Page 54 of The Lure of Wolves and Whispers
“Maeve,” I answer, pulling up tall. “Of Quayside.”
I don’t bother waiting for her to announce me before I step through the curtain.
The light of an impossible number of glowing candles blinds me for a long second before my eyes adjust, and I make out a sweeping staircase of pure black stone stretching down from a small landing just beyond the curtain into the largest hall I’ve ever seen.
Hundreds of nobles wait below. A menacing silence weighs over them.
Talon barely manages to tame the rare grin curving across their mouth before offering out a hand to me from where they wait at the top of the staircase. “Thought you might need an escort,my lady.”
“Don’t even…” I shake my head, and the heat of the attention and the flickering candlelight makes everything spin just a little around me. “Tell you what. Get me down these stairs in one piece, and I promise I’ll listen next time.”
“Told you the wine’s ridiculously strong.” Talon steps to the edge of the stairs, wide and sweeping down into a room of black marble, glimmering mirrors, and torches setting every surface ablaze with dancing light.
“You were right,” I admit, hooking my right arm through their left and holding on tight. “And I’m sorry. About… before.” I swallow. “I have a temper.”
“I never would’ve guessed.”
Step by step, Talon leads me down the stairs, and the humming in my head quiets to a hush. Someone moves in the crowd, a blur of crimson and steel. But there are too many shadows for me to see clearly from this high up.
My heart thrums in my ears, filling the nerve-racking quiet.
There is no great cheer for a peasant—just disgust, and a wary coldness that seeps over the exposed skin up the curve of my upper spine.
When we make it to the bottom of the stairs, a new wave of heat from all the bodies washes over me, sending blood rushing to my cheeks. There’s a cloying sweetness to the air, heavily floralin a way that makes my throat clench, but I can’t quite place it.
Each of the noble daughters who went before me stands lined up with the serious-looking women and men who must be their escorts, like Talon is mine.
My heart thuds. “Talon?”
They lower their head toward me, keeping their intelligent eyes on the crowds pressing in from all sides. It makes no sense, but having Talon here helps calm me.
“Thanks for being here.”
The corner of their mouth twitches. “Where else would I be?”
You’re not the only one with lives on the line if you fail.
Old Ones, I want to ask what they meant then. How many people in this room, in this castle, might be working with them. But Talon’s words aren’t the only ones pressing into my mind now. My mother’s do too.
Secrets are your greatest shield.
I can’t ask anyone to lower their shield if I won’t either.
We make our way to the very end of the line, past the sixth noble daughter—Oona of House Dunluce. I keep a wary distance, the desire to wedge something sharp intoherribs warring with the knowledge that doing so right now will almost certainly get me killed.
My eyes leap to where the line of us faces a dais in the center of the long room.
Two thrones, gilded with ornately carved backs and cushioned seats, wait there. The High Queen sits in one of them—I recognize the coldness of her crystal eyes, the black kohl lining the rims, and the brutal tangle of delicate braids crowning her white-blond hair. Her eyes harden on mine, and my blood turns to ice.
But it’s the quiet mutterings of the man on the larger throne beside her than make every other thought vanish from my mind.
The High King—that specter haunting the streets of Quay-side with every waft of rotting flesh from the Black Quay, the man whose title is whispered like a curse on every street—looks as frail as a starving newborn.
Sharp bones jut from his cheeks like blades beneath the skin.
His hair hangs in thinning strands that might once have been blond, and the rich velvet tunic hangs off his shoulders. As if it fit him once, but no longer.
There’s something so disturbingly… ordinary about him.
