“And where do the lowborn live?” I asked. “In these courts.”
“Villages. Some closer, some further from the citadel.” His finger traced through the air in a growing circle. “The closer to the grove, the closer to nature, they say. But there are those who live solitary lives on the court’s outskirts. In this court, some fae straddle autumn and winter and have forgotten whether they are of Sylvanwild or Noctere.”
My eyebrows rose. “Are there no walls between the courts?”
“Only those we build with our animosity and waggling tongues.”
What a thing, to live without walls. To pass through the forest and arrive in another court.
“And the war that killed Queen Carys?” I asked. “Was it fought between the courts?”
“All four.” While we spoke, he liked to roll a perfectly round amethyst crystal on his desk, back and forth between his hands. “The only time the four courts warred. Every other war occurred between just two courts, when the reigning queen was weak and a usurper thought to try her hand.”
“Why did the four courts go to war during Carys’s rule?”
The crystal’s roll slowed. Then, his voice low, “Decades after she created the trials, she wanted to undo them, and the courts. She wanted to break the wheel.”
The wheel. That seemed familiar.
The Kingdom of Storms had its own wheel. The castle, the inner districts, the outer districts. But when you spent your whole life in the Dip, you didn’t think of it that way. You just lived.
“Why break it?”
He caught the crystal in one hand and lifted it between us. “She became obsessed with power. She believed she was something called the Courtbreaker.”
“The Courtbreaker?”
He waved a hand. “It’s irrelevant to our work.”
“Tell me. Please.”
“There’s a rhyme I was taught as a boy.” His eyes unfocused, as if he was pulling something from the corner of his mind. When he drew in a breath, he recited in a strange, haunting voice:
Four courts keep the world in line?—
One for blood, and one for shine,
One for thorn, and one for sky…
But if the Courtbreaker wakes?—
one must kneel, and one must die.
“I love children’s rhymes that involve death,” I said. “What does it mean?”
His hazel eyes lowered to the crystal. “Long ago, it was said there lived a fae who could harness the magic of two courts. That fae longed for power and was said to have brought Feyreign to the verge of ruin.” He rolled the crystal to the other hand. “She had to be destroyed.”
“The magic of two courts—did Carys harness it?”
His eyes met mine, lit by the lantern on his desk. “Just once. And she was killed for it.”
At the endof that first week, Haskel told me to meet him in a certain room of the citadel in the afternoon. That was all. He gave me directions—up a staircase, down a hall, left and right—and I managed to find the room only after a few misses.
I knocked on the door. Haskel opened it and was flanked by a narrow-eyed, slender man who immediately scrutinized me. Hewas brown-haired, beige-skinned, but shorter and more slender than most of the men in the court.
Haskel’s hand went to my shoulder and guided me in. “These are the tailor’s quarters. And that’s the court tailor.”
“Mirek,” said the man, his eyes drifting over me from my face down to my boots. “Those leathers don’t suit you at all.”
