Misrule, page 11
Her nostrils flare. “If you were my pet, at least I didn’t keep you in a cage for a hundred years. And now I’m in another. How long until your court decides to add my head to the walls?”
Mortania’s presence swells and crests, sizzling across every nerve, and I do not fight her. “Do you want to know why there are heads on the walls? Because of Endlewild. And the Fae courts, who tried to drive all of my ancestors to extinction. Ask the Goblins and Demons and Imps what their lives were like after the War of the Fae, hunted and exiled. The murdered families and degradation. You were pampered and spoiled. A princess. You have no idea what it’s like to be one of us.”
For the briefest instant, the fire in her eyes dims. “I may not know exactly what hardship they suffered, but I never treated you with anything but respect. I loved you.”
Loved. The fissures in my wasted heart expand. Unwelcome tears sting in my eyes. I blink them away.
“But you could not even claim me in front of your court,” she goes on. “What did you think was going to happen when I woke? I’ve seen the human servants. It might be kinder to keep them in the dungeons. Leythana’s crest has been chipped out of the stone, the tapestries of the early queens are destroyed. All evidence of Briar has become a mockery. I’m a mockery.”
I grip the arms of my chair. “Is that what you care about? The trinkets, and the jewels, and the gowns? The statues and the sigils? What will you do—cry and whine for what you deem is your right? Throw tantrums until someone hands it to you?”
Wind bullies against the glass. The walls creak.
“I hate you,” Aurora whispers. It steals my breath. “I hate what you’ve become. You’re not Alyce anymore. And I…” She swallows. “I wish I was still asleep.”
My pulse thuds in my palms against the carved wood of the armrest. I cannot keep the tears back now, but I will not let her see them. I gather myself and go to the door. “Whether you choose to believe it or not, I did this for us. I won’t apologize for making a home for my kind after the hell we endured. Briar may not be glittering or gilded anymore, but it is still the world we imagined. I still want you to be part of it.”
I risk a glance back. But Aurora isn’t looking at me. She’s picked up a tarnished hand mirror from her dressing table and is examining her warped reflection. A fresh wave of anger crashes into me. Is she worried about the Grace magic in her blood Fading, and her famed beauty draining away?
“It was not real,” Aelfdene’s vile words lodge themselves into my very soul.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I hate you.
It chases me through the next days and nights. Invades my dreams and smothers my appetite. Aurora refuses to come out of her rooms, and I will not go and see her again after what happened. The Imps tell me that she’s barricaded herself in her bedchamber. That sometimes they can hear her crying.
I have her favorite foods sent to her rooms, and books I think she might enjoy. She ignores my notes and invitations to join the court. I should spend my time in the council chamber, or my solar, and lose myself in strategizing. I wander the corridors instead, my argument with Aurora replaying mercilessly in my mind. She was so cruel. Utterly unwilling to see my side of things. When Briar was at its height, Aurora abhorred the nobles like Elspeth, a bunch of sycophants obsessed with climbing the social ranks. But the way she looked at the servant—far kinder than she’s looked at me since she woke. Or perhaps ever will again.
Let her go, pet, Mortania urges.
At times, I wish I could.
Some days later, I find myself on the battlements after sunset. The Demon sentries are accustomed to seeing me here and dip their chins in greeting. We’ve had no further visits from Oryn’s forces, and I know the sentries are hungry for Etherian captives—and for more steeds to add to the number Derek is training. Malakar and his Goblins enthusiastically await the chance to utilize them during our next campaign. Which reminds me—I owe the ship’s boy a visit. There are many more questions I want answered.
There’s a high shriek above me, and then Callow lands on my shoulder. She ruffles her tawny wings and knocks her head against my cheek. I stroke her back and look out at the Grace District. Callow fought beside me when I razed it. Slashed the faces of our enemies with her talons as fiercely as if she were a dragon instead of a kestrel.
“What do you think?” I ask her quietly. “Am I a monster?”
“You’re keeping strange counsel these days.”
Torin seems to peel herself from the shadows. Given the molten fire that is their blood, the Demons can tolerate the cold far better than the rest of us. I’m wrapped in furs against the bitter wind, but she’s in a thin silk gown, its ruby color striking against the black and amber of her skin. “Does the bird have any wisdom to impart?”
As if in answer, Callow chuffs and rearranges herself. I laugh. A sentry passes us and raises his fist to Torin in salute. “I wish she did.”
“Is the advice of your council not sufficient?”
There’s an edge to her tone that grates against my conscience. “I didn’t mean—”
“I know you didn’t.” She picks at the loose stonework. “But many of us are still reeling from the discovery of a princess in the palace. I, for one, did not realize there was information you did not trust me to handle.”
I study the bottomless black of the horizon, chastened. “I’m sorry. You’re more than my council. You’re my friends. My family.”
“Family doesn’t keep secrets like that.”
The wind whistles around us. I sigh. “It was just…easier. I worried that you would all think less of me because of her. Humans haven’t been kind to us in the past.”
“Nor at present,” she comments, “if the princess’s attitude in the throne room is any indication of her future behavior.”
“She’s only—”
“How long did you know her before?” Torin asks. “Her whole life? Twenty years, perhaps?”
Metal clinks together as another pair of sentries passes. Heat climbs up my neck.
“One year.”
Less than that, actually, as Aurora and I met on the night of her twentieth birthday, and she was cursed again just before her next.
The fissures in Torin’s skin change abruptly from deep gold to canary yellow. “A single year?”
The flush on my face deepens, and I busy myself with petting Callow. “Does that matter? Don’t you think two people can get to know each other in that time?”
“I do,” she hedges. “But we have been friends for decades, and yet there are still things I am discovering about you.”
The distant crash of waves drifts in from the sea.
“I said I was sorry.”
Torin, cool and collected as ever, examines what scant stars are visible in the murk. “Do you recall the story of how the first Vila was created?”
I’m not sure why she’s bringing this up now. Besides, she knows I’ve read Nimara’s tale hundreds of times. “Which version?”
In Briar’s, Nimara was angry and vengeful after being turned by the Demon, and laid waste to the Fae courts in her wrath. But the Vila paint her as the founder of a mighty race, establishing Malterre for all who would join her.
“Precisely.” Torin slides me one of her enigmatic smirks. “It has always interested me the ways in which a tale will change based on who is telling it. In most renditions, so much of that particular story centers on Nimara as a victim. She’s attacked by the Demon, and then either rejects or embraces her fate. But what of the Demon himself?”
I shrug. “He vanished, I suppose. Is it important?”
Torin fiddles with the pendant around her neck. Her rich garnet hair drinks the torchlight. “It might be. If the Demon did not lure a Fae female out of her court. If he was invited to cross the border into Etheria.”
Invited? Callow chuffs and rearranges herself.
“After all, if it was so simple to outwit and then overpower an Etherian, why hadn’t it been done before?”
“I always thought the Demon was exceptionally clever.”
“Maybe. Or perhaps the Etherian female was curious about the dark creature and his power. Maybe she befriended him. Desired to become Vila.”
My mind spins with these suggestions. This is not the story I know, but does that make it false? Briar had no trouble casting the Vila as the villains in their version of the birth of Malterre. Who’s to say that the Vila didn’t do the same to the Demons?
“But…Demons were members of the Vila courts—and kin, because their magic is what turned Nimara’s blood,” I reason. “It would have been disrespectful to portray them as being so vicious and wicked.”
“And that”—she points at me—“is why many Demons refused to set foot in Malterre before the first war.”
The next howl of wind grabs at my furs. The torches gutter. “I wasn’t aware.”
“You couldn’t have been. And there’s no way to know for certain what happened between the demon and the Fae he turned. Perhaps he was as cruel as the Vila’s depiction of the legend claims. But those of us who did have cause to dispute that portrayal of one of our own could not share the home of the creatures who judged us ravenous, blood-lusting beasts.”
I don’t blame them. It had been intolerable to live in Briar as the Dark Grace, a resident monster. I wouldn’t wish the same fate on anyone. Well, mostly anyone. “And was your family among those who would not live in Malterre?”
She nods. “Most of us took refuge in the forests of the southern kingdoms across the sea. It was a nomadic life and an arduous one. Not least of all because, in a way, we were turning our backs on our own. As you point out, some of our magic flowed in Vila blood, and yet we could not bear to count them among our kin.”
Something scratches at the corners of my mind. A deeper purpose I cannot quite grasp. “Why are you telling me all this?”
It’s a few moments before she answers, as if she’s weighing her words. Callow mutters at something and picks at her feathers.
“Because you are asking us to put aside all of our prejudices and differences when it comes to the mortal princess,” Torin says at last. “Based solely off your word.”
I heave a sigh. It clouds in front of my face. “I understand it will be difficult, but—”
“And yet you are not willing to do the same when it comes to your own.”
“My own?”
She arches an eyebrow. “Neve.”
Neve? My irritation spikes. I start to protest, but Torin holds up a finger.
“Have you ever wondered why Neve prefers to sleep elsewhere? And why her visits to the Dark Court are so brief?”
“She’s head of the Starlings. She has to go and do…Starling things.”
“Or she doesn’t feel welcome at court.”
A raven shrieks, far away.
“That’s not it,” I insist. “The Imps love dressing her up, and the Demons adore her. I’ve witnessed the two of you together on countless occasions, and—”
“And I have never seen you two together, not when it wasn’t required. You’re the head of this court, and yet you looked like it physically pained you to attend the Starling funeral—and not because of grief. The Imps exhibited better decorum than you did.”
Now I’m sorry I came to the battlements. There seems a trap waiting for me at every turn. “That isn’t fair. I didn’t know what to do, and she made me feel completely inadequate.”
“One day, this war will end,” Torin goes on as if I hadn’t spoken. “And then Neve and her Starlings will come home for good. What then?”
I frown. The war has stretched on for so long that I haven’t given the prospect much thought. It settles like a stone in my belly.
Torin holds out the pendant she wears around her neck. I must have seen her tugging at it a thousand times, but I’ve never paid close attention to the detail. Torchlight ripples over the onyx stone, lighting up fissures of amber and gold. It looks almost like a piece of Torin herself. “This is the token of the Demons; those who allied with Malterre were required to surrender it to demonstrate their loyalty to the Vila courts. It was passed down in my family for generations. I count myself a member of the Dark Court, but I still wear it. Do you know why?”
“To honor your past?”
“Partly.” She lets the obsidian pendant fall against the glow of her chest. “And partly because you would never ask me to surrender it. It reminds me of the progress we’ve made since the days of Malterre. You have created a home here for us. That is why I came, and why I stay. Had I refused to join you because of how the Vila used to treat the Demons, I would have allowed my past to poison my present.”
“And you think that’s what I’m doing with Neve?”
“Your distrust of the Shifter leader is understandable given what happened before your siege of this realm.” I squirm at the mention of Kal. “But Neve has nothing to do with the shadows of your past. Stop punishing her for them.”
Flags snap in the wind. And I cannot deny that Torin has a point, much as I wish otherwise.
“I’ll try harder with Neve,” I grumble. “But that means you have to try with Aurora. She doesn’t deserve your distrust, either.”
Torin frowns and smooths her sleeve. And I grin. It’s a rare feat to trap the Demon leader in her own logic.
“A fair bargain,” she relents. “But any effort on my part would require the princess to emerge from her rooms. It’s been nearly a week with no sign of her.”
Callow mutters again, and I share her frustration.
“She’ll come out.” But I actually have no idea if that’s true.
A Demon in shadow form whispers past us, raising gooseflesh over my entire body. I huddle in my furs, but Torin leans into the swirling darkness.
“Are you certain she’s well?”
“What do you mean?”
“I possess little experience with curses, but do you have any clue as to what will happen now that the princess’s is lifted? If you or I were to sleep for a hundred years, our magic would preserve our physical bodies. But she is mortal. Will she continue aging as a typical human from this point forward? Or not at all?”
Or all at once? I grip the edge of the battlement, imagining Aurora’s years draining away like sand through an hourglass. Opening her bedchamber to find that she is nothing but bones and dust, as every other mortal who didn’t take my oath. “I’m not sure.”
There must be some way to prevent such a nightmare. But without binding her to me, how can I—
Dragon’s teeth. An idea plops into my mind, and my temples immediately begin to throb. It might work. But it means visiting the one person I hoped never to encounter again.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Garden is what I now call the block of the prison cells where Tarkin incarcerated me all those years ago. I used to visit in order to attempt to glean information from its inmates, or to taunt them with my very existence. But the excursion soon lost its luster. Now I let the Goblin guards run the place as they see fit.
Iron squeals as I unlock the various gates. The guards are confused to see me when we have no Fae prisoners, but they let me pass without much more than a greeting. Torchlight licks the rusted row of cells. The prisoners are awake. I detect muffled mewling and the scuffle of feet. My train swishes on the slimy stone until I reach the fifth cell on the right. A hand curls tentatively around an iron bar, then another.
Even in the dimness, I can make out the singular shade of pink in a tangled nest of curls.
Rose.
* * *
—
I’d lain waste to every Grace house in the realm during my siege, but there were many Graces who hid in cellars, or private homes, or whatever holes they could unearth to escape my vengeance.
As they’re part Fae—gifted with just enough Etherian magic to bestow temporary blessings and charms in the form of elixirs—some Graces fled to Etheria. They supposed, I assume, that their distant kin would take pity on them and usher them into the refuge of the Fae courts. But the Etherians know nothing of pity. The Graces who attempted to cross the mountain border either died during the journey or were killed by the protections surrounding Oryn’s domain.
Other Graces cobbled together flimsy rafts and set sail from the wrecked harbor. I usually let them get just beyond the sight of the shore before I went after them, rounded them up, and deposited them in the palace dungeons. At the time, I suspected that I could use the magic in another Grace’s blood to undo Laurel’s alterations to Aurora’s curse. But it was a fruitless effort.
Though their magic was useless for my purpose, I couldn’t simply release the Graces. Not after the decades they spent lording their status over me. Instead, I offered to allow them to swear to me, as the humans had done. But they refused, preferring to wallow in the prison cells for the rest of their lives, which appear to be the same interminable period as that of the Fae, now that they’re not draining their power at the demand of the nobility.
“And to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit, Malyce?”
Rose’s voice is raspy with disuse but laced with her usual venom. That nickname—the one she invented for me in Lavender House—used to raise my hackles. But I let it slide from my body like a discarded cloak and smile. “I see your tenure in this cell has done nothing to improve your manners. Perhaps I shall have to instruct the Goblins to educate you on appropriate conversational skills.”
Rose’s cheeks smudge amber, but I have to say I admire her spirit. No matter the circumstances, she never loses her fire.
“I beg your pardon.” She bobs a mocking curtsy. “What is it they call you these days? Mistress? If only our own Mistress Lavender could see you now. I’m sure she’d be pleased to learn what her generosity in not drowning a green-blooded infant has wrought.”
