We passed out of the dining room, down the hallway, and into the citadel’s throne room. Two servants were at work, a man and a woman, one of whom was pruning the vines growing on the throne itself. I stared as we passed through the double doors and into the morning light.
“You’ll grow used to it,” Dorian said.
“I’ll never grow used to it,” I said. “Not when I’ve spent my life on the other side of it.”
He glanced at me as we walked the garden path. “A life without butter could hardly be considered living.”
For once, I wasn’t entirely in disagreement. “Where do you even get butter?”
“The Highmark Court. We trade for it.”
“And who are they?”
His gaze slid over my hair. “They are the sun-touched court.Bright and vain.” He touched my shoulder, urging me to the left down a side path through the gardens I hadn’t seen before. We came around the citadel, the moat following us in our turn. “Training will be in two parts. In the mornings we’ll focus on physicality, and in the afternoons on intellect.”
I nearly stopped. Physical training I had expected, but… “Intellect?”
He didn’t break stride. “Surely you’re not satisfied with that dull wit?”
Somewhere in my head, I heard Theo’s carrying laugh. It made Dorian’s words less a sting and more a familiar jibe. “Is wit on trial?”
“Perhaps. Some say the great Queen Carys could never have ruled the four courts without it.”
Carys. That was a name from our kingdom.
My mind spun on a greater fact: a ruler of all four courts. I had seen those four courts depicted on the tapestry in my room; I’d already spent hours studying it. “And when did she rule?”
“Some four hundred years ago.”
“Your people value intellect, then.”
He tapped his temple. “You may swing a sword or shoot an arrow, but neither matters if you can’t tell your ally from your enemy in the thick of things.”
“But that’s not intellect. That’s…” Well, I didn’t know how to define intellect. I’d only learned to read and write from Elisabet. “That’s strategy.”
“Strategy is beneath intellect.” Dorian pressed out a sharp breath. “Think of it as a single root in a tree. Useful. Necessary. But intellectisthe tree. Intellect gives it form, purpose, reach.”
I kept my face forward, neck heating. I felt the largeness of Dorian’s knowledge, and the lack of my own. I also felt my own longing, my desire to understand, to grow.
We came through a thicket of trees and emerged into a clearing where the grass had been tamped or eaten down to nothing and awooden fence had been erected around a low building with a wide-open side.
From within, a loud snort sounded. Something banged hard against the wood, and I flinched.
Dorian cast a sharp glance at me. “It’s a horse. They’re four-legged?—”
“I know horses.” My voice came out quick, irritable. “I just didn’t expect that.”
He approached the fence line. “But have you ridden one?”
“Of course I haven’t. Horses are for?—”
He raised a finger. “Royalty?”
“And the patrol,” I said. When he only stared, I said, “They’re the guard who ride outside the walls. They kill monsters like you.”
“Ah. Now I understand.” Dorian crossed to a gate in the fence and unlatched it. He gestured for me to walk ahead. “And you weren’t part of this patrol?”
“They wouldn’t take a woman.” My eyes darted everywhere, taking in sights and the new scents. Another bang sounded from the depths of the open-sided building, but I didn’t jump this time.
