Page 127 of The Lure of Wolves and Whispers

Maybe, just maybe, I can make it through tonight without anyone trying to kill me.

Though I might be asking for too much there.

Talon fastens the ties behind the crown of my head.

“Ready?”

I turn to face them and squeeze their hand in mine.

“I’m ready.”

For whatever will come.

THIRTY-ONE

When my feet cross the threshold of the candlelit banquet hall, my heart stops.

The thrones are nowhere to be seen.

The dais is torn down.

And climbing up the walls along the edges of the room are trellises of roses so painfully pale it looks like the life’s been drained out of them.

There are no flickering sconces, but bonfires set into vases of pure iron. The shadows and darkness consume even more space than before.

The room smolders.

The only music is a haunting melody from some kind of instrument where the player sits on a narrow bench and plays at a series of black and white keys with both hands. The sweet, dark tones each key produces are mellow and rich, but foreign to my ear.

Talon’s gaze locks on it, a stiff set in their jaw.

“What is that?” I ask, looking around the room.

The trellises of roses block off half the sweeping throne room, condensing the area enough that it already feels packed and full. Still, there aren’t enough nobles here to fill the room.

Hope surges in my chest.

More than half the nobles normally at banquets of the Assay aren’t here.

The ones who are watch each other warily, as if taking stock, as the sweet darkness the musician coaxes from the keys swells.

“Thatis a piano.” Talon drops their voice as we step deeper into the shimmering haze of the bonfires. “It’s from Cymrea.”

At that moment, the High Queen enters from behind a trellis of white roses, two-pointed golden crown atop her tangle of Cymrean braids, courtiers trailing at her sides in a parade of blatant, unmistakable power.

Cashel stills on the dance floor, sapphire eyes flashing darker than navy, darker than storm clouds as they snap to the crown on his stepmother’s head.

That’s his father’s crown—not hers.

Shocked breaths rustle across the room as the High Queen steps into a pool of firelight, lighting a halo behind her—and there’s no sign of the High King anywhere.

“Your king remains… indisposed,” she says in a voice sharper than a knife.

Notourking. Notherking.

Yourking.

That’s what she said.