Misrule, page 19
“I don’t want any of that,” I say. “But I don’t want to be like Oryn, either.”
Regan squeezes my arm. “You couldn’t be. The difference between Oryn and us is that we punish only those who deserve it.”
She winks, but I can’t return the sentiment. I scan the crowd, searching for Elspeth. She’s disappeared somewhere. Instead, I catch sight of a hideous wig making its way across the room and toward Aurora. Derek again.
Dragon’s teeth. I’d sternly instructed her Imps that Aurora was not to spend any time at all with the ship’s boy. I didn’t banish him from the revel. I want him to be able to see her and know that she doesn’t care for him. But that smile in the courtyard.
“Since the sparring was canceled today, I suppose we’ll have to pick it up tomorrow,” Regan says. But I’m only half-listening. “You’ll be there?”
“Of course.”
A troupe of Imps tumbles away from their fellows and piles atop one another in front of the dais. In warbling, discordant tones, they belt out a hastily devised song about decapitated heads and plucked eyeballs, ending with a loud, lingering Mistress Nimara. But my answering applause is unenthusiastic, and I decide to handle the matter of the prowling ship’s boy myself.
“Where are you going?” Regan asks at my back.
I mumble something in reply and keep walking. I’ve lost Derek in the sea of dancers. Imps giggle and tug at my arms, and I bat them gently away. Where has the damn boy gone?
“Looking for someone?”
A Vila couple spins past, and then I’m face-to-face with Rose. Glossy pink curls cascade in a flattering fashion over one of her bare shoulders, and her gown is of the same caliber as something she would have worn at a palace ball. The skirt is fashioned out of what appears to be pink butterfly wings, veined in gold. Matching ribbons crisscross up the bodice. The Imps must be more than satisfied with her elixirs.
“Are you enjoying yourself?” I mirror the Grace’s sticky-sweet smirk. “Or do you miss the gaggle of men you had at your disposal?”
She fluffs her skirts. “As you can see, I’m getting on splendidly, all things considered. The princess and I both know that this is only a temporary arrangement.”
“Are you certain of that? In case you failed to notice, Aurora snubbed the Fae envoy. There’s absolutely no chance of your escaping to Etheria now.”
One of the butterfly baubles dangling from her earlobes gleams. “Oh, I’m not worried about that. She’ll come to her senses sooner or later. And I’ll be more than ready when she does.”
Anger fizzes in my fingertips. And I reach out to straighten her necklace. “Careful, Rose. You wouldn’t want any mishaps to occur.”
She narrows her gaze. The golden Grace powder limning her eyelids shimmers. “The only mishap in this realm is you.”
I laugh. “Do you think your insults have any effect on me anymore? I’m not the Dark Grace.”
“No? But what does she think you are?” Rose points behind us with her fan.
Aurora’s Imps are vaulting onto one another’s shoulders and flipping down again. She laughs at them and claps. One of them turns a stone into a pastry topped with a miniature crown and offers it to her on bended knee. And there is that ratty wig, far closer to her than it ought to be.
“Oh, they make a handsome couple, don’t they?” She says at my shoulder. “What a touching romance. The man who lifted the lost princess’s curse then stole her heart. The stuff of legends, is it not?”
Where my power dwells, Mortania stirs. I should have drained Rose’s gift long ago. Let her go the way of Marigold and Laurel. I itch to do it now—dull those golden eyes and still that conniving tongue forever.
“Poor Malyce,” Rose goes on. “Are you still in love with her? Did you think she would wake and run back to you?” She clicks her tongue, and I’ve half a mind to forgo my magic and rip it out of her mouth with my bare hands. “But how could she? How could she ever really love something like you?”
Something. The word lands like a hammer, just as it always used to. And then Aelfdene’s voice rears its ugly head.
“It was not real.”
No. I grind my teeth against the stinging in my eyes. And I will show Rose who’s in charge of this court.
“Artesia,” I bark out.
A nearby Vila peels herself away from her partner and bows in greeting.
I grip Rose’s elbow and thrust her forward. “You’ve met our Grace? She craves a dance. In fact, she claimed that she could dance all night without ceasing. Could you accommodate her?”
Artesia grins, licking her lips. “Certainly, Mistress. It would be a pleasure.”
Rose’s perfect pink curls bounce as she’s half-dragged away, the petrified butterflies sewn into the toes of her slippers flapping with each step. “No, I’m tired and—”
But the Vila is deaf to her protests, and Rose is soon swallowed in the throng.
And even though Derek is sitting with Aurora, and she is laughing at his inane jokes, I do not go to them. I slip away instead, into the chill of the night.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The gardens are empty. I stalk down the gravel paths, furious at Rose and Derek and especially myself. I am Mistress of the Dark Court. The most powerful Vila living. Why do I care about the human servants, or an idiotic ship’s boy, or a vapid Grace?
Why indeed, pet?
Brittle branches and thorny vines snag in my hair and clothes. I send my magic out to meet theirs, and they shrivel away. Before I know it, I’m deep inside the garden, standing in front of a fountain I have not visited in a hundred years.
It is almost unrecognizable, the marble charred and blackened. The sculpted faces of the bathing maidens are smashed, some of their limbs missing. Under no circumstances could it spout water—or anything resembling liquid. But I close my eyes and imagine myself a century ago, angry and lonely and completely powerless against a realm that despised me for the very reasons it exploited my magic.
And now that realm is reduced to ash, but I can’t help feeling that I am right back where I started. Anger presses against the inside of my skin. For a heart-stopping moment, I fear I will explode with it. That they will find me here, nothing but dust.
“I take it that this is still your preferred hiding place when something goes wrong at a party?”
The voice startles me into the present. I whirl. Moonlight glints on the copper-gold of Aurora’s hair and drenches her luminous skin.
“I…didn’t know anyone followed me.” I tug at my dress.
“You were walking in that way that you do when you’re furious about something.”
“I don’t have a walk like that,” I say.
But she only arches an eyebrow. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”
And it’s then that I fully comprehend that Aurora is here, not sitting with Derek, or gossiping with Rose. She chose me. Everything else becomes instantly unimportant.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say, letting my frustration slide from my shoulders.
“If you say so.” Aurora shrugs and inspects the fountain. Something ripples across her expression. “Is this where we first met? The fountain you muddied up?”
“It is.” A sudden shyness overcomes me. “I’m surprised you recognized it.”
Aurora lets out a long breath, and I imagine that, like me, she is thinking of the person she was that long-ago night. “I see you still have a knack for ruining it.”
She’s teasing me. I feign outrage, pressing a hand to my chest. “You said you liked it better that way.”
“Oh, I did.” She laughs. “You should have seen the royal gardeners the next day. They were in a state for weeks.”
I laugh with her, reveling in how familiar this is. How easy. I toy with a wandering vine, the stem smooth against my papery skin. “I saw you with Malakar and the others, shooting a crossbow. You’re very good. Though I don’t imagine you had much training in weaponry as Briar’s princess.”
“Mother would have had a fit if she’d been there.” Her eyes sparkle in that mischievous way I adore. “But I rather enjoyed it. Not that I’d want to shoot at anything other than targets,” she adds. “I’m relieved none of the Imps got in the way. I’m not sure how those little deviants survived in the Fae courts. They must have driven the Etherians mad.”
“It’s been a point of debate,” I say.
Ravens trade their calls nearby. Aurora is quiet for a while, picking dead leaves from the nooks of the fountain and letting them crumble. “I’m glad you rescued them,” she says at last. “No one should endure what they did. They deserve a home.”
It’s the first time she’s acknowledged that I accomplished anything of value since she was cursed to sleep, and I’d like to believe it might mean she’s beginning to trust the Dark Court. Maybe even trust me. But I’m too much of a coward to ask her outright. “Have you been reading any of the books I gave you?”
“I have,” she says. “I’ve not discovered anything about Leythana or her negotiation with the Vila courts. But I have read about Malterre. You were right—the books present a very different version of its people than what Briar taught. Not that I’d read many of those texts.”
No. The only books about the Vila were hidden away in the abandoned library. And even those were ridiculously one-sided.
“And have they…helped you to understand what I did? And why?”
It takes her a long time to answer. Wind groans in the branches. “I can understand your anger. And that you might have felt such a drastic response was necessary.” Hope surges up from my toes. Then, “But, Alyce, that understanding doesn’t bring anyone back. It doesn’t change the fact that you’ve done to me and my home what Briar and the Fae did to yours.”
Her words shudder through me, cruelly deflating any happiness. And the worst part is that I cannot entirely refute what Aurora says. That same fanged guilt that I experienced when I found out about the secret funeral sinks its teeth into my soul. Mortania writhes in the place where my magic lives.
Why should you feel guilt, pet? You were not the one to strike the first blow.
No, I wasn’t. And I’d be willing to bet that Aurora would have razed some other realm if it meant protecting her own. Sometimes I wonder if she would have condoned the blight on Malterre during the first war if she’d been alive then. I draw myself up, recentering my focus where it always should be—on the Dark Court.
“You want me to say I regret what I did, but I don’t.” She flinches slightly, but I don’t relent. “Your father, and Mistress Lavender, and everyone else—they pushed and pushed, until I finally pushed back. I will not apologize for that.”
Night creatures chitter. “And I won’t apologize for missing my family, even if they could be ruthless. Or for mourning the life I thought I was going to have.”
My breath clouds in front of my face, the beauty of this night having shriveled as soon as it bloomed. Here we are, enemies again. “So where does that leave us?”
She picks at the chipped stone of the fountain. “I don’t know.”
A thousand thoughts war inside my mind. I want to tell her that I love her. That I hate her. That I’m angry with her for her constant judgment and criticism. That I’m sorry for her grief. But I say nothing. Eventually, Aurora’s footsteps crunch back toward the palace. And I let them go.
Alone, and surrounded by the brittle and blackened foliage, the decaying statues and fountains, part of me misses how these gardens looked at Briar’s height. It’s late summer, and the sky should be sugared with stars, the air thick with the perfume of dozens of kinds of flowers. On a whim, I send my power out to find the thready magic of the curtain of bramble draped over the fountain and bid it curl away. And then I guide it to burrow into the ruined marble, discovering the firm heart of the stone itself, and re-form a half-crumbled maiden into a dragon’s head. It’s not like it used to be, but it holds its own sort of beauty.
And another idea wriggles its way out of the darkness.
Aurora and I are at a stalemate, each of us entrenched in the worlds we knew before. But what if there was a way to meet in the middle? To forge a path together, as we’d planned to do before everything went so horribly wrong.
I think I might know how to make that happen.
* * *
—
“Where were you this morning?” Regan asks as I take my place at the council table the next day. “You said you would come to the practice yard. I had a mountain of pastries waiting. We had to use them as target practice.”
Dragon’s teeth, I completely forgot. I’d been up the whole night planning and managed only a few hours of sleep in the early morning. “I’m sorry,” I tell her, pouring out a cup of strong tea. “Next time?”
Her answering smile is forced. “Of course. But you did miss incredible feats of agility.”
“I am sorry,” I say again.
“No matter.” She pushes a plate of cheese my way. “Here—you look like death.”
I shoot her a glare but stuff a wedge into my mouth anyway.
“Enough dallying,” Malakar says as he scoots his chair closer to the table. “It’s time to discuss the siege of the High Court. My thought is—”
“Before we do that,” I interrupt, steeling myself for what I’d spent a solid hour rehearsing last night. “I have something to present. Given what happened with Aurora and the envoy, I think we should do something for her.”
A slightly confused silence follows.
“Already had a revel,” Valmar comments, tail curling behind him.
“What I have in mind would be more formal,” I explain. “A proper welcome.”
“Such as?” Neve adds cream to her tea, stirring her spoon in a way I know she intends to be annoying. Silver scrapes against the china—and my nerves.
“I’ve learned from the Grace’s reports that Aurora’s birthday is coming soon,” I say, doing my utmost best to keep my tone even and casual. “Humans enjoy birthdays. We should throw her a party. Celebrate her.”
Unspoken questions hang thick above the table, like storm clouds lumbering in from the sea. I will not have much opportunity to sway them to my side.
“We all witnessed how she responded to the envoy,” I go on. “She’s been trying of late. Really trying.”
Wind presses against the glass. The council members trade loaded glances.
“Mine do speak well of her,” Valmar says around a mouthful of chocolate pastry, already selecting another.
“Aye.” Malakar is playing with some trinket from the Court of Dreams—a glass ball with a galaxy of stars whirling inside the crystal—and it emits a musical sound as he rolls it back and forth on the table. “She handled the crossbow as easily as any of mine could. Quick learner.”
“High praise,” Neve drawls.
“It is that.” Malakar puffs out his chest. “She even complimented the craftsmanship. Built the thing myself.”
I smile into my goblet. The way to a Goblin’s heart is through his weapons.
“I believe what Nimara actually proposes is that this party will serve as an invitation for the princess to become a full member of court,” Torin says.
She looks to me with that keen amber gaze, and I nod in confirmation. My pulse speeds up, as I’m not sure what I’ll do if they reject this idea.
“It can’t hurt anything,” I insist before it’s immediately shot down. “In fact, her official induction to the Dark Court could help our position. Aurora would be a human ally and a former princess. There are a multitude of diplomatic tasks she could help us accomplish after the war. And she’s more than proven that she isn’t like the humans of former Briar.”
Neve inspects her ironlike nails. “Would she choose to join us? A few pleasant encounters do not guarantee a lasting alliance.”
She’s picking this plan apart because it’s mine. For all her talk about my disrespect, she’s as bad as Rose. “If Aurora is trying, we should try. That’s how alliances are guaranteed.”
Torin lets out a sigh. “I admit, the princess has impressed me. I assumed she would spend the rest of her life in her rooms or continue treating us like we were vermin invading her palace. But”—she gestures at Valmar—“yours have taken a shine to her. And even my Demons claim she is a cunning partner in their games. And a graceful dancer. Of course, they say the same thing about the boy.”
I have no desire to include him in this discussion.
“Aye,” Valmar relents. “Suppose it cannot hurt to ask her.”
Triumph buzzes in my veins.
“Then it’s settled?” I ask. “We hold a surprise party to officially welcome Aurora into our midst.”
The ensuing pause is not as uncomfortable as it was before.
Malakar thumps his fist on the table. “It’s an excuse for another revel, if nothing else. Don’t have to yank my tail for one of those.”
I laugh and raise a toast. And I do not realize until much later that Regan is the only one of the council who said nothing at all.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The Imps are enthusiastic when I solicit their help. Fae and others of magical blood do not celebrate birthdays, as few of us can guess exactly when we were born, which makes the party seem marvelously eccentric.
Though I explained to them about other parties given in former Briar, the roguish creatures have no interest in Grace-grown flowers, or pots of redolent incense, or live hummingbirds flitting like winged jewels among the guests. Instead, columns are dressed as ominous trees with scythelike arms draped in cobwebs. Brambles curl along what’s left of the mezzanine. Vases teem with midnight-petaled irises and a species of orchid only the Imps could have summoned—with miniature leering faces in the centers. Ravens are captured and let loose in the ballroom, their laughing calls sinister and echoing.
