All fae. The next question rose in me and surfaced before I could stop it. “Then why are you a servant?”
Silence lapsed between us, during which the liquid in Faun’s jug finally gave the slightest tremble. “You thinkI’ma servant,” she said, low. “But between the two of us, who will live and who will die?”
With that, she turned away and continued down the hall. She disappeared along with her pretty jug.
She had a point. Even if it was at my expense.
Would I rather be a servant if it meant I wasn’t being sacrificed by the spiritstag to once-in-a-century trials created by some long-ago queen who believed in “equality” amongst courts I wasn’t even a part of?
Faun was gone, but I stared after her. Yes, I would rather scrub floors. That’s what anyone rational would say. And yet…
The deep-of-night thought returned—the one I could hardly acknowledge to myself.
I had been waiting for the world to end for my entire life.
And, for me, it had.
It had been replaced by this. By courts, queens, and a spiritstag offering me a choice.
Night cloaked the Sylvanwild tree,vast and full of mysteries. No one had explicitly told me I could not explore it—only that I must not venture past the citadel’s moat. And now that I was one of the competitors in the trials, I figured that conferred a certain measure of protection.
I wandered curving hallways and past closed doors. And because the citadel was so tall, my natural inclination when I saw a set of stairs was to climb them.
On the way, I passed fae. Some stared and some acknowledged me and some narrowed their eyes. None of them stopped me, so in that gamble I was right.
Some who passed me were servants moving with trays and bundles, and some were nobles sweeping by in silks, and I began to understand that this place was as stark in its divide as I imagined our kingdom’s castle to be. Only the least and the greatest lived within this tree. And, of course, the least served the greatest.
Tomorrow I would ask Dorian where the rest of the Sylvanwild fae were: the farmers, the weavers, the hunters. If this was their palace, then there must be many more—the equivalent of districts to sustain the court. Otherwise, how would they have access to so many delicacies? So many fruits and meats, such varied fibers fortheir clothes and drapes and bedclothes? They couldn’t trade for everything.
I kept a mental map of my path; I would need to retrace it before the night was done. And my fatigue was deepening, which meant I wouldn’t go much further tonight. Not that there was much to see, it seemed?—
I stopped in front of a long, winding staircase. This was the longest staircase I’d found. It corkscrewed upward as far as I could see. And, with almost piercing brightness, I could swear the moon shone down from the center. Was this stair open to the sky?
Maybe I’d go just a little further. Theo and child-Eurydice would be ashamed of me if I didn’t climb the highest place I could find.
I had only ascended for a minute when a grunt resounded from above, followed by the high pitch of metal striking metal. I froze; it was a familiar sound—a chilling one.
I had to know. I had to see.
I climbed faster.
The sounds came clearer. They were a man’s grunts, and the metal had a piercing ring.
After minutes, an archway offered an exit from the staircase, leading out onto one of the tree’s boughs, so vast I didn’t even recognize it at first as a branch. It looked more like an enormous, curving platform. It was above the canopy, and the moonlight poured over its serrated bark. And him. The man who stood upon it.
He had black hair and a strong but lithe body where the shadows did not cling to him. He swung a sword in one hand, and it gleamed and shrieked where it struck the curved scythe of a creature the moonlight could not illuminate. The creature moved around him like a shadow, so fast and smooth it didn’t seem corporeal. And the scythe… the blade alone was taller than me.
He was fighting one of the wraiths. One of the creatures I’d first encounteredthat nightin the Dip.
The figure moved like he knew the creature’s rhythm—ducking, pivoting with precision, lunging, low to the ground onemoment and vaulting high the next—as if he’d fought its kind before. His blade carved arcs through the dark like liquid silver, sparks flying where metal met something not quite flesh. A guttural sound tore out of him—not pain, not rage, but something fundamental.
Whoever he was, he didn’t falter. He didn’t retreat. He fought as though the edge of the world waited just behind him.
Their clash ran fast, almost faster than my eyes could track, a blur of shadow and silver. The man was quick, a miracle with his sword, every block and parry exact.
When he turned toward the archway and the moonlight caught his face, I stepped back.
Dorian.
