I remember his words from the revel: Do you love me enough to give me up? Isn’t that a test of love?
I guess she passed the test, and I failed.
“So he proposed to you,” I say. “While the royal family got butchered. That’s so romantic.”
Oriana gives a little gasp, probably afraid that Madoc would hear me, that he’d object to my characterization. Taryn looks a little pale, too. I suppose since none of them actually saw it, they could have been told nearly anything. One doesn’t have to lie to deceive.
My hand tightens on the hilt of Nightfell. “What did Cardan say that made you cry the day after we came back from the mortal world?” I remember my hands buried in his velvet doublet, his back hitting the tree when I shoved him. And then later, how she denied it had anything to do with me. How she wouldn’t tell me what it did have to do with.
For a long moment, she doesn’t answer. By her expression, I know she doesn’t want to tell me the truth.
“It was about this, wasn’t it? He knew. They all knew.” I think of Nicasia sitting at Locke’s dining table, seeming for a moment to take me into her confidence. He ruins things. That’s what he likes. To ruin things.
I thought she’d been talking about Cardan.
“He said it was because of me that he kicked dirt onto your food,” Taryn says, voice soft. “Locke tricked them into thinking it was you who stole him away from Nicasia. So it was you they were punishing. Cardan said you were suffering in my place and that if you knew why, you’d back down, but I couldn’t tell you.”
For a long moment, I do nothing but take in her words. Then I throw my sword down between us. It clangs on the floor. “Pick it up,” I tell her.
Taryn shakes her head. “I don’t want to fight you.”
“You sure about that?” I stand in front of her, in her face, annoyingly close. I can feel how much she itches to take my shoulders and shove. It must have galled her that I kissed Locke, that I slept in his bed. “I think maybe you do. I think you’d love to hit me. And I know I want to hit you.”
There’s a sword hung high on the wall over the hearth, beneath a silken banner with Madoc’s turned-moon crest. I climb onto a nearby chair, step up onto the mantel, and lift it from its hook. It will do.
I hop down and walk toward her, pointing steel at her heart.
“I’m out of practice,” she says.
“I’m not.” I close the distance between us. “But you’ll have the better sword, and you can strike the first blow. That’s fair and more than fair.”
Taryn looks at me for a long moment, then picks up Nightfell. She steps back several paces and draws.
Across the room, Oriana springs to her feet with a gasp. She doesn’t come toward us, though. She doesn’t stop us.
There are so many broken things that I don’t know how to fix. But I know how to fight.
“Don’t be idiots!” Vivi shouts from the balcony. I cannot give her much of my attention. I am too focused on Taryn as she moves across the floor. Madoc taught us both, and he taught us well.
She swings.
I block her blow, our swords slamming together. The metal rings out, echoing through the room like a bell. “Was it fun to deceive me? Did you like the feeling of having something over me? Did you like that he was flirting and kissing me and all the while promising you would be his wife?”
“No!” She parries my first series of blows with some effort, but her muscles remember technique. She bares her teeth. “I hated it, but I’m not like you. I want to belong here. Defying them makes everything worse. You never asked me before you went against Prince Cardan—maybe he started it because of me, but you kept it going. You didn’t care what it brought down on either of our heads. I had to show Locke I was different.”
A few of the servants have gathered to watch.
I ignore them, ignore the soreness in my arms from digging a grave only a night before, ignore the sting of the wound through my palm. My blade slices Taryn’s skirt, cutting nearly to her skin. Her eyes go wide, and she stumbles back.
We trade a series of fast blows. She’s breathing harder, not used to being pushed like this, but not backing down, either.
I beat my blade against hers, not giving her time to do more than defend herself. “So this was revenge?” We used to spar when we were younger, with practice sticks. And since then we’ve engaged in hair pulling, shouting matches, and ignoring each other—but we’ve never fought like this, never with live steel.
“Taryn! Jude!” Vivi yells, starting toward the spiral stair. “Stop or I will stop you.”
“You hate the Folk.” Taryn’s eyes flash as she spins her sword in an elegant strike. “You never cared about Locke. He was just another thing to take from Cardan.”
That staggers me enough that she’s able to get under my guard. Her blade just kisses my side before I whirl away, out of her reach.
She goes on. “You think I’m weak.”
“You are weak,” I tell her. “You’re weak and pathetic and I—”
“I’m a mirror,” she shouts. “I’m the mirror you don’t want to look at.”
I swing toward Taryn again, putting my whole weight into the strike. I am so angry, angry at so many things. I hate that I was stupid. I hate that I was tricked. Fury roars in my head, loud enough to drown out my every other thought.
I swing my sword toward her side in a shining arc.
“I said stop,” Vivi shouts, glamour shimmering in her voice like a net. “Now, stop!”
Taryn seems to deflate, relaxing her arms, letting Nightfell hang limply from suddenly loose fingers. She has a vague smile on her face, as though she’s listening to distant music. I try to check my swing, but it’s too late. Instead, I let the sword go. Momentum sends it sailing across the room to slam into a bookshelf and knock a ram’s skull to the ground. Momentum sends me sprawling on the floor.
I turn to Vivi, aghast. “You had no right.” The words tumble out of my mouth, ahead of the more important ones—I could have sliced Taryn in half.
She looks as astonished as I am. “Are you wearing a charm? I saw you change your clothes, and you didn’t have one.”
Dain’s geas. It outlasted his death.
My knees feel raw. My hand is throbbing. My side stings where Nightfell grazed my skin. I am furious she stopped the fight. I am furious she tried to use magic on us. I push myself to my feet. My breath comes hard. There’s sweat on my brow, and my limbs are shaking.
Hands grab me from behind. Three more servants pitch in, getting between us and grabbing my arms. Two have Taryn, dragging her away from me. Vivi blows in Taryn’s face, and she comes to sputtering awareness.
That’s when I see Madoc outside his parlor, lieutenants and knights crowded around him. And Locke.
My stomach drops.
“What is wrong with you two?” Madoc shouts, as angry as I have ever seen him. “Have we not already had a surfeit of death today?”
Which seems like a paradoxical thing to say since he was the cause of so much of it.
“Both of you will wait for me in the game room.” All I can think of is him up on the dais, his blade cracking through Prince Dain’s chest. I cannot meet his gaze. I am shaking all over. I want to scream. I want to run at him. I feel like a child again, a helpless child in a house of death.
I want to do something, but I do nothing.
He turns to Gnarbone. “Go with them. Make sure they stay away from each other.”
I am led into the game room and sit on the floor with my head in my hands. When I bring them away, they are wet with tears. I wipe my fingers quickly against my pants, before Taryn can see.
We wait at least an hour. I don’t say a single thing to Taryn, and she doesn’t say anything to me, either. She sniffles a little, then wipes her nose and doesn’t weep.
I think of Cardan tied to a chair to cheer myself. Then I think of the way he looked up at me through the curtain of his crow-black hair, of the curling edges of his drunken smile, and I don’t feel in the least bit comforted.
I feel exhausted and utterly, completely defeated.
I hate Taryn. I hate Madoc. I hate Locke. I hate Cardan. I hate everyone. I just don’t hate them enough.
“What did he give you?” I ask Taryn, finally tiring of the silence. “Madoc gave me the sword Dad made. That’s the one we were fighting with. He said he had something for you, too.”
She’s quiet long enough that I don’t think she’s going to answer. “A set of knives, for a table. Supposedly, they cut right through bone. The sword is better. It has a name.”
“I guess you could name your steak knives. Meaty the Elder. Gristlebane,” I say, and she makes a little snorting noise that sounds like the smothering of a laugh.
But after that, we lapse back into silence.