Rhiannon’s fingers touched my scalp at the hairline, her touch a brand. “I accept your bid for the trials…” Her voice trailed off.
My eyes snapped open. She didn’t even know my name.
“Eurydice. Eurydice Waters.”
She repeated my name. On her lips, it sounded as untamed and thorny as Sylvanwild itself.
Dorian paced beforeme in the citadel gardens. We had found a secluded spot in the late afternoon, where two benches faced oneanother and yellow flowering bushes grew up alongside the gnarled armrests.
I sat. He did not. Dorian had not stopped moving since we’d left Rhiannon’s quarters.
At times he paused, stared at me, then resumed his restless stride. We had not spoken since the ordainment, but he had met eyes with me as soon as Rhiannon had allowed us to leave. He clearly had something to say. Or maybe he had nothing to say, but an enormity of feeling inside him. I understood that.
Theo had been that way when agitated. I just had to wait his pacing out.
So I remained silent. Here, in these gardens, I could recognize I was stuck in the numbness I’d felt since the moment I’d woken in that wagon. In each moment since, some part of me was still on my knees, staring at that crater. Only the grove had broken that spell, but that had felt like a dream.
The only proof of its realness was Dorian, my new partner. Who still paced.
After ten minutes, I finally said, “Don’t punish the grass for it.”
Dorian glanced up, brow drawn, then seemed to process my words. He stopped, glanced from the grass up to me. “What?”
I hadn’t expected him to speak. My chest tightened. “Where I come from, we don’t have grass.”
“You nearly died up there. Now you’re thinking of grass.”
“Well I?—”
He swung toward me. “Rhiannon was a fiber’s twitch from drawing her dagger on you. Do you know what that would have meant?”
A fiber’s twitch.I set both palms on the bench to feel its solidity. “I’d have drawn my knife.”
He took a step closer, voice hushed. “You’d be dead before you drew.”
No smallness.“At least I’d die with the right instinct.”
He almost laughed; I saw his lips wanting to curl. “Where did you get that mouth?”
“The Dip,” I said.
“TheDip?”
My eyes flashed, chin lifting. “The section of our kingdom you destroyed.”
His jaw ticked once before he turned away, facing out toward the moat flowing by. Probably stewing on his bad luck. That was fine; he wouldn’t be the first man unhappy to be stuck with me.
“I have questions,” I said.
He swept out a hand, still facing away. “Then ask.” His voice was lower, maybe even brushstroked with penitence.
I stood. “What are the trials?”
“The trials change every time they’re held. No one except the spiritstag and the queen know what they’ll be.”
“And how often are they held?”
“Once a century.”
