Page 26 of The Lure of Wolves and Whispers

The guard pulls me up a narrow staircase, then across a sweeping hall tiled with polished black-and-white marble. Crimson-and-black banners along with thin furls of crested flags stream from the high wooden beams stretching across the arched ceilings. I recognize them from the ones that’ve been flying for weeks now—the colors of all the noble families arriving for the Assay. The flags of the noble daughters about to fight to the death to be the next queen.

Women and men in finely embroidered wool or velvet cloaks mill in the hall, their eyes darting from one hanging flag above to the next, whispering.

The Assay must be just days away from starting now. And beneath the banners, the crimson and black that feels like a waiting shroud, all I can think of is the poor peasant woman the gardai stole for the competition, wherever she is.

I hope she doesn’t suffer in this place.

I hope she dies quickly.

I hope whoever she is, she finds the strength to resist—in whatever small way she can. I hope she can close her eyes at the end and dream of magic.

I will, when the end comes for me.

A pair of gleaming brass doors rises up before us, and the guard nods to the pair of gardai on either side. They sweep the doors open, and my blood races. Bracing for an executioner or a beating before they take me down to the Black Quay.

But the air inside is sweet. And it’s blissfully warm, lit by the crackle and smoke of a hearth burning chips of priceless cedar and rose petals. Paned glass windows lining the back of the stone walls are thrown open to the gray sky and the churning black seabeyond, as though the sweet smoke and warmth are so common that it’s nothing to waste them.

My eyes sweep over the large chamber, counting the gardai and the long, brutal swords at their sides. And then I see her—there, right in the center of the room, is the High Queen herself.

It has to be her, the High King’s Cymrean queen, dripping with soft furs and heavy golden chains woven into elaborate knots around her. Her hair is the color of wheat from the fields, bound up in tiny braids throughout her carefully curled waves. Thick smudges of kohl ring eyes as cold and cruel as I’ve ever seen.

When they narrow on me, a shiver rips down my back.

Her throne is smaller than the one beside her, but no less intimidating.

Where is the High King?

The guard holding me up drops down to all fours and pulls me down, yanking me close enough to hiss,“Say nothing.”

Once I’m on the floor, I freeze.

A voice as hard as ice tears through the tendrils of scented smoke. “I do not care for this tradition,” the High Queen declares, tapping her nails along the arm of the throne. She says the wordtraditionlike it has a foul taste. “Explain to me again why we bother bringing a peasant rat into the test to find a queen?” Her lilting accent is strong despite almost two decades on our isle. She arrived as the Cymrean ambassador’s daughter not long after the High King married his first wife, an Eireician noble from a family just as old as his own.

The copper-haired guard covers a cough and looks up to meet her glare. “To remind the people that no peasant will ever be worthy of power, Your Majesty. Hope is a stubborn weed. It willalways try to root, so we scorch it out before it can grow.”

Ice flashes in the High Queen’s crystal eyes. “Hmm.”

I grit my jaw so hard it creaks in my ears and press my forehead into the cold marble, wishing I could sink down and escape through the mountain itself below us.

“She will not last. Look at her—weak as a drowned rat.” Her voice could cut glass.

“Watching her fail will remind any noble foolish enough to sympathize with the rebels again that no peasant will ever be worth what they risk,” the guard vows.

Her eyes snap to the guard’s with a bright malice as my heart freezes.

No.

They can’t mean what this sounds like.

My fingers press hard against the tile.

Fear races through me as I hear the High Queen speak again. “In three days,” she sneers, “the Assay begins. And only the woman worthy of the prince’s hand will still be breathing at the end.” I feel her icy eyes lock on me. “It will not be you.”

I don’t dare lift my gaze to glare at her. One word and she could order the gardai to run me through with their swords right here.

“Enjoy the precious food we waste on you. Walk these halls and remember that none of this will ever be yours. No matter whathope”—she spits the word out—“you think you feel, you and your kind will never win. Not against us.”

Old Ones, this can’t be happening. No peasant has ever survived the Assay. I have to escape. I have to get back to Finn. We can run—I don’t know where, but we could. She must have pil-feredenough coin from our father by now to buy the permits to leave the city.