I sucked in air at the softness of his words. Of all the things he might have said, I hadn’t expected that.
Something rose and settled in me at the same time, a certain decisive change I couldn’t exactly name the shape of. Somehow, I knew he meant it.
Before I could speak, Dorian nodded past my shoulder toward the citadel. “Those men you saw last night and this morning, the ones mocking and jeering? Those are the fuckers who won’t ever stop. They’re our competition.”
Those men… There must have been at least twelve of them in that throng. All of them at least twice as large as me, and a few were huge. Dorian had muscle, but he wasn’t hulking. Perhaps he was faster, but he didn’t have their heft.
“And their partners?” I asked.
He shrugged one shoulder. “Yet to be seen. But the spiritstag always partners a man with a woman.”
Always a woman. In my kingdom that would have been helpful, but here, where queens reigned…
I didn’t know.
“So if you hate mockery”—Dorian set his fingers to the vine of a trellis by my head and plucked a fat-petaled yellow blossom—“those bastards will give you no shortage of longing to crush them.” He twirled the blossom with its face toward me, then encompassed it with his hand and closed it in his fist.
I stared at his closed hand. “Do you know how to do anything but kill?”
He unfolded his fingers, palm up; the crushed yellow blossom gleamed in the light. “I didn’t know you were such an advocate for flora.”
I swept a hand out toward the verdant gardens. “I should think you would be the advocate.”
“Sylvanwild needs no advocate,” he said. “It thrives through change, grows wild. For every flower crushed, ten buds offer themselves in its place.”
How lovely that would be for my kingdom. How little he realized his own privilege.
“Why were those men gathered there, before Rhiannon?” I asked.
His eyebrows lifted. “Guess.”
“She likes cocks.”
His mouth twisted as though he were trying to stifle a laugh. “You’re not wrong.” He paused. “But that—that was a throne-room confessional you saw. She makes everyone in the trials tell her their closest-held secrets.”
I stared. “Why?”
“Leverage.” One shoulder rose and fell. “Simple, effective.”
Yes, it was. Very. “And now she’ll make us tell her our secrets?”
“Most likely.” His eyebrow rose. “Though as you’re not part of her court, she can’t force you.”
A tendril of relief wound through my chest. Then, “She can force you?”
“When your queen gives you an order, you obey.” His eyes went distant, glassy. “There’s a reason why she’s queen, after all.”
I didn’t fully understand the shape of what Dorian was saying, but I did understand the weight of it. As I’d thought: Rhiannon had tectonic power over her subjects.
What a terrible thing. What an incredible thing to wield.
“So,” I said, “what now?”
He lowered his hand, allowing the canary petals to flutter to the grass. “We’ll almost certainly die in the first trial. But if you’re asking me for hope, Eurydice, then hold that hatred you feel for me—for all of us—close. Let it warm you.”
For the second time I noticed the fatigue under his eyes, shadows half-hidden behind the carved angles of his face. I’d first noticed it last night by the wagon, under the moonlight. His eyes were older than the rest of him.
“What of preparation?” I said. “I don’t even know you. How you fight, how you think?—”
