And then there are the Folk who must be convinced that I am the legitimate Queen of Faerie.
By the time the Bomb comes into the room, face covered and in her long, hooded cloak, I am composed.
Nonetheless, when we look at each other, she comes immediately over and puts her arms around me. I think of the Roach and of all the curses that cannot be broken, and for a moment, I hug her tight.
“I need to know who is still loyal to me,” I tell her, letting go and returning to my pacing. “Who is throwing in their lot with Madoc and who has decided to play for themselves.”
She nods. “I will find out.”
“And if one of your spies overhears plans for my assassination, they do not need to bring me word. Nor do I care how vague the plot or how uncommitted the players. I just want them all dead.” Perhaps that is not how I ought to handle things, but Cardan is not here to stay my hand. I do not have the luxury of time or of mercy.
“It will be done,” she says. “Expect me with news tonight.”
When she goes out, Taryn comes in. She looks at me as though she’s half-expecting an enormous serpent to be in here, too.
“How’s Oak?” I ask.
“With Oriana,” she says. “Who isn’t sure if she’s a prisoner or not.”
“She showed me hospitality in the North, and I aim to return the favor.” Now that shock is receding, I find that I am angry—at Madoc, at Oriana, at the whole of Elfhame. But that is a distraction, too. “I need your help.”
“Mine?” Taryn asks, surprised.
“You chose a wardrobe for me when I was seneschal, to make me seem the part. I saw Locke’s estate and how changed it was. Can you put together a throne room for me? And maybe find clothing from somewhere for the next few days. I don’t care where it comes from, so long as it makes me appear to be the Queen of Faerie.”
Taryn takes a big breath. “Okay. I’ve got this. I’ll make you look good.”
“I’m going to have to look really good,” I say.
At that, she gives me an actual smile. “I don’t understand how you do it,” she says. “I don’t understand how you can be so calm.”
I’m not sure what to say. I don’t feel calm at all. I am a maelstrom of emotions. All I want to do is scream.
There’s another knock. Fand opens the door. “Your pardon,” she says. “But Lord Baphen is here, and you said you wanted to see him immediately.”
“I’ll find a better place for you to receive people,” Taryn assures me, slipping past.
“The Council wants an audience, too,” Fand says. “They’d like to accompany Lord Baphen. They claim there’s nothing he knows that they ought not hear.”
“No,” I say. “Just him.”
A few moments later, Baphen enters. He is wearing a long blue robe, a shade lighter than his navy hair. A bronze cap sits atop his head. The Royal Astrologer was one of the few members of the Council that I liked and who I thought might like me, but right now, I regard him with dread.
“There really is nothing that—” he begins.
I cut him off. “I want to know everything about the prophecy you made when Cardan was born. I want you to tell me it exactly.”
He gives me a look of slight surprise. On the Council, as the High King’s seneschal, I was deferential. And as High Queen, I was in too much shock to make any shows of authority.
Lord Baphen grimaces. “Giving the High King unfortunate news is never a pleasure. But it was Lady Asha who frightened me. She gave me such a look of hatred that I felt it to the tips of my ears. I think she believed I exaggerated somehow, to advance my own plots.”
“It seems clear now that you did not,” I say, voice dry. “Tell it to me.”
He clears his throat. “There are two parts. He will be the destruction of the crown and the ruination of the throne. Only out of his spilled blood can a great ruler rise.”
The second part is worse than the first. For a moment, the words just ring in my head.
“Did you give the prophecy to Prince Cardan?” I ask. “Does Madoc know it?”
“The High King may have been told by his mother,” Lord Baphen says. “I assumed—I thought Prince Cardan would never come to power. And then when he did, well, I supposed he would become a bad High King and be slain. I thought it was an unambiguous fate. As for Madoc, I do not know if he ever heard any part of it.”
“Is there a way to break the curse?” I ask in unsteady tones. “Before he died, Grimsen said: No true love’s kiss will stop it. No riddle will fix it. Only death. But that cannot be true. I thought the prophecy around his birth would provide an answer, but …” I cannot finish the sentence. There is an answer in it, but it’s one I don’t want to hear.
“If there is a way to reverse the, uh … transformation,” Baphen begins, “I do not know it.”
I clasp my hands together, sinking my nails into the skin, panic flooding me in a dizzy rush. “And there’s nothing else the stars foretold? No other detail you’re leaving out?”
“I am afraid not,” he says.
“Can you look at your star charts again?” I ask. “Go back to them and see if there’s something you overlooked the first time. Look at the sky, and see if there’s some new answer.”
He nods. “If that’s what you wish, Your Majesty.” His tone suggests that he’s agreed to many equally useless commands on the behalf of previous rulers.
I don’t care that I am unreasonable. “Yes. Do it.”
“Will you speak with the Council first?” he asks.
Even a short delay in Baphen’s attempting to find a solution sets my teeth on edge, but if I wish to be accepted as the rightful queen, I need the support of the Living Council. I cannot delay them forever.
Is this what it is to rule? To be far from the action, stuck on a throne or in a series of well-appointed rooms, reliant on information brought to you by others? Madoc would hate this.
“I will,” I say.
At the door, Fand tells me a room is ready for me to move to. I am impressed by the swiftness with which Taryn has arranged things.
“Is there anything else?” I ask.
“A runner came from Grima Mog,” she says. “The king—I mean, the serpent—is no longer in the throne room. It seems to have gotten out through the crack in the earth made by Madoc’s blade. And—and I am not sure what to make of this, but it’s snowing. Inside the brugh.”
Cold dread races through me. My hand goes to the hilt of Nightfell. I want to ride out. I want to find it, but if I do—what then? The answer is more than I can bear. I close my eyes against it. When I open them, I feel as though I am spinning. Then I ask to be conducted to my new throne room.
Taryn stands at the entrance, waiting to escort me inside. She’s chosen an enormous parlor and stripped it of its furniture. A large, carved wooden chair sits on a rug-covered platform in the echoing space. Candles glow from the floor, and I can see how the flickering shadows will help me appear intimidating—perhaps even play down my mortality.
Two of Cardan’s old guard stand to either side of the wooden chair, and a small moth-winged page kneels on one of the rugs.
“Not bad,” I tell my sister.
Taryn grins. “Get up there. I want to see the whole picture.”
I sit in the chair, my back straight, and look out at the dancing flames. Taryn gives me a very mortal thumbs-up.
“Okay,” I say. “Then I’m ready for the Living Council.”
Fand nods and goes out to fetch them. As the door shuts, I see she and Taryn discussing something. But then I have to turn my attention to Randalin and the rest of the councilors, who are grim-faced as they enter the room.
You have only seen the least of what I can do, I think at them, trying to believe it myself.
“Your Majesty,” Randalin says, but in such a way that it sounds a little like a question. He supported me in the brugh, but I am not sure how long that will last.
“I’ve appointed Grima Mog to be the Grand General,” I tell them. “She cannot come and present herself at the moment, but we should have a report from her soon.”
“Are you sure that’s wise?” says Nihuar, pressing together her thin green lips, her mantis-like body shifting with obvious distress. “Perhaps we ought to wait for the High King to be restored before we come to any decision about such important matters.”
“Yes,” says Randalin eagerly, looking at me as though expecting some answer about how we’ll do that.
“Slithery snake king,” says Fala, dressed in lavender motley. “Rules over a Court of nice mice.”
I remember the Bomb’s words and do not flinch, nor do I attempt to argue. I wait, and my silence unnerves them into silence themselves. Even Fala goes quiet.
“Lord Baphen,” I say quellingly, “does not yet have an answer to how the High King may be restored.”
The others turn to him.
Only out of his spilled blood can a great ruler rise.
Baphen nods briefly in assent. “I do not, nor am I sure such a thing is possible.”
Nihuar appears astonished. Even Mikkel seems taken aback by that news.
Randalin glares at me with accusation. As though everything is over and we’ve lost.
There is a way, I want to insist. There is a way; I just don’t know it yet.
“I’ve come to make my report to the queen,” comes a voice from the doorway. Grima Mog stands there.
She strides past the Council members with a brief nod. They eye her speculatively.
“We would all hear what you know,” I say to murmurs of reluctant approval.