I blinked at the knight, but if he had heard the voice of the Dark Fool, he gave no sign. I glanced around me for a figure clad in leaves and velvet, iridescence sparking in the inky black of his hair. I saw him everywhere and nowhere. He was here and he was missing, like the mortal world and the Veil.
The knight made a basket of his fingers. I stepped into them and allowed him to hoist me onto my mount.
I wriggled in my seat—discreetly, I hoped, and concealing my discomfort. “Your name, sir knight?” I silently added,And would you happen to know mine?
For how could I think of myself as Una’s daughter without even the name she gave me?
“Lyel, Your Majesty.”
This time, when he addressed me thus, I hardly winced at all.
“I shall lead you to the palace now, if so you desire,” Lyel continued, taking the horse’s lead, to my great relief. “And I shall be at your disposal, now and evermore, until you should step down and name a successor in your place.”
A voice spilled out from the forest around us, sonorous and familiar. “Or until the crown should tumble off your unworthy head.” And the air wafted forth with the scent of musk and deep forest loam, something holy become profane and foul.
Then it was dust, all bone and iron.
I looked out across my demesne, and far into the distance stood trees twisted and bare, dead limbs curling like skeletal claws. The ground beneath me lay dry and cracked; I breathed in dusty, metallic air. For a moment, the sky flashed red as flame.
Such a vision had the Dark Fool shown me when we met on the other side of the Veil.
He thought me incapable of preventing this.
The Dark Fool was wrong.
It shall never come to pass. By the blood of Queen Una inside me, I shall see that it does not.
The moment passed, and naught was around me but mellow greenness, the scent of flowers teasing my nose.
I sat tall in my saddle, head high, smiling like a benevolent goddess as I looked out over Faery. I had been made to rule Her, and never would I falter in that task.
All around me, the citizens of Faery shouted out in joy.
“Our queen has returned! Queen Fia has come home!”
Fia.
Like an anchor it moored me, kept me from floating adrift.
For the first time I heard my own name.
Thirty-One
That night I slept asthe earth slumbers beneath a hard winter frost, exhausted by all I had seen and become.
Does the phoenix ever long to return to its nest of ash?
Drunk on wonder, I marveled at the outlandish creatures who had greeted me in the forest, the twisting, sky-piercing spires of the palace Lyel swept me through.Mypalace. Mine. Scarce had I more than a kirtle to my name before. Now I’d an entire world that suited itself to my needs. I could barely digest it. Through endlessly unfurling wonders Lyel escorted me, passing beneath ceilings glinting with stars, carved by ocean waves, or buttressed by living trees. The walls gleamed with nacre or were hung with tapestries of vines, some of which dripped heavy with fruit. The windows were as the glass of cathedrals and like veined leaves, emitting a cool green light into the palace. My feet glided over carpet that was grass that was carpet, both at once, and brushed like thistledown over my silken slippers. Nor did I recall from whencethosecame.
Just another marvel in this impossible world.
There was so much to look at, to touch, to breathe. I’d have sworn I would never close my eyes again; yet I passed out the moment I stretched across my bed.
And what a bed! Soft as cloud, with no straw pricking its way out through the mattress. I smelled neither hound nor old wool, but the sweet aroma of flowers and the juice of exotic fruits.
Why had I grown up apart from all this? From what dangers did Mairi Grieve seek to keep me safe?
And did those dangers yet remain?
