“To Lycanthyr,” I said dismissively, as if I had told him I was going on an evening walk.
“You will be going personally?” Lioren asked, his eyes wide as his tone changed to one ofsurprise. I had not left Vaetharyn in years, yet here I was talking as if it were something I did every week.
“Yes, myself and the human” I said, still not bothering to look up. Elara would accompany me, to test her resolve. For me to see how serious she was about earning her coveted freedom. Perhaps she would even keep me from dwelling too long in my silence.
“The Wolf King-” Lioren began, but my hand raised into the air. Commanding silence.
“He will receive me,” I stated. “He will know what is at stake.”
“At once,” Lioren said and I watched him bow from the corner of my eye. His feet scurried across the floor. The door announced his exit with a soft click.
I stood once again in my throne room, alone. Surrounded by maps and shadows. For the first time in years, I felt tired, a bone deep, soul aching tiredness. Seven winters I had worn this crown alone. Burning bridges and watching battlefields soaked in blood. Yet to survive, I would willingly ride to every King who had every reason to put a blade to my throat, and ask him to trust me once more.
In the dark of my thoughts, she surfaces again. Somewhere in the eastern wing Elara was likely arguing with a member of my staff. Breathing infuriating life into the stone corridors I had worked hard to keep cold. That stupid, infuriating life that had somehow wormed its way into my veins like hope. It was a disease. I would need to stop her spreading before shebecame the death of me.
“Wolves first,” I murmured to the empty hall, as if speaking the plan allowed would cement it into place. “Then the dragons, and if the gods truly despise me, the sirens”
The shadows that always followed me, flicker in response. Ignoring them I move back towards my throne. Each step a silent vow. Vaetharyn will not fall, my brother's death will not have been meaningless.
I will not allow a simple human girl, with a sharp tongue to distract me from the thing I have craved most.
Revenge.
Chapter Six
A week passed, and The King said nothing more of spies, war or freedom. Instead, I was swallowed whole by the court.
It was not the romantic kind of suffocation, no balls beneath glittering chandeliers, no jewelled hands brushing silk whilst nobles plotted murder behind my back.
This was a slower kind of suffocation. Duller and far more cruel.
Every morning, Penny woke me before dawn. I was scrubbed until my skin was raw, brushed and braided until not a single strand dare defy its place. My gowns were chosen with care, rich fabrics in muted shades meant to soften me, to make me seem more ornamental, than a human out of place. She had stopped trying to cover my scar after two days, tired of watching me pull the fabric down anyway.
By the time I was marched through the corridors I felt less like a person and more like a trinket. A well dressed shadow, silent, decorative and achingly bored out of my skull.
My bruises and scars had softened thanks to Penny’s constant use of oils and salves, althoughmy lip was still split. It was healing, just very slowly as was expected for my human body. The only one that had not changed was the burn on my neck. Every time Penny saw it, she looked at me with pity.
Pity was something I did not want nor need, so I often ignored her, shoving the sponge away or snatching it from her hands to wash the puckered skin myself.
The first few days, I tried so hard to pay attention. Fae politics glittered with hidden blades, alliances and insults were woven together it was almost an art. If I was going to survive, to do as The King asked, I would need to understand all of it.
By the third day, I would have gladly thrown myself into a dragon's nest, if it meant avoiding listening to another debate, over trade routes or the sanctity of long dead bloodlines.
By the fifth, the thought of driving a decorative fork into my own head; at dinner, began to feel almost reasonable.
Each evening, I sat at one end of an ornate wooden table, long enough to seat ten, whilst the Fae King occupied the other. We ate in silence, beneath chandeliers shaped like frozen lightning. The quiet was not comfortable, it was a chasm.
I was bored. Dangerously bored.
That was how I found myself hiding in the library. Not the grand one, crowded with perfumed nobles, pretending to read books. Whilst whispering about who had been seen coming from whose bed, in the early hours of the morning.
No, this spaceI had claimed as mine.
I had found a narrow door, concealed behind a tapestry of some long dead queen, which led to a forgotten tower of shelves, layered in dust. The shelves stretched upwards until they disappeared into the darkness. The air was filled with the scent of dust and parchment. It was thick and musty, a smell I was sure Penny would complain about, if I stayed too long.
I could endure the smell, as long as I got the silence I so desperately craved. I had smelt worse, I myself had smelled worse.
I claimed a small alcove between two towering shelves, curling into the seat as though I could fold myself out of existence. Here, no one could demand that I smile. No one to watch for insolence in the tilt of my chin.
