed eyes watching me. Men, women, even the little girl at the water.
Let them think you’re obedient.For one like me in the southern district, it was better to be underestimated until you had your bearings.Rabbits had to choose their moment.
I started forward as voices murmured around me. For as much as I wanted to stand here and stare—to step into that glorious, clear water alongside that child—I kept my eyes ahead, on Dorian’sback.
Did these people have any idea the luxury they had? They’d attacked my kingdom, so they must… or at least the ones who’d ventured that far from this land. But why would a people who had all this be bothered to attack our walls? We had bare plains and acid and some stacked stones.
And yet.
Above me, a tree branch creaked in the breeze. It brought back that noise, the shrieking of that night, metal on stone?—
Renewed rage rose in me as I crossed the bridge behind Dorian. I stared at the place on his neck where I’d nicked him, visible above his cloak, and took pleasure in the spot of red illuminated by the sunlight.
We came onto the forest path, and I expected us to follow it, but he soon veered off to the left and into the thick foliage. Here a narrower path offered itself amidst the trees, the lush plants and trunks burnished by sunlight as we walked.
It was at once lovely and terrifying.
The voices from the garden had long faded, and it was just Dorian and me making our way into Sylvanwild. In daylight, this forest was even more curious and miraculous. Green leaves as fat as my head grew freely from trees as wide around as the wagon I’d ridden here in, rising so high I lost their tops to the sky.
Around us, flowers dotted the forest floor in startling reds and purples and blues. Vines hung low and languorous. Rustling stirred all around, but I never could lay eyes on anything I heard.
The scent here was almost overwhelming, sweet and earthy and drugging. This place was gorgeous and wild. And as I passed through it, I wondered if this was the last walk I’d ever take.
