“I see.” His face suffuses with shame. “I shouldn’t have spoken.”
I creep toward the kitchen, the Ghost behind me. As we head toward the door, I hear the Bomb’s soft voice.
“If you hadn’t,” she says, “then I couldn’t tell you that your feelings are returned.”
Outside, the Ghost and I walk back toward the palace, looking up at the stars. I think about how much cleverer the Bomb is than I am, because when she had her chance, she took it. She told him how she felt. I failed to tell Cardan. And now I never can.
I veer toward the pavilions of the low Courts.
The Ghost looks a question at me.
“There’s one more thing I need to do before I sleep,” I tell him.
He asks me nothing more, only matches his steps to mine.
We visit Mother Marrow and Severin, son of the Alderking who had Grimsen so long in his employ. They are my last hope. And though they meet me under the stars and hear me out politely, they have no answers.
“There must be a way,” I insist. “There must be something.”
“The difficulty,” says Mother Marrow, “is that you already know how to end the curse. Only death, Grimsen said. You want another answer, but magic is seldom so convenient as to conform to our preferences.”
The Ghost glowers nearby. I am grateful for his being with me, particularly right at the moment, when I am not sure I can bear to hear this alone.
“Grimsen would not have intended for the curse to be broken,” says Severin. His curved horns make him look fearsome, but his voice is gentle.
“All right.” I slump onto a nearby log. It wasn’t as though I was expecting good news, but I feel the fog of sorrow closing over me again.
Mother Marrow narrows her eyes at me. “So you’re going to use this bridle from the Court of Teeth? I’d like to see it. Grimsen made such interestingly awful things.”
“You’re welcome to have a look,” I say. “I’m supposed to tie my own hair to it.”
She snorts. “Well, don’t do that. If you do that, you’ll be bound along with the serpent.”
You will be bound together.
The rage I feel is so great that for a moment, everything goes white, like a strike of lightning where the thunder is just behind it.
“So how ought it work?” I ask, my voice shaking with fury.
“There is probably a word of command,” she tells me with a shrug. “Hard to know what that would be, though, and the thing is useless without it.”
Severin shakes his head. “There’s only one thing the smith ever wanted anyone to remember.”
“His name,” I say.
It is not long after I arrive back at the palace that Tatterfell comes with the dress that Taryn found for me to wear to the banquet. Servants bring food and set about drawing me a bath. When I emerge, they perfume me and comb my hair as though I were a doll.
The gown is of silver, with stiff metal leaves stitched over it. I hide three knives in straps on my leg and one in a sheath between my breasts. Tatterfell looks askance at the fresh bruises coming up where I was kicked. But I say nothing of my misadventure, and she does not ask.
Growing up in Madoc’s household, I have gotten used to the presence of servants. There were cooks in the kitchens and grooms to care for the stables and a few household servants to make sure the beds were made and that things were decently tidy. But I came and went mostly as I pleased, free to set my own schedule and do what I liked.
Now, between the royal guard, Tatterfell, and the other palace servants, my every move is accounted for. I am barely ever alone and then not for long. In all the time I gazed at Eldred, high upon his throne, or at Cardan, tipping back yet another goblet of wine at a revel with a forced laugh, I didn’t understand the horror of being so powerful and so utterly powerless all at the same time.
“You may go,” I say to them when my hair is braided and my ears hung in shining silver in the shapes of arrowheads.
I cannot trick a curse and do not know how to fight one. I must somehow set that aside and focus on what I can do: evade the trap set for me by the Court of Teeth and avoid Madoc’s bid to restrict my power. I believe he intends to keep me High Queen, with my monstrous High King forever by my side. And imagining that, I cannot help thinking how terrible it would be for Cardan to be trapped forever as a serpent.
I wonder if he’s in pain now. I wonder what it feels like to have corruption spread from your skin. I wonder if he has enough consciousness to feel humiliation being bridled before a Court that once loved him. Whether hate will grow in his heart. Hate for them. Hate for me.
I might have grown into something else, a High King as monstrous as Dain. And if I did—if I fulfilled that prophecy—Iought to be stopped. And I believe that you would stop me.
Madoc, Lord Jarel, and Lady Nore plan to accompany me to the banquet, where I am to announce our alliance. I will have to establish my authority and hold it through the evening, a tricky proposition. The Court of Teeth are both presumptuous and sneering. I will look weak if I allow that to be directed at me—yet it would be unwise to risk our alliance by returning it. As for Madoc, I don’t doubt he will be full of fatherly advice, pushing me into the role of sullen daughter if I reject it too vociferously. But if I cannot stop them from getting the upper hand with me, then everything I’ve done, everything I’ve planned, will be for nothing.
With all that in mind, I throw back my shoulders and head to where our banquet will be held.
I keep my head high as I walk across the mossy grass. My dress flows behind me. The strands of silver woven through my hair shine under the stars. Following me comes the moth-winged page, holding up my train. The royal guard flank me at a respectful distance.
I spot Lord Roiben standing near an apple tree, his half-moon sword gleaming in a polished sheath. His companion, Kaye, is in a green dress very close to the color of her skin. Queen Annet is speaking with Lord Severin. Randalin is drinking cup after cup of wine. All of them seem subdued. They have seen a curse unfold, and if they are still here, it is because they intend to fight on the morrow.
Only one of us can tell them lies.I recall Cardan’s words to me the last time we spoke to the rulers of the low Courts.
But tonight it is not lies that I need. And it is not precisely the truth, either.
At the sight of me with Madoc and the rulers of the Court of Teeth, a hush goes over the gathered company. All those inkdrop eyes look in my direction. All those hungry, beautiful faces, turning to me as though I were a wounded lamb in a world of lions.
“Lords and ladies and denizens of Elfhame,” I speak into the silence. Then I hesitate. I am as unused to giving speeches as anyone could be. “As a child in the High Court, I grew up with wild, impossible wonder tales—of curses and monsters. Tales that even here, in Faerie, were too incredible to be believed. But now our High King is a serpent, and we are all plunged into a wonder tale.
“Cardan destroyed the crown because he wanted to be a different kind of ruler and to have a different kind of reign. At least in one way, that has already been accomplished. Madoc and Queen Suren of the Court of Teeth laid down their arms. We met and hammered out the terms of a truce.”
A low murmur goes through the crowd.