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In the cellar of Hollow Hall, they do not speak.
Only the dimmest candlelight reaches the bottom of the oubliette. He is clad darkly; his face is downturned; the pale flash of bare hands is his only distinctive feature from where she stands gazing down.
She wonders if he is still chained. She doubts it. She weighs the heft of his dagger and considers her own dark eyes in the polished blade. He does not need a weapon; he is a weapon—she knows this. When she'd pulled it from the sheath on his ribs, she had not been thinking of safety.
Her traitorous heart is still quite fond of fairytales. She thinks, fleetingly, of a hero rescuing a maiden from a tower. Of a maiden rescuing a hero from a tyrant. Fairytale protagonists are always so pure of heart. She exhales a frustrated breath through her nose and shifts her feet.
He shifts, too, and his cunning eyes glint up at her through the gloom. Her heart turns over. They are neither maiden nor hero, and what they had was no love story.
It begins with the Blood Crown.
Before chaos breaks in Hollow Hall, Taryn is not thinking of Balekin's coronation. Newly engaged, and newly estranged, she watches her twin whisper into Prince Cardan's ear. Their arms are linked; their bodies angle toward one another with familiarity. His conspiratorial smirk is damning. Jude accused her of keeping secrets—my honor, grievously wounded, she'd spat—but just what has she been up to in these last months?
Taryn does not have long to wonder. There is an explosion, then yelling, then bolts fired from the rafters and more yelling. And then the Blood Crown is dropped at Taryn's feet. She picks it up on instinct and in the haze of shock as she straightens, she looks up. Someone is crouched on the ledge where Balekin had been displaying the crown. The figure is clad in black and nearly disappears into the gloom, but beneath a dark cowl, she glimpses a sharp jaw, narrowed eyes, and a mouth opening in dismay. He lifts his crossbow.
"Give it to Vivi," Jude calls.
She pulls her eyes away from the shadowed figure. Never mind the weapon pointed at her chest; Jude's words pierce flesh. The larger picture is still obscure, but it's not difficult to fit these pieces together. The crown was dropped at her feet by mistake, and this—whatever this is—was orchestrated by her twin.
The air turns thick with the promise of violence. There are so many eyes on her—ideal in other circumstances, but not these. The crown is heavy in her hands. Balekin's gaze blackens with fury as he spits out threats she only half hears. But it is Oriana who brings her back to herself. Oriana: pinching her lips into a flat line, twisting her pale hands together, and nodding at Taryn in reassurance. As if this is merely another test of all her myriad lessons in composure and courtly manners.
Jude steps in front of her and grips the cool metal of the crown. "Please," she whispers. Taryn wonders what will happen if she pulls away. Perhaps she really will be shot for her defiance.
"What are you doing?" The words come out as a hiss.
"The best I can."
The response is not reassuring.
Taryn scowls. Hesitates. She waits long enough to make Jude nervous before releasing the crown from her grasp. And then she watches numbly as her twin sister presides over the crowning of Cardan Greenbriar—vicious bully, cruel bastard, capricious fool—as the High King of Elfhame.
In the wake of High King Cardan's unexpected coronation, there is little to do besides carouse. Taryn drinks her weight in wine, accepts her first sliver of everapple, and sleeps beneath banquet tables when the hour grows late. Occasionally, she ventures home for a bath and a new gown, but Madoc's estate is grim. Unhappy, protracted silences lurk in every hallway. She begins slowly moving her belongings into Locke's estate.
They're good at holding court, the two of them. They're not yet wed, but they make a fine pair. Locke—her soon-to-be husband, she thinks with a thrill—flourishes in the center of attention like a dandelion in full sun. And Taryn has always taken Oriana's lessons to heart. She charms and flatters and commiserates. She learns so many names that she has to start keeping notes. Multiple attempts are made to entice her away from her love-match; Locke's delight grows with each.
She does not speak to Jude and she tries, as much as possible, to avoid even looking at her. When her eyes do wander to the royal dais—Cardan lounging insouciantly on the throne with the ancient Blood Crown of the Greenbriar line at a precarious angle on his brow; Jude standing just beside him with her stony face and dull doublet and one hand on the hilt of her sword—Taryn experiences an out-of-body sensation, as though they are two strangers, as though their history is an elaborate fantasy that she has made up for herself.
She doubts Jude feels the same. Taryn is how she has always been. A bit more louche, perhaps, a bit more wild, but still the same frightened mortal girl in the mirror. Jude just found a way to outpace her, as Taryn had always known she would.
She finds the endless revelry tiring, though she does her best to avoid showing it. When time away from the noise is needful, she wanders through the palace's hallways, mapping the floorplan in her mind, peering through open doors, and imagining how she'd redecorate the rooms that lay beyond. King Eldred, Mab rest his bones, had not cared overmuch for ambiance in his later years.
She wanders far this time and finds herself in a hallway with many closed doors. She is barefoot, holding an empty chalice with loose fingers, humming a soft reel when she turns a corner and a guard steps into her path. At least, his uniform is that of a guard, but she knows—from the cut of his jaw, from the cold line of his full lips, and especially from the way his eyes sharpen when they see her—that he is the shadowed figure who'd thrown the crown at her feet and then aimed his crossbow at her heart.
"You thought I was Jude," she accuses. The words are out before she can reconsider them.
His eyes—hazel, uncommonly light for the Folk—flick warily down the hallway to where the next guard is posted. He nods to a doorway and then slips through, apparently certain she will follow. She does, watching him curiously.
Many in Faerie are dangerous, but on the night of the coronation, shrouded in shadows and aiming to kill, he'd looked overtly lethal. Now, he wears the uniform of a palace guard stiffly. His steps are silent. She watches him quickly take in their surroundings—a simple sitting room with blooming orchids and thick, stuffy curtains—before he leans against a wall with affected ease, his hand falling to the hilt at his hip.
She'd bet her left tit that he isn't a mere palace guard.
"I did," he finally says. His voice is low. Quieter than she'd expected. "I learned my lesson. Immediately."
"Who are you?"
He cocks his head. "You don't know." His ears, she realizes, are only subtly pointed. He has some human parentage. His light hair should have given that away, but she's not entirely sober.
It seems an innocuous response, but there's an edge to it that she doesn't like. He speaks as though she should know him—as if her ignorance is a disadvantage. And he's right. It is a disadvantage. He clearly knows Jude; he was trusted to secure the crown for her schemes.
"Why did you want Cardan to be the High King?"
His face goes flat. "Did I?
She purses her lips. Oriana toiled for years to instill social graces among her stepdaughters, and she would surely faint to see such abandonment—but Taryn can hardly bring herself to care. "You certainly played your part in crowning him." She recalls the explosion in Hollow Hall. He must've scaled the ledge during the disturbance. She remembers the way he'd almost disappeared into the shadows behind him, and the practiced speed with which he'd drawn his crossbow. "What kind of guard are you?"
He traces a whorl in the hilt of his sword. "I don't know why any guard would merit your attention."
An evasion. She raises a brow. "I believe you merited my attention at the coronation."
"In a room filled with very significant individuals." He lifts a shoulder. "To that room—to you—I'm nobody of note."
There is noise in the hallway: a peal of scornful laughter and the low muttering of someone evidently displeased. He stiffens. "I trust you can find your way to the great hall." He inclines his head and slips through the door before she can protest.
She still doesn't know his name.
Nobody-of-Note begins visiting Locke's estate—or perhaps he's been doing so, and she's only just noticed. He does not speak to her; he barely looks at her. Her curiosity grows. Locke has never seemed all that interested in the plays of kings and crowns. He likes petty drama: trysts and secrets and betrayals, the strokes and shades that make an individual stand out from their canvas.
And she is—selfishlessly, vainly—irritated by the man's apparent disregard for her. He passes her half-dressed, lounging on a fainting couch with her fingers tangled through the hair of a fae who's using her stomach as a pillow. His sharp gaze travels the length of her body and then flicks away. Disinterest, but whether it's feigned or genuine she can't decipher. Her inability to read him needles her. He gives her no script to follow.
He moves toward Locke's study without another glance in her direction. She shifts the slumbering fae off her stomach and places a silver of everapple on her tongue to ward off the discomfit. In the sweet fruit's hazy glow, she decides the only way she'll learn is by trying.
Considering his lithe bearing, she suspects he can easily disappear through any window that pleases him, yet he always uses the servant's door through the kitchen. A creature of habit, perhaps, or he's honoring a request of Locke's. She's been unsuccessful in untangling the threads of their relationship, much less how they connect to Jude's orchestration of Cardan's coronation—though, if she's honest with herself, she's hardly tried.
She waits in the kitchen and waylays him when he appears. "You never stay." Her hand finds his chest, wanders down the plane of his stomach. He's back in dark clothing, armed, with his cowl hanging off his shoulders. He catches her wrist.
"I don't want to stay," he says bluntly. "I don't take pleasure in communal debauchery."
She casts her eyes around the empty kitchen. "And private debauchery? Do you take pleasure in that?"
He looks a little wild-eyed. A muscle flexes in his jaw. He winds his free hand through her long hair and tugs, tilting her head to the side as he studies her face. He's not particularly gentle, but the haze of the everapple makes her warm and compliant.
He releases her wrist to touch her jaw. Her liberated hand finds a hilt on his chest and grabs hold of it, anchoring herself. He wears quite a few weapons. Undressing would involve disarming. She thrills at the thought.
His thumb traces down the long column of her neck. It feels good—touch always feels good when everapple is involved—so she lets her eyes fall closed. He makes a low, thoughtful sound, and touches her bare shoulder. Without the help of sight, it takes her a heartbeat to realize that it is a kiss: surprisingly chaste, gentler than his hands. She feels as if she is soaring.
"Private," he finally says. Her skin is cold where his mouth was. "And guileless."
She opens her eyes, confused, as his thumb presses past her lips and onto her tongue. She tastes salt—the salt of her own sweat, from skin overwarm with drink. Her mind clears; reality sweeps over her like a breaker. She frowns.
"There," he says, taking in her unhappy expression and stepping backward, tucking his hands behind him. "See?" She reads the meaning: you don't want this.
She does, she realizes. Even with a headache crowding at her temples and the shame-anger-guilt of knowing that Locke is only one floor away—of knowing that he would be delighted if she took up a dalliance of her own accord—it is undeniably desire that burns through her bloodstream.
"You could—" she starts, but he's already shaking his head and pulling his cowl back over his ears.
"You deserve each other," he mutters, then slips into the night.
The problem is that she loves Locke.
Of course, part of her had always longed for a fairytale love, but that's not why she'd insisted on his vow. Vivi found her place in the mortal lands. Jude bullheadedly charged toward knighthood and then, at some point unbeknownst to Taryn, decided to become a kingmaker. And Taryn—who lived far too long with her roots in foreign soil, who had no love for combat and bloodshed—set her sight on what seemed the simplest goal of all: a place among the Gentry, secured not through adoptive fatherhood but through a spouse.
Locke was convenient. That was the truth. Even as his charm won her heart, she'd been running the calculations: he was Gentry, he had no parents or siblings to appease, and he saw value in the courtly manners she had worked so hard to cultivate. He did not care overmuch for the estate where he'd been raised, so she'd be allowed to run it as she saw fit upon becoming its lady. There would be no better match.
Her heart had gotten wrapped up in it. A good thing, theoretically—loving one's future husband should bode well for the marriage. A nightmare, in practice.
The problem is that he does love her, but in a manner that pierces deeper than disdain. In crowds of revelers, he heaps praises upon her, tugs her into his lap so she can assist his storytelling, and pulls her into elaborate dances while murmuring secrets into her ear. In private, he orders her favorite dishes, runs decadent baths in which they inevitably spill their wine, and indulges all of her requests for fine dresses and new carpets and fresh flowers. She is so in love that she could burst with it—but then she finds him whispering slyly into the ear of a pretty fae, or running his slim fingers down another's neck, or laughing with someone's lips on his chest. He loves her distractedly, inexclusively, and even occasionally—worst of all—disinterestedly.
Taryn is strong. She tells herself that this is merely a trial, that they will grow beyond it. He will only grow in his love for her steadfastness, her forgiveness. She will walk across hot coals for her reward. She will endure thorns in her skin. She repeats this like an incantation, but sometimes the magic doesn't hold.
This is why she is sheltered in the kitchen's root cellar, sniffling quietly, when the spy who is decidedly not just nobody of note happens across her. He takes in the messy tracks of her tears with an unimpressed expression, looking like he rather wishes to be elsewhere.
Shame wells up first, but then anger sparks deep in her belly. In its furnace, her shame is forged into something sharper. Meaner. You deserve each other, he'd said. Who is he to speak on what she's earned?
Larkin Gorm Garrett. She weighs his true name on her tongue. I can be sly, too, she wants to say. I can plot and keep secrets and listen at doorways. She doesn't say it, though. It would be a terrible waste of a surprise, and she already has so few winning hands to play.
He watches her face as she processes all of this, and then the corner of his mouth lifts when it becomes clear she's chosen to remain silent. Despite the near-smile, his expression is cold.
"You disappoint me," he says. "I thought you were as awful as Locke, but now I see that you do mind his nastiness—you just don't do anything about it."
The rage is flashpoint and primal. She slaps him square across the cheek. Her palm burns from the impact. She waits for the anger to melt into embarrassment—etiquette would demand her apology—but it lingers, simmering beneath her skin.
He does not quite laugh, but something about the lightness of his expression suggests it. He nods, pressing a palm to the place she struck. "There's that Duarte spine."
"I'm not Jude." She sounds bitter. He raises an eyebrow and she realizes, with a shock, that he's made note of her tone. "You criticize me for not doing anything, but I can't go around challenging duels." Taryn wields demure smiles and courtly fashions and politely phrased slights the way Jude wields stony scowls and Nightfell. Taryn cannot simply strap a sword to her hip and begin antagonizing others; it would erode much of her work.
"No," he says mildly. "I imagine you'd be creative."
It is close enough to a compliment to make her feel wrong-footed. She reaches for a response that will bring her back to solid ground. "If you hate Locke so much, why are you here?"
It's a covertly cruel question. She's overheard enough to know that he doesn't have a choice in the matter. Locke holds his true name; he uses him to spy and scheme. When summoned, he must show. But she has tried to keep this knowledge a secret.
But he doesn't react adversely; he just leans back against a shelf and says, "Penance."
She snorts. "Locke is your absolution?"
His eyes are unamused. He slides his hands into his pockets and takes his time before responding. "It is no life, being someone else's pawn."
She startles. Perhaps he knows that she's been listening after all.
"The way you blend in, how you become somebody else to please those around you—there's a kind of power in it, certainly. But it makes you a pawn."
She frowns. He's speaking about her, not himself. "It makes me beloved."
"It weakens you."
How dare he speak as though he knows her. But this time, she smothers the anger and thinks. Guileless, he'd said. She supposes it doesn't get more guileless than drying tear tracks.
She steps forward. "I'll take your words into consideration."
He feels the shift; his posture changes. She takes another step forward, and his eyes follow like he's prey. Another step—it is a small root cellar—and he places a hand on her hip. To preserve the remaining distance between their bodies, maybe. Or for the simple pleasure of touching her. She gambles on the latter and curls a hand around the nape of his neck.
"I've never seen a faerie with your coloring," she muses, then runs her finger along the point of his ear. He takes in a stilted breath. "In a land oversaturated with beauty, you stand out. Did you know that?"
"I try to avoid notice." His fingers clutch at her hip. She stumbles an inch closer, her chest brushing his. He is not so unaffected as he pretends, then.
"Shame," she lilts. "It didn't work on me."
He laughs, and though it is brief, there is no coldness in it. No disdain. She catches the tail end of that laugh on her own lips.
He makes a soft, resigned noise—more sigh than groan—and responds without hesitation, his hand cupping her jaw as he kisses her. He is gentler than she anticipated. She wants to push him to the point of roughness; she wants his teeth on her skin. She presses closer. His fingers grip her hip tightly, the only indication that something else smolders beneath his restraint. She splays her fingers over his neck—he is so warm to the touch, not marble but man—then trails them downward, over the slope of his shoulder and onto his chest. Jars jostle on the shelf behind him. Her hand circles around the hilt near his ribs, but she allows one more languid kiss.
His unadulterated attention is almost as heady as faerie fruit, so she isn't surprised by the force of her own desire. But she did not account for her reluctance to pull away.
She slides the blade from its sheath and angles it toward the pulse point under his jaw. Something sparks in his heated eyes—not fear.
"I have taken your words into consideration," she says, more breathless than intended. "And I find them lacking." She smiles. "I am not the one who is weakened."
He reaches a hand toward her—slowly, telegraphing his movements. Runs a thumb along her lower lip. Her mouth falls open, wanting. He raises a knowing eyebrow. He does not need to repeat the word 'weakened' for her to understand his meaning.
"I do not deny my own desires," he finally says.
She is warm with want. Her breaths come fast as if she's just sparred. "What can I call you?"
He tilts his head; he studies her face. She wonders if he's searching for deception. She wonders if she's hiding it well enough. He moves too quickly for her to counter, twisting the blade from her grasp and stepping into the doorway.
He slides the dagger back into its sheath with a distant expression, then turns to leave. But he pauses. Looks back over his shoulder. "Lark."
Hearing the first syllable of his true name sends a shock down her spine. When she emerges from the root cellar, he's gone.
Jude avoids them all. She doesn't come home. She follows Cardan to revels and whispers furiously in his ear and assesses anyone who dares approach the throne. On the rare occasion that her gaze meets Taryn's, it is cold. Disinterested. Taryn knows, the way she knows her own heart, that it is a mask crafted by pride—that Jude is wounded, and angry, and probably misses Taryn as much as Taryn misses her. But it is hard not to believe the mask. It is hard to believe that Jude wants anything to do with her.
We both got what we wanted, Taryn tells herself in the mirror as she weaves laurels into her hair for courage. But the words feel like a half-truth. For one thing, she's not sure what game Jude's playing. Cardan represents everything she despises about the Folk—or so Taryn thought, right until the moment she put him on the throne. The role of seneschal is highly honored, but Jude can't be happy in it for long. Not when it makes her subservient.
Taryn consulted Madoc shortly after the coronation, hoping it would help her put the pieces together.
"She poisoned me," he said. "She betrayed me, used Oak, and now she is utterly alone as she attempts to keep that fool King of hers in line." Even under the carefully tamped-down anger in his voice, there was a note of admiration. It made Taryn want to throw something, or say something snide, or—worst of all—burst into tears. Jude had always been Madoc's favorite and now, she was everything he'd raised her to be. He had only himself to blame. Or to congratulate.
She is still trying to put the pieces together. She feels that she is full of questions. If she betrayed you, she wants to say to Madoc, it was probably for good reason. But she bites her tongue. She will be kind and genteel, as she always is. They are qualities that will never earn Madoc's favor, but they will earn his tolerance—and she is in need of allies.
Because Taryn is—
Well. Taryn is not entirely certain she's gotten what she wanted, either.
When she is with Locke, she is incapable of doubt. Their love is sunlit, wine-drenched, perfect. It is the kind of love folktales espouse: the kind that turns beasts back into men and kills hags with its sweetness.
But when Locke is away, or when his attention is elsewhere, part of her heart freezes over. The revels, the games, the stories—they have to end eventually. Real life has to begin. But she doesn't think Locke sees it that way. And now he is Master of Revels. When he explained it to her, it sounded so lovely, so full of delight, that she hadn't had even the desire to protest. But in his absence, the new role promises dissolution and heartbreak.
So Taryn is swallowing her pride. Jude already thinks her weak—fine. She can debase herself further, cast herself on the mercy of her seneschal sister. If anyone can do something about Locke, it's her.
So she waits outside Jude's door. And waits. And waits. When Jude appears, she looks weary. Wisps of hair stick to her temples from sweat. But beneath the obvious exhaustion, she is strong and sharp-edged, clothed in black, her hand resting on Nightfell's hilt even in the empty palace hallway.
She blinks when she sees Taryn outside the door. Something soft flits across her face then is smothered under that familiar, flat mask. Taryn has tried to forget how much she misses her twin, but it's like trying to ignore a phantom limb—she is so used to relying on her that the absence aches.
"There's a bruise coming up on your jaw," she says.
She wishes she could put it on record, somehow, that when she offered to help Jude with her wardrobe, she meant it. Her only ulterior motive was Locke—a small, selfish wish. Nothing to do with crowns and armies. The offer was made in goodwill: Jude had been running herself ragged, and it seemed evident that clothing was not one of her many concerns.
It isn't until the dressmaker comes to the estate that everything gets muddled.
Madoc finds Taryn and Brambleweft bent over the rough sketches, talking through thread count and fabric weight and places where clever pouches can be added without altering silhouettes. He takes in the tableau as if it is a battle map, then nods slowly.
"Which will be easiest to create?" he asks, gesturing to the tabletop.
Brambleweft shuffles a sheet of parchment aside and points toward the simplest design. Madoc doesn't even look at it. "Good. Make two." And then he leaves the room.
Taryn has her suspicions about his motivations—of course she does. But she tries not to think of it.
That becomes more difficult when the fine, dark doublet and hose are delivered to her room with a note in Madoc's hand: To keep until needed. Practice at playing your twin in the meantime. She doesn't ask after his plans. A childish part of her—the part that used to believe closing her eyes made her less visible to monsters—thinks her ignorance might one day absolve her.
When she dons the doublet for the first time, ignorance, stretched thin as it is, gives way to justification.
Madoc loves Jude, so whatever he's planned will work out. Jude takes hits and gets back up. Jude gets bruises and loses fingers and doesn't say how. Jude starts fights with obstinance and ends them with relish. And she'd been the one to betray Madoc. Taryn is just trying to stay afloat. Their family wasn't exactly idyllic to begin with, and now, with Oak, Jude, and Vivi all gone—all swept up in Jude's opaque schemes—Taryn shoulders the brunt of the unhappy silences and grim conversations.
The justifications taste like ash on her tongue.
Clad in practical black, she sees double in the mirror. Her eyes are too soft. Her posture is straight and confident, but in the way of Gentry, not of knighthood. Her steps are graceful but unobtrusive, whereas Jude strides. So she practices. She scowls and smirks and stonewalls. She walks with a hand on a sword hilt and plays out scenarios in her mind.
Jude holds her chin high when walking through the brugh, which means Taryn will have to resist the impulse to duck her head in greeting as others pass. She is busy as seneschal, which is good—it means Taryn can rush on past anyone trying to flag her attention. But what of Cardan?
She tries to imagine Jude in love and is reminded of her cautious smiles under Locke's flattery. But then there's the matter of Cardan's clothing scattered across her floor. Perhaps no blushing, then. Perhaps not love, either, come to think of it. It's not that Taryn can't understand the appeal—Cardan is beautiful, as most Folk are—but their long-entrenched animosity complicates things.
She grimaces and stows the musings alongside the doublet.
A few days later, during a rare lull in revelry, Taryn shuts herself into one of Locke's side bedrooms to fuss with her hair. It would be easiest to enlist the aid of a servant, but that would involve explanation—the exact thing she hopes to avoid. Nevertheless, when the door opens, she resigns herself.
Except it's not a servant or Locke. It's Larkin Gorm Garrett, leaning a shoulder against the doorframe. He never wears his guard uniform when calling upon Locke.
"I could've been indecent," she protests.
He raises an eyebrow. The fine, sharp lines of his face underscore his canny gaze. She feels exposed when he looks at her—a sensation simultaneously alarming and exhilarating, like standing at a cliff's edge.
"More so than usual?" His voice is wry.
"The principle matters. Why are you peering into closed rooms?"
"This door is never shut. My interest was piqued."
"It's not yours to open."
"But it is yours?"
She presses her lips together. He seems to enjoy finding the cracks in her composure, and she already has far too many when it comes to him. Meeting with a weapon pointed at one's heart will do that, apparently.
He holds up a hand. "Of course, the betrothal. Please understand the difficulty one might have remembering which of Locke's rotating lovers he intends to wed."
The cracks spider through her like old porcelain—brittle armor over her tender heart. He has dug a blade directly into the bloody meat of it all. She squeezes her knee beneath the cover of the vanity. What's gotten under his skin? They've never been friendly, yet this feels combative in an entirely new manner.
"You're certainly prickly today. Jealous?" She cocks her head, playing at thoughtfulness. "Perhaps you're competing for Locke's affections. You're here often enough."
There: a flash of real irritation. He despises Locke; she can't fault him for it. But then his expression smooths back out. "Now you're repeating lines of inquiry."
Right. Penance, he'd said in the root cellar. Whatever that meant.
He clicks the door closed and steps into the room. In the mirror, he appears over her shoulder. "This seems beneath you." He teases at one of her braids, unwinding it from the approximate shape of a horn.
She hoped he'd think it inconsequential. She and Jude grew up together, after all. Sisters share many things, hairstyles included.
He unwinds another. She bats his hand away and combs her fingers through the braids, releasing them into waves around her shoulders. "I was just passing the time."
His expression changes—something in the corner of his mouth and the glint of his gaze shifting to say: I don't believe you. She can't argue the point further, or he'll know for certain that she's lying. She considers how to regain the conversation and remembers the root cellar, how immediately he responded to her touch.
She turns on her stool to face him. Her knees brush his legs; her head is level with his stomach. She places her hands on his thighs and tilts her face up. In this light, at this angle, she knows how she looks: doe-eyed and pouting, her hair falling like a dark veil around her shoulders.
That's all it takes. His breathing changes. In the stretching silence, their gazes meet, and she understands: he would follow her to bed if she beckoned, and they would fall into one another for reasons both wrong and right. Wanting to take something from Locke does not preclude desire.
He places his thumb on her bottom lip. "Liriope was a honey mouth." Her lips fall open. His thumb follows. "A gancanagh." A shiver of dread steals down her spine. It does not entirely chase out the heat. "You understand?"
She leans back. His hand falls from her face. "Why would you tell me this?"
His hazel gaze is inscrutable. Her jaw remembers his touch. Her lips remember his. "Might I not be motivated by goodwill?"
Clever fae phrasing. She stands and tucks her hands behind her as he moves to put space between them. "You might be motivated by whatever you wish, but I do not savor the thought of owing a debt."
He lifts a shoulder. "Perhaps one day I shall need your kindness."
"Might my kindness not be motivated by goodwill?"
His eyes search her as he steps away. "No, I don't think so."
Unexpectedly, the words sting. He closes the door behind him as he leaves. She frowns and removes her hands from behind her back. The heft of the throwing knife she stole from his thigh does not feel quite as victorious as she'd like.
The next time she visits her bedroom in Madoc's estate, she finds an empty sheath beneath her pillow. A small roll of parchment is nestled inside. If you wanted it, the note reads in an inelegant scrawl, you need only have asked.
It feels like a lie. Nevertheless, the blade slides seamlessly into the leather.
She avoids Locke for six days. Six days and he does not seek her out, does not even send a message by sparrow to ask after her. When the loneliness crystallizes into something caustic in her belly—they are mere days from their wedding—she decides to act.
Most of her gowns are elaborate wonders of fae artistry, but she decides to don a simple slip of black silk and twist her hair up into something tastefully unkempt. Dressed in the color of mourning, with silk clinging to the curves of her mortal body, and bare of all the ostentation so common to the High Court, she is certain to stand out.
She resolves to check his estate first, then the brugh as a final resort—but blessedly, it doesn't come to that. Based on the nude, drunken figures dancing across his grounds, it's apparent that the Master of Revels is holding court in his own home. She politely declines an invitation to dance in the courtyard, accepts a crown of lilies at the door, then sweeps into the main hall as if she has not missed a moment of the debauch.
Locke's shock of red hair is visible in the corner of her vision, but she pays him no mind. She turns instead to a willowy, umber-skinned fae—Cedrus, if she remembers his name correctly—as he makes a deep bow and brushes a kiss to her knuckles.
"My lady," he says, voice sly, "There was speculation about whether you'd join."
So her absence was noted, but she was not summoned.
She leans in close as if sharing a secret, letting out a breathy giggle. "I only just found the time. There are simply too many delights in Elfhame to remain always in this estate." Let him think it a slight on Locke. Let him spread the word that the lady of the house finds secret enjoyment elsewhere.
His smile sharpens. His teeth are thin and pointed, shark-like. He holds out an arm. "A dance?"
She takes it. "It'd be my pleasure."
She spins through dance after dance. Under the faerie music's compulsion, she is unable to halt her stamping feet—but she does not want to stop. She laughs and presses close to her partners, savoring the flush she feels growing on her cheeks, all the while avoiding the gaze of her betrothed. He will come to her.
He does.
"Blossom," he says, catching her hand with the sweetest of smiles.
She knows that gancanaghs can love-talk mortals to death, and though the knowledge does nothing to stifle the warmth in her chest, she's steeled herself for this. She wants to please him—to show him her love. Kindness is not the only way to do so. She holds her chin high and her shoulders back.
"Allow me a break, my love." She does not have to pretend at breathlessness. "I tire of dancing."
"Whatever you'd like." He pulls her to a stop, then tucks her hand into the crook of his arm. When he makes to move back in the direction from which he'd come—toward a crowd of lounging Gentry—she pulls her hand away.
He gives a bemused smile. "Come, join me."
He will like it if I go off-script, she reasons. I have learned his lessons; I can become a new story. One he's never read.
"And if I find you too dull for my entertainment this eve?"
His eyebrows rise, shocked. She has managed to strike the amusement from his face. Good. She's taken a risk—but she's wagering that his fascination will win out over his ego.
She can study people's stories, too.
She lets the silence stretch, then dips her chin. "I've had my fill of this revel. Seek me out when you, too, grow weary of it." She turns without another look, deciding on a whim to head up the stairs rather than out the front door.
She wanders barefoot through the quiet upper hallway, pushing through a rarely-used door that creaks on its hinges. The room beyond is south-facing, with great, sunny windows, which is why it's crowded with plants. Most of them are for the wedding. Some of them are here simply because she likes them.
Now that she is not dancing, the scent of lilies is cloying. She disentangles the crown from her hair and casts it aside. A shock of bright orange pollen smears along her forearm. She wets a finger and rubs it off, trying—with only limited success—to quell the wild beating of her heart. If this is victory, then why does she feel sick with it?
There is a soft knock at the door—not Locke, as she first assumes, but Lark. He stops just inside the threshold.
"How long have you been here?"
"Long enough." His eyes are unreadable. "He ought to know you better by now. You're like an oleander bloom. Lovely. Lethal."
"Venomous," she corrects, offering him her hand. He turns it over and kisses the center of her palm. "Not poisonous."
He makes a noncommittal sound as if in disagreement. This close, it's clear that he's been sleeping poorly. He smells of brine, like he's recently been to the seashore. She wonders how many secrets he keeps tucked behind those lips. She sees, now, that they are bitter on his tongue. That they burden him.
Off balance, the two of them. She has come to rely upon the push and pull of their encounters. There's an equilibrium there—circling this thing hand-in-hand like revelers around a bonfire, tugging one another toward the heat of the flames and yet always inexorably on, around, away. But they've both fallen out of step.
She once read the tale of a brave girl who had to dance through fire to thaw the ice-heart of her beloved. Every moment of the dance was agony, but when she emerged, she was unharmed. That's how love works in fairytales.
This is not love, pure and generous, but she feels the lick of flames regardless.
She presses close and reaches past him for the door, clicking it shut. When she tilts her head up, their lips are barely a breath apart, but he does not move—just watches with his steady, bright gaze.
She reaches for the dagger near his ribs and slips it, slowly, from its sheath, then steps backward and carefully sets it on the wooden tabletop where her crown of lilies lies discarded. He follows with his silent tread, a quiet choreography. A longer blade is sheathed at his hip—a shortsword. She does not remove only the sword; she undoes the buckle of the leather scabbard and reaches around his hips to divest him of the belt entirely. Other objects hang from it: a length of cord, a garrote, a small pouch.
He noses at her temple. Brushes his lips against the curve of her ear. Places his hand over the small of her back.
The moment turns hazy and fragile. The wisps of hair at her temple stir. Her breath sticks in her throat as she lays the belt and sword aside, and she feels wine-drunk despite her sobriety as she grasps the sleek handle of one of the throwing knives sheathed on his thigh. It makes a metallic hushing sound as she pulls it from the leather, a soft knocking sound as she places it on the table. There are two more—he has already replaced the one she pilfered—and she removes them in the same manner, her knuckles grazing the column of his thigh. To prove that she's been practicing, she flips the final one in her grip and throws it. It thuds into a wooden beam, pinning a sunflower petal. His eyes warm.
She braces herself with a hand at his hip, then begins to sink to her heels.
"Taryn," he says roughly, breaking the truce of their silence. Her name sounds strange on his tongue. She realizes, with a jolt of amazement, that she's never heard him say it.
As she descends, his hand slides up silk, over the skin of her shoulders, and tangles in her hair. Her heartbeat thunders in her ears. She presses her forehead just above his knee and takes a steadying breath, and then she seeks out the blade that she knows, even without seeing, is hidden at his ankle. It is a small but wicked thing, slightly curved. Something dark in her—a voice she often tries to ignore—wonders what he has used it for.
Her hair tumbles down around her shoulders. He releases a soft hiss of breath as he lays the now liberated hairpin—long, sharp, and made entirely of iron—on the table beside his blades. It is probably improper to take such delight in watching him press a stinging finger to his lips as she rises back to standing. But he doesn't question her, nor does he insinuate she should've warned him. Instead, he begins extricating himself from the leather sling that holds his crossbow to his back.
As he lays it atop the table, he asks, "Have I been sufficiently defanged for your tastes?"
"Oh, don't play at harmlessness. We're both too clever for that."
He presses a thumb to the corner of her smile. Her cheeks are hot—she must be terribly flushed. Her pulse patters fast and heavy in her throat. It is late for bashfulness, but she finds herself hesitant.
"Go on, then," she whispers. "Your turn."
He slides his hand to the base of her neck and kisses her: thoroughly, inelegantly, with the edges of his teeth catching at her bottom lip. She has a moment to feel gratified as she remembers the gentleness of his kiss in the root cellar, and then she stops thinking altogether.
His fingers trace a burning trail over the slope of her shoulder. She feels the silk strap of her dress fall, whisper-soft. And then, as if waking from a stupor, he pulls his lips from hers and guards the inch between like a dearly won battleground.
"It would be best," he says softly, "if you said you didn't want this. It could end right here."
She believes she's made it rather obvious that she does, in fact, want this. "If that would be best, why don't you say it?"
His eyes close, almost pained. "I cannot."
"And I will not."
She crosses the no man's land, and he does not protest. They stumble back in a haze of lips and hands and falling silk. Peripheral details slide away—time, place, past animosities. Other details come into sharp relief: the way his irises deepen into a moss green at the edges, the low rumble of a surprised chuckle—felt in her fingertips, against his throat—as he backs into a daybed, the ease with which he pulls her down after him, one hand on her waist.
He finds the sheath belted around her thigh. She finds a peculiar, crescent-shaped scar above his hipbone. On the velvet daybed, she captures his wrists and studies him: his flushed cheeks and golden hair, his straight nose and elegant hands, the lean but strong lines of his limbs. He allows it with a private, closed-lip smile. Larkin, she wants to say. I have seen you, and I have kept you like the very best of secrets. There is something rotten in me, and I think it's what you like most. How much blood is on those clever hands, and would you kill for me?
Instead, she bites her tongue until it bleeds. They jostle a potted plant and peony petals scatter across his bare chest like a wedding aisle. She doesn't expect his rich laughter and can't withhold her responding grin. His fingers are calloused. She sinks her teeth into his shoulder and he makes a low, rough sound that is not pain.
She does not intend to doze. When she wakes, he and his array of weapons are gone. And though it is perhaps her best story of all, she does not tell Locke.
She's had barely an hour to bask in the love-flush of Locke's vows when she's informed that the Undersea has swallowed Jude whole.
She shelves her pride and petitions Cardan. When that doesn't yield results, she pleads with Madoc, who informs her only that he is working on a plan. She turns to the Merfolk, offering baubles and jewels and sweet fruits that only grow on land, but their gossip is incomplete at best. Despite all of her efforts, she is helpless.
There is no honeymoon. She barely eats. She spends so much time by the sea that her hair becomes stiff with salt.
It is only after Jude is returned—wan and pale, with haunted eyes—that Taryn realizes two things. Larkin Gorm Garrett has disappeared, and she is pregnant.
She stops drinking. In the vile, shaking clarity that follows, she recognizes that she does not much enjoy her life. Locke grows worse: more extravagant, more sly, more absent. Madoc sends her to deceive a delirious Cardan, and in an obscure turn of fate, Balekin is killed and Jude is exiled. And Taryn—entirely alone in the world she has chosen to call home, informed that she has run out of story, with a baby hidden like a secret beneath her heart—snaps.
The blood is everywhere. Moving Locke's body is an ungainly affair, and she has to pause on the way to the shore to wretch. Once she makes it to the water, there is no ceremony. She piles rocks into his pockets, hauls his corpse into the waves, and watches as the red of his hair is swallowed by the ravenous deep.
"Do I still disappoint you?" she calls to the sea.
There is no answer.