Tam sidestepped the worst of it and sidled up to his wife. “Not my fault you decided to challenge the king on a day he can verbally flog you in front of everyone.”
Denan grunted. “Hiding behind your wife, you coward.”
“Wouldn’t you?” Tam said. Alorica shot him a glare. “See? She’s scary.”
Alorica rolled her eyes.
Insulting each other was a game between the men, a sparring match to work out their tension. Larkin was stuck with taking a calming breath and closing her sigils.
Denan pressed on his blighted side. “Let’s find Gendrin. See if he can talk some sense into his father.”
“You two go ahead,” Larkin said. “I need to speak with Alorica about our defenses.”
Denan nodded distractedly. He and Tam moved through the crowd, which bowed respectfully to their prince. Some still watched Larkin, but most returned to their own conversations, which was a relief. She hadn’t liked the attention of crowds since one tried burning her at the stake.
Larkin eyed the women around them. Hidden beneath fine dresses and sparkling jewels were their best enchantresses. They’d been drilling with the White Tree Sentinels for weeks. “Have they docked?”
“Come see for yourself.”
Alorica slipped through the crowd. Larkin followed. The enchantresses bowed to her. Most of the men did not. Larkin tried not to notice. What the pipers thought of her didn’t matter and shouldn’t bother her.
She hated that it did.
Alorica glared at them. “They’ll learn to respect you. Like I did.”
That brought a crooked smile to Larkin’s face. She and Alorica had hated each other once, but being kidnapped and forced through the Forbidden Forest together had made allies of them. Over the last couple months, that alliance had deepened to a bond as strong as any Larkin had with her sisters.
Shifting through the bodies clogging the entrance, they passed under the archway opposite the dais. Squinting against the bright morning light, they peered at the sudden drop below. Twenty stories down, the three hundred or so Idelmarchians had already disembarked. Their all-black Black Druid uniforms made them look like beetles instead of people. In contrast, the White Tree Sentinels wore white livery with their gold-and-silver armor.
Black and white. Black like the screaming shadows that had torn apart the Alamantian defenses. White like the light pulsing from a raised fist. Even now, Larkin felt herself being sucked back into a vision of the Curse Queen’s memory of that horrible day. When a massacre had occurred on this very platform. A massacre that had preceded the curse.
Already, she could hear the screams . . .
“Larkin!” Alorica tugged Larkin’s hand open. The echoing screams abruptly stopped. Without realizing, she’d gripped her amulet too hard. One of the branches had pierced her skin, activating the vision of the day the curse had come into being. Alorica pressed a handkerchief to the spot of blood on the side of Larkin’s palm.
They had perhaps thirty minutes before the druids reached them. Larkin had to get control over herself. She slowed her breathing. Slowly, her panic eased. “Did you see Nesha?”
Alorica dabbed away the last of the blood. “Twenty stories is too far away to pick out one person.”
Larkin tucked the amulet inside her dress and passed a hand down her sweaty face. It was barely morning, and already the sun felt hot and the air heavy.
Alorica frowned. “You’ll smear your makeup.”
Larkin tried to laugh her friend’s concern away.
Alorica clearly wasn’t buying it. “Do you want me to get Denan?”
“No!” Larkin said too quickly and too loudly. Light, she didn’t used to be such a mess.
Alorica dragged Larkin back under the now-empty arch and didn’t pause until she’d pushed her way through the press crowding a table of delicate crystal glasses filled with golden champagne. The instant the crowd recognized Larkin, they backed up a step, giving them the space her position demanded.
Alorica pushed a flute into Larkin’s hand. “Drink.”
“I don’t want—”
“I don’t care what you want. You cannot fall apart in front of the druids.” She took a long drink of her own. “Or the Alamantians, for that matter. All these men need to see us as equals. Not hysterical women.”
And just like that, Alorica had shoved a dagger into Larkin’s fear and twisted.
I will not fall apart when I see Garrot. I will keep it together. Despite the strangeness of drinking champagne so soon after breakfast, Larkin threw the glass back, the bubbles burning her throat and nose and sending her eyes watering. A burp burbled out, earning her disapproving glances. A man to her right gave her a hostile stare and marched off, many in the crowd following him.
She hated champagne.
“Larkin.” Iniya stepped into the place the man had vacated, her voice holding more than a touch of scorn. She pulled Larkin away from the table and off to one side, Alorica trailing.
“Champagne is an ornament,” Iniya whisper-shouted. “You do not throw it back like a barmaid!”
Alorica crossed her arms. “She needed something to settle her nerves.”
“Nerves?” Iniya sent Alorica a scathing look. “A princess doesn’t have nerves. Nor does she keep company with her guard.”
Larkin set down her glass. “I—”
Iniya banged her cane on the bark. “I don’t want your excuses. Circulate among the crowd. Be the delight they need to see.”
“I don’t like you,” Alorica said through clenched teeth.
Iniya huffed. “You don’t matter.” She shot Larkin a piercing look and then fixed her gaze on the king. She shooed Larkin. “Off you go. I have work to do.” Her expression transformed into serene gentility as she limped away.
Alorica stared after her. “Why do you listen to her?”
Larkin started to rub her face, remembered the makeup, and dropped her hands. “She survived in an enemy court for decades. If anyone can help me, it’s her.”
“She’s wrong.” Alorica studied her. “You’re not duplicitous enough to be the kind of person Iniya wants you to be.”
Yet still the pipers ignored her. “Who I am hasn’t swayed them.”
Alorica looped her arm through Larkin’s. “It takes a bit of time getting used to you is all.”
Larkin would have laughed, but one of her enchantresses signaled that the Idelmarchians were through the inspection.
Following her gaze, Alorica began ticking off their precautions. “The druids were all excised of the wraiths’ thorns. Your Arbor father-in-law and I checked them over when they entered the city; if I never see another hairy druid, it will be too soon. We tested them under enchantment to make sure none were planning anything. The White Tree Sentinels have done a thorough search for weapons. And if those druids are idiot enough to try anything . . .” Alorica lit her sigils. “Well, I would hate to get blood on this dress, but I will if I have to.”
No one was allowed to bring weapons to this ceremony, but it wasn’t as if the enchantresses could put their sigils down. Larkin was counting on the druids dismissing the women out of hand, as they always had.
It had worked once. Perhaps it would again.