There are plenty of the Folk who delight in murder and plenty more who delight in spectacle. A kind of giddy madness seems to come upon the crowd, a kind of hunger for even greater slaughter. I fear they may have a surfeit of satisfaction. Two of the knights have seized Eldred.
“I will not ask you again,” Balekin says.
But Eldred only laughs. He keeps laughing when Balekin runs him through. He doesn’t fall like the others. Instead of blood pouring from his wound, red moths stream out, into the air. They rush out of him so quickly that in a moment, the High King’s body is gone and there are just those red moths, swirling up into the air in a vast cloud, a tornado of soft wings.
But whatever magic made them does not last. They begin to fall until they are scattered across the dais like blown leaves. The High King Eldred is, impossibly, dead.
The dais is strewn with bodies and blood. Val Moren is on his knees.
“Sisters,” Balekin says, striding toward them. Some of the arrogance is gone from his voice, replaced with a horrible softness. He sounds like a man in the midst of a terrible dream from which he refuses to wake. “Which of you will crown me? Crown me and live.”
I think of Madoc telling my mother not to run.
Caelia steps forward, dropping her knife. She is dressed in a stomacher of gold and a skirt of blue, a circlet of berries in her loose hair.
“I will do it,” she says. “It is enough. I will make you the High King, although the stain of what you have done will forever taint your rule.”
Never is like forever, I think, and then am angry to be reminded of anything Cardan has ever said, especially now. There’s a part of me that is glad she has given in, despite the awfulness of Balekin, the inevitable horror of his rule. At least this is over.
A bolt comes from the shadows of the rafters—in a completely different trajectory than the last. It strikes her in the chest. Her eyes go wide, her hands flutter over her heart, as though the wound is immodest and she needs to cover it. Then her eyes roll back, and she goes down without a sigh. It is Balekin who cries out with frustration. Madoc gives orders to his men, pointing toward the ceiling. A phalanx breaks off from the others and rushes up the stairs. A few guards fly up into the air on pale green wings, blades drawn.
He killed her. The Ghost killed her.
I push my way blindly toward the dais, past a sluagh howling for more blood. I don’t know what I think I am going to do when I get there.
Rhyia picks up her sister’s knife, holds it in one shaking hand. Her blue dress makes her look like a bird, caught before she could take flight. She’s Vivi’s only real friend in Faerie.
“Are you really going to fight me, sister?” Balekin says. “You have neither sword nor armor. Come, it is too late for that.”
“It is too late,” she says, and brings the knife to her own throat, pressing the point just below her ear.
“No!” I shout, although my voice is drowned out by the crowd, drowned out by Balekin shouting, too. And then, because I can’t stand to see any more death, I close my eyes. I keep them closed through being jostled by something heavy and furred. Balekin starts calling for someone to find Cardan, to bring him Cardan, and my eyes automatically fly open. But there’s no Cardan in sight. Only Rhyia’s crumpled body and more horror.
Winged archers take aim at the cluster of roots where the Ghost was hiding. A moment later, he drops down into the crowd. I hold my breath, afraid he has been hit. But he rolls, stands, and takes off up the stairs, with guards hot on his heels.
He has no chance. There are too many of them, and the brugh is too packed, leaving nowhere to run. I want to help him, want to go to him, but I am hemmed in. I can do nothing. I can save no one.
Balekin turns on the Court Poet, pointing at him. “You will crown me. Speak the words of the ceremony.”
“I cannot,” Val Moren says. “I am no kin to you, no kin to the crown.”
“You will,” Balekin says.
“Yes, my liege,” the Court Poet answers in a quavering voice. He stumbles through a quick version of the coronation as the hill goes silent. But when the crowd is asked to accept Balekin as the new High King, no one speaks. The golden oak-leaf crown is in Balekin’s hand, but not yet on his head.
Balekin’s gaze sweeps over the audience, and though I know it will not settle on me, I still flinch. His voice booms. “Pledge yourselves to me.”
We do not. The monarchs do not bend their knees. The Gentry are silent. The wild faeries watch and measure. I see Queen Annet of the southmost Unseelie Court, the Court of Moths, signal to her courtiers to leave the hall. She turns away with a sneer.
“You are sworn to the High King,” Balekin booms. “And I am king now.” Balekin lifts the crown and sets it on his own head. But a moment later, he howls, knocking it off. A burn is on his brow, the red shadow of a circlet.
“We do not swear to the king, but to the crown,” someone cries. It is Lord Roiben of the Court of Termites. He has made his way to stand in front of the knights. And although there are more than a dozen directly between him and Balekin, Roiben does not seem particularly concerned. “You have three days to get it onto your head, kin slayer. Three days before I will depart here, unsworn, unchecked in power, and unimpressed. And I am certain not to be the only one.”
There is a smattering of laughter and whispers as his words spread. A motley group still fills the hall: glittering Seelie and terrifying Unseelie; the wild fey that seldom leave their hills, rivers, or grave mounds; goblins and hags; pixies and phookas. They have watched nearly all the royal family be slaughtered in a single night. I wonder how much more violence will spring up if there is no new monarch to caution them. I wonder who would welcome it.
Sprites glitter in air that stinks of freshly spilled blood. The revel will go on, I realize. Everything will go on.
But I am not sure that I can.
I am a child again, hiding under a table, with the revel spinning around above me.
Pressing my hand to my heart, I feel the speeding thud of it. I cannot think. I cannot think. I cannot think.
There is blood on my dress, little dots of it sinking into the blue sky.
I thought I could not be shocked by death, but—there was just so much of it. An embarrassing, ridiculous excess. My mind keeps going back over Prince Dain’s white ribs, the spray of blood from Elowyn’s throat, and the High King’s denying Balekin over and over as he died. Over poor Taniot and Caelia and Rhyia, who were forced to discover, each in turn, how the crown of Faerie mattered more than their lives.
I think of Madoc, who had been at Dain’s right hand all these years. Faeries might not be able to lie outright, but Madoc had lied with every laugh, every clap on the back, every shared cup of wine. Madoc, who’d let us all get dressed up and given me a beautiful sword to wear tonight, as though we were really going to some fun party.
I knew what he was, I try to tell myself. I saw the blood crusted on his red cap. If I let myself forget, then more fool me.
At least knights had led my family away before the killing started. At least none of the others had to watch, although, unless they were very far away, they could not have failed to hear the screams. At least Oak would not grow up as I have, with death as my birthright.
I sit there until my heart slows again. I need to get out of the hill. This revel is going to turn wilder, and with no new High Monarch on the throne, there is little holding any of the revelers back from any entertainment they can devise. It’s probably not the best time to be a mortal here.
I try to remember looking down on the layout of the throne room from above with the Ghost. I try to recall the entrances into the main part of the castle.
If I could find one of the guards and make them believe that I was part of Madoc’s household, they might take me to the rest of my family. But I don’t want to go. I don’t want to see Madoc, covered in blood, sitting beside Balekin. I don’t want to pretend that what happened is anything other than horrific. I don’t want to disguise my disgust.
There’s another way out. I can crawl under the tables to the steps and go up them to the ledge near Madoc’s strategy room. I think from there I can climb directly through and be in the part of the castle most likely to be deserted—and the part with access to secret tunnels. From there, I can get out without worrying about knights or guards or anyone else. Adrenaline makes my whole body sing with the desire to move, but although what I have feels like a plan, it’s not one yet. I can get out of the palace, but I have nowhere to go after that.
Figure it out later, instinct urges.
Okay, half a plan is good enough.
On my hands and knees, heedless of my dress, heedless of the way the sheath of my sword drags against the packed-earth floor, heedless of the pain in my hand, I crawl. Above me I hear music. I hear other things, too—the snap of what might be bones, a whimper, a howl. I ignore all of it.
Then the tablecloth lifts, and as my eyes adjust to the brightness of the candlelight, a masked figure grabs for my arm. There’s no easy way to draw my sword, crouched as I am under a table, so I grab for the knife inside my bodice. I am about to strike when I recognize those ridiculous spike-tipped shoes.
Cardan. The only one who can legitimately crown Balekin. The only other descendant of the Greenbriar line left. Everyone in Faerie must be looking for him, and here he is, wandering around in a flimsy silver fox half mask, blinking at me with drunken confusion and swaying a bit on his feet. I almost laugh outright. Imagine my luck to be the one to find him.
“You’re mortal,” he informs me. In his other hand, he’s carrying an empty goblet, tipped over absently, as though he’s forgotten he still carries it. “It’s not safe for you here. Especially if you go around stabbing everyone.”
“Not safe for me?” Absurdity of the statement aside, I have no idea why he’s acting as though he’s ever thought about my safety for a moment, except to endanger it. I try to remind myself he must be in shock and grieving, and that might make him behave strangely, but it’s hard to think of him as a person who could care about anyone enough to mourn. Right now, he doesn’t even seem to care about himself. “Get down here before you’re recognized.”
“Playing hide-and-seek under the table? Crouching in the dirt? Typical of your kind, but far beneath my dignity.” He laughs unsteadily, like he expects I am going to laugh, too.
I don’t. I ball up my fist and punch him in the stomach, right where I know it will hurt. He staggers to his knees. The goblet drops to the dirt, making a hollow clanking sound. “Ow!” he shouts, and lets me tug him under the table.
“We’ll get out of here without anyone noticing,” I tell him. “We stay under the tables and make our way to the steps to the upper levels of the palace. And don’t tell me it’s beneath your dignity to crawl. You’re so drunk you can barely stand anyway.”
I hear him snort. “If you insist,” he says. It’s too dark to see his expression, and even if it wasn’t, he’s masked.
We make our way through the underside of the tables, with ballads and drinking songs sung above us, screams and whispers in the air, and the soft footfalls of dancers echoing around us like rain. My heart is hammering from the bloodshed, from Cardan being so close, from striking him without consequences. I concentrate on him shuffling behind me. Everything smells of packed earth, spilled wine, and blood. I can feel my thoughts spiraling away, can feel myself start to tremble. I bite the inside of my lip to give myself a fresh pain to focus on.