Lutie-loo abandoned her perch and flew to the throne. Roiben looked up, laughed, and cupped his hands to receive her.
“She drank all the mushroom wine,” Lutie accused, pointing to Kaye.
“Indeed?” Roiben raised one silver brow. “Will she come and sit beside me?”
“Sure,” Kaye said, levering herself up onto the dais, unaccountably shy. “How has it been?”
“Endless.” His long fingers threaded through her hair, making her shiver.
Only months ago she’d thought of herself as weird, but human. Now the weight of gauzy wings on her back and the green of her skin were enough to remind her that she wasn’t. But she was still just Kaye Fierch and no matter how magical or clever, it was hard to understand why she was allowed to sit beside a King.
Even if she had saved that King’s life. Even if he loved her.
She couldn’t help but recall the beetle-woman’s words. Did the dreadlocked girl with the drum intend to make a declaration? Ask for a quest? Had the girl with the cat tail already done so? Were the fey laughing at her, thinking that because she had grown up with humans, she was ignorant of faerie customs?
She wanted to make things right. She wanted to make a grand gesture. Give him something finer than a ragged bracelet. Swaying forward, Kaye went down on both her knees in front of the new King of the Unseelie Court.
Roiben’s eyes widened with something like panic and he opened his mouth to speak, but she was faster.
“I, Kaye Fierch, do declare myself to you. I…” Kaye froze, realizing she didn’t know what she was supposed to say, but the heady liquor in her veins spurred her tongue on. “I love you. I want you to give me a quest. I want to prove that I love you.”
Roiben gripped the arm of his throne, fingers tightening on the wood. His voice sank to a whisper. “To allow this, I would have to have a heart of stone. You will not become a subject of this court.”
She knew that something was wrong, but she didn’t know what. Shaking her head, she stumbled on. “I want to make a declaration. I don’t know the formal words, but that’s what I want.”
“No,” he said. “I will not allow it.”
There was a moment’s hush around her and then some scattered laughter and whispering.
“I have recorded it. It has been spoken,” said Ruddles. “You must not dishonor her request.”
Roiben nodded. He stared off into the brugh for a long moment, then stood and walked to the edge of the platform. “Kaye Fierch, this is the quest that I grant. Bring me a faery that can tell an untruth and you shall sit beside me as my consort.”
Shrieking laughter rose from the throng. She heard the words: Impossible. An impossible quest.
Her face heated, and suddenly she felt worse than dizzy. She felt sick. She must have gone white or her expression must have turned alarming, because Roiben jumped off the platform and caught her arm as she fell.
Voices were all around her but none of them made sense.
“I promise that if I find who put this idea in your head, they will pay for it with their own.”
Her eyes blinked heavily. She let them close for a moment and slipped down into sleep, passing out cold in Faerieland.
Chapter 3
I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful
When rain bends down the bough;
And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted
Than you are now.
—SARA TEASDALE, “I SHALL NOT CARE”
The little hob shivered in the corner of the cage as Corny heaved it out of the trunk. Dumping the wire box into the backseat, he got in next to it and slammed the door. Dry heat pumped from vents as the engine idled.
“I’m a powerful being…a wizard,” Corny said. “So don’t try anything.”
“Yes,” said the little faery, blinking black eyes rapidly. “No. Try nothing.”
Corny turned those words over in his head, but the possible interpretations seemed too varied and his mind kept getting tangled. He shook the thoughts out of his head. The creature was caged. He was in control. “I want to keep myself from being charmed, and you’re going to tell me how to do it.”
“I weave spells. I don’t lift spells,” it chirped.
“But,” Corny said, “there has to be a way. A way to keep from being happily led off the side of a pier or craving the honor of being some faery’s footstool.”
“There is no leaf. No rock. No chant to keep you completely safe from our charms.”
“Bullshit. There must be something. Is there any human who is resistant to being enchanted?”
The little faery hopped to the edge of its cage, and when it spoke, its voice was low. “Someone with True Sight. Someone who can see through glamours.”
“How do you get True Sight?”
“Some mortals are born with it. Very few. Not you.”
Corny kicked the back of the passenger-side seat. “Tell me something else then, something I’d want to know.”
“But such a powerful wizard as yourself—”
Corny shook the crab trap, sending the little faery sprawling, its pinecone hat falling out through one of the holes in the aluminum cage to land on the floor mat. It yowled, a moan rising to a shriek.
“That’s me,” Corny said. “Very freaking powerful. Now, if you want out of here, I suggest that you start talking.”
“There is a boy with the True Sight. In the great city of exiles and iron to the north. He’s been breaking curses on mortals.”
“Interesting,” Corny said, holding up the poker. “Good. Now tell me something else.”
That morning, while the slumbering bodies of faeries still littered the great hall of the Unseelie Court, Roiben met with his councillors in a cavern so cold his breath clouded. Tallow candles burned atop rock formations, the melting fat stinking of clove. Let our King be made from ice. He wished it too, wished for the ice that encased the branches out on the hill to freeze his heart.
Dulcamara drummed her fingers against the polished and petrified wood of the table, its surface as hard as stone. Her skeletal wings, the membranes torn so that only the veins remained, hung from her shoulders. She regarded him with pale pink eyes.
Roiben looked at her and he thought of Kaye. Already he could feel the lack of her, like a thirst that is bearable until one thinks of water.
Ruddles paced the chamber. “We are overmatched.” His wide, toothy mouth made him look as though he might suddenly take a bite out of any of them. “Many of the fey who were bound to Nicnevin fled when the Tithe no longer tied them to the Unseelie Court. Our troops are thinned.”
Roiben watched a flame gutter, flaring brightly before going out. Take this from me, he thought. I do not want to be your King.
Ruddles looked pointedly at Roiben, closed his eyes, and rubbed just above the bridge of his nose. “We are further weakened as several of our best knights died by your own hand, my Lord. You do recall?”
Roiben nodded.
“It vexes me that you do not seem to expect an imminent attack from Silarial,” said Ellebere. A tuft of his hair fell over one eye, and he brushed it back. “Why should she hesitate now that Midwinter’s Eve is past?”