Page 22 of The Crown the Fae Forgot
Shiel looked at me then, so fiercely that it was all I could do not to shrink back.
“Better you than Icarus,” he said. “Because I promise you this, if it was Icarus on that pile of bodies, it would not stop there. It would not stop until there was no sky left to eclipse. Let Icarus have reign over this world, this kingdom, and he will not stop until he drowns us all.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
There was onlyone thing I didn’t tell Shiel, Zev, and Finch when I told them all the rest—and it the one thing that carried me forward, ready to face my fate. It was the one thing that had truly planted a small seed of hope in me, one that I wasn’t ready to share, for fear that it might be extinguished, and with it, any courage I had left to push onward towards my increasingly darkening fate.
Because if I was able to call forth a fae without their knowing or consent, then surely, when the time came, I could call forth a memory, too.
It was with this thought buoying my once drowned spirits that I met Lady Phyrra this time. Vestele waited for us at the entrance to the stronghold-like manner, guarded with double the number of armed fae this time. Her eyes avoided mine, and shame colored her cheeks, as if she already regretted her part in what had brough us here tonight. I, much to my own surprise, felt no resentment towards her, no sense of betrayal.
It was her role, after all—the spy—one that she’d never tried to hide.
It was the same reason I’d begun to trust Icarus during my time in his court. It had been refreshing, knowing a fae’s true intentions.
Or, had been, at least, until even there I was wrong. Even there, he’d deceived me.
Thoughts of the dark fae brough with it a weight that settled on me once more. It wasn’t just the memory of his betrayal that anchored each following step more than the last. It was the sight of him in my room, called to me by the new power I was only just learning how to access.
Back there, under the influence of the tea, I’d been terrified of his twisted from.
Now that I understood what it meant, it should have given me comfort to know that he was too weak to follow, too weak, even, to enact anything that might undermine our attempts to reach the Eastern Court before him. Unlike Shiel, who trusted his advisor with the very future of his court, Icarus had no one he could trust.
I’d seen the way he interacted with his court, the way they followed him out of fear. He would never entrust them with the truth of his weakness, let alone the power to do anything without his presence.
Despite knowing all that, it wasn’t comfort that I found in remembering the way his body had been broken.
Instead, it was with a pang of guilt that I remembered it. Worry. Fear, even.
The lord of the Wildness didn’t deserve my sympathy, but he had it. However much I hated myself for feeling it, it was there. Whatever way I felt about Icarus and his current state, the time had come for me to face the consequences of calling on the dark lord, as Finch was so fond of calling him.
We were swiftly brought inside and led through to a different wing, this one at the end of a long series of winding, maze-likemirrored corridors. We didn’t stop until we’d been led into a dining hall of sorts, something too small to be used for dinner parties, but far too massive for it to look anything other than odd with only the lady herself sitting alone at one end.
A half dozen servants stood at her beck and call, each one standing rigid as a statue, staring straight ahead, unseeing, as they waited for her next command. Guards were stationed at each entrance to the room—all four of them—each one with their weapons already drawn, their own faces watching us with an intensity I hadn’t felt since we’d left Icarus’ court.
After all the time I’d spent under the careful, overly watchful eyes of the Wildness fae, I should have been used to it. But once more, the weight of it, the feel of their eyes boring into me, looking and watching and waiting for me to give them some sort of sign that they were looking for, it made my skin crawl.
It served as a reminder that we were still prisoners, not guests, in yet another court.
However bright and colorful this court might be compared to the last.
Lady Phyrra lounged against the back of her chair, her hair and makeup elaborate and perfect as the dressing gown that gathered around her crossed ankles. She regarded us with a sort of only half-interested glance before she motioned for one of the servants to step up and refill her wine glass, then again for four more to be brought out and filled. These she offered to us, then waited as each one of them took them in hand, before she finally addressed us.
“My friends and visitors, it is so nice to see you again. You’ll have to excuse me for not meeting with you sooner. The Midsummer activities take up a large amount of my available time.”
Her voice contained that same cool indifference, but she wasn’t able to hide the spark of something far more cunningfrom glinting in her eye when she looked my way. This was no chance invitation, however she might try to make it seem like it was.
Not that she thought she was fooling us. No, the look in her eye when she raked her gaze over me was not one trying to deceive. This was some sort of test, a dance of some kind, a war of words meant to gage our own reactions. I felt myself shrink back a bit as my mind wandered back to the books upon books that I’d devoured at my short stint in the library. All that studying and nothing could prepare me for this, for the nuance that only came from a lifetime of living amongst these creatures.
Thankfully, Shiel had done just that, and he was the one who answered for me.
“There’s no need for apologies, my Lady,” Shiel says warmly, his face betraying no sign of pain as he dipped his head towards her. His body, the legs that shook ever so slightly as he straightened back up, however, told a different story.
I felt a familiar pang twist my insides.
This was my fault. I’d prompted him to get out of bed, to end the bedrest that he’d so dutifully fulfilled over the last week at the healers’ insistence.
If Lady Phyrra saw this, too, she didn’t let it show in the smile she flashed our way, completely unbothered.
