It was, I realized, the same look I’d seen that night he’d held a sword pointed at me.
His eyes were like two onyx gems, flinty and cavernous.
“What is it?” I said.
He stood. “We’re out of time.”
I rose with him. “What do you mean?”
I knew what he meant. I just didn’t want to say it.
His lips pressed together, and a deep line formed between his eyebrows. Horror and sorrow; his skin had gone ashen.
My voice sounded like a reed. “The trials?”
“The spiritstag’s call just sounded.” His words were a rasp of stone on stone. “The first trial begins in the hour.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
The timethat had pressed in on me all week now squeezed my chest in a vise, and I couldn’t find the breath to speak. We had barely begun—we’d only had a week to prepare.
It wasn’t enough. It was all we had.
In Dorian’s study, the floor went to liquid beneath me. The world swayed. My head felt light.
Dorian’s hand went to my shoulder, the iron weight of it centering me. “The trial won’t start until we’re all before Rhiannon. Go to your room. Get your leathers on, your bow, your sword, and whatever else you need, but don’t overburden yourself. I’ll meet you in the throne room in twenty minutes.” His eyes traveled between mine. “Just keep moving, Eurydice.”
Distantly, I felt myself nod. It was the first time he’d called me by my full name.
“Twenty minutes,” he said. “Repeat it.”
“Twenty minutes.”
He squeezed my shoulder and turned away. He crossed into his bedroom and grabbed at his tunic as he walked. He lifted the shirt up and the hewn slab of his back came intoview. He was all corded muscle and sinew, and for the first time I truly began to understand his strength.
He lifted his leather armor piece by piece from the dresser, his movements swift, methodical.
Go, Eury,a voice said inside me. My mother’s.If you sit now, you die.
I moved fast. Down the hallway back to my room, barely seeing anything. When I entered my chambers, I stopped hard. Haskel stood there at the end of my bed, my bow and small hip quiver in his hands. The quiver was full of those white-feathered arrows.
“I heard the call,” he said.
I gave a nod, wordless. My voice had been stolen.
He lifted the quiver and bow. “I restrung the gutstring myself, to ensure it wouldn’t break or slacken on you.”
I came forward and took the weapons from him. “You’re the only fae I like.”
He stepped to the corner of the room, facing away as I changed into my leathers and placed my weapons. I picked up my cloak; I hadn’t worn this except once, to briefly look at myself in the mirror when I’d gotten my leathers. It hung dark with Sylvanwild patterns, the same as Dorian’s. The drape was light.
“It’s well made.” Haskel must have heard the sound of the cloak as I slipped it around me. “Mirek is the best of the Unseelie tailors.”
I clasped it at my neck. It was a perfect fit.
Haskel turned back around, observing me. “Aside from that flaxen hair, you look almost like one of us.” He stepped forward and set a hand to my arm. He leaned close and whispered, “See you keep yourself alive to the end.”
My throat tightened. “I will.”
