A blur of dishes is brought out by servants. Tender stalks of fern, walnuts wrapped in rose petals, wine bottles choked with herbal infusions, tiny birds roasted whole with honey. As I stare out at the Folk, it seems as though the gardens are spinning around me. A strange sense of unreality intrudes. Dizzily, I look around for one of my sisters, for someone from the Court of Shadows. Even Fand.
“Your Majesty,” comes a voice. It is Lord Roiben at my elbow. My chest constricts. I am not sure I am able to project authority to him, of all people, right now.
“It was good of you to stay,” I say. “After Cardan broke the crown, I wasn’t sure you would.”
He nods. “I never cared much for him,” he says, staring down at me with his gray eyes, pale as river water. “It was you who persuaded me to pledge to the crown in the first place, and you who brokered peace after the Undersea broke their treaty.”
By killing Balekin. I can hardly forget.
“And I might have fought for you regardless if for no other reason than a mortal Queen of Faerie cannot help but delight many people I hold dear and annoy many people I dislike. But after what Cardan did in the great hall, I understand why you were willing to take mad gamble after mad gamble to put him on the throne, and I would have fought until the breath left my body.”
I never expected such a speech from him. It grounds me to the spot.
Roiben touches a bracelet at his wrist, with woven green threads running through it. No, not thread. Hair. “He was willing to break the Blood Crown and trust in the loyalty of his subjects instead of compel it. He’s the true High King of Faerie.”
I open my mouth to reply when, across the expanse of grass, I see Nicasia in a shimmering gown the silver of fish scales weaving between courtiers and rulers.
And I notice Roiben’s consort, Kaye, moving toward her.
“Um,” I say. “Your, um, girlfriend is about to—”
He turns to look just in time for both of us to see Kaye punch Nicasia right in the face. She stumbles into another courtier and then hits the ground. The pixie shakes her hand as though she hurt her knuckles.
Nicasia’s selkie guards run toward her. Roiben immediately begins moving through the crowd, which parts for him. I try to follow, but Madoc blocks my way.
“A queen does not race toward a fight like a schoolgirl,” he says, grabbing hold of my shoulder. I am not so distracted by annoyance not to see the opportunity before me. I pull out of his grip, taking three strands of his hair with me.
A redheaded knight shoves her way between Kaye and Nicasia’s selkie guards. I don’t know her, but by the time Roiben gets there, it seems clear that everyone is threatening to duel everyone else.
“Get out of my way,” I growl at Madoc, then take off at a run. I ignore anyone who tries to speak with me. Maybe I look ridiculous, holding up my gown to my knees, but I don’t care. I certainly look ridiculous when I tuck something into my cleavage.
Nicasia’s jaw is red, and her throat is flushed. I have to choke down a wholly inappropriate laugh.
“You best not defend a pixie,” she tells me grandly.
The redheaded knight is mortal, wearing the livery of the Alderking’s Court. She’s got a bloody nose, which I assume means that she and the selkies already got into it. Lord Roiben looks ready to draw the blade at his hip. Since he was just talking about fighting until the breath left his body, that’s something I’d rather avoid.
Kaye is wearing a more revealing gown than she did the last time I saw her. It shows a scar that starts at her throat and runs down over her chest. It looks half like a cut, half like a burn, and definitely something it makes sense for her to be angry about. “I don’t need any defending,” she says. “I can handle my own business.”
“You’re lucky all she did was hit you,” I tell Nicasia. Her presence makes my pulse thrum with nerves. I can’t help remembering what it was to be her captive in the Undersea. I turn to Kaye. “But this is over now. Understood?”
Roiben puts his hand on her shoulder.
“I guess,” Kaye says, and then stomps off in her big boots. Roiben waits a moment, but I shake my head. Then he follows his consort.
Nicasia touches fingers to her jaw, regarding me carefully.
“I see you got my note,” I say.
“And I see you are consorting with the enemy,” she returns with a glance in Madoc’s direction. “Come with me.”
“Where?” I ask.
“Anywhere no one can hear us.”
We walk off together through the gardens, leaving both our guard behind. She grabs hold of my hand. “Is it true? Cardan is under a curse? He is transformed into a monster whose scales have broken the spears of your Folk.”
I give a tight nod.
To my astonishment, she sinks down to her knees.
“What are you doing?” I say, aghast.
“Please,” she says, her head bent. “Please. You must try to break the curse. I know that you are the queen by right and that you may not want him back, but—”
If anything could have increased my astonishment, it was that. “You think that I’d—”
“I didn’t know you, before,” she says, the anguish clear in her voice. There is a hitch in her breath that comes with weeping. “I thought you were just some mortal.”
I have to bite my tongue at that, but I don’t interrupt her.
“When you became his seneschal, I told myself that he wanted you for your lying tongue. Or because you’d become biddable, although you never were before. I should have believed you when you told him he didn’t know the least of what you could do.
“While you were in exile, I got more of the story out of him. I know you don’t believe this, but Cardan and I were friends before we were lovers, before Locke. He was my first friend when I came here from the Undersea. And we were friends, even after everything. I hate that he loves you.”
“He hated it, too,” I say with a laugh that sounds more brittle than I’d like.
Nicasia fixes me with a long look. “No, he didn’t.”
To that, I can only be silent.
“He frightens the Folk, but he’s not what you think he is,” Nicasia says. “Do you remember the servants that Balekin had? The human servants?”
I nod mutely. Of course I remember. I will never forget Sophie and her pockets full of stones.
“They’d go missing sometimes, and there were rumors that Cardan hurt them, but it wasn’t true. He’d return them to the mortal world.”
I admit, I’m surprised. “Why?”
She throws up a hand. “I don’t know! Perhaps to annoy his brother. But you’re human, so I thought you’d like that he did it. And he sent you a gown. For the coronation.”
I remember it—the ball gown in the colors of night, with the stark outlines of trees stitched on it and the crystals for stars. A thousand times more beautiful than the dress I commissioned. I had thought perhaps it came from Prince Dain, since it was his coronation and I’d sworn to be his creature when I joined the Court of Shadows.
“He never told you, did he?” Nicasia says. “So see? Those are two nice things about him you didn’t know. And I saw the way you used to look at him when you didn’t think anyone was watching you.”
I bite the inside of my cheek, embarrassed despite the fact that we were lovers, and wed, and it should hardly be a secret that we like each other.
“So promise me,” she says. “Promise me you’ll help him.”
I think of the golden bridle, about the future the stars predicted. “I don’t know how to break the curse,” I say, all the tears I haven’t shed welling up in my eyes. “If I could, do you think I would be at this stupid banquet? Tell me what I must slay, what I must steal, tell me the riddle I must solve or the hag I must trick. Only tell me the way, and I will do it, no matter the danger, no matter the hardship, no matter the cost.” My voice breaks.
She gives me a steady look. Whatever else I might think of her, she really does care for Cardan.
And as tears roll over my cheeks, to her astonishment, I think she realizes I do, too.
Much good it does him.
When we finish talking, I go back to the banquet and find the new Alderking. He looks surprised to see me. Beside him is the mortal knight with the bloody nose. A red-haired human I recognize as Severin’s consort is stuffing her nose with cotton. The consort and the knight are twins, I realize. Not identical, like Taryn and me, but twins all the same. Twin humans in Faerie. And neither of them looking particularly discomfited by it.
“I need something from you,” I tell Severin.
He makes his bow. “Of course, my queen. Whatever is mine is yours.”
That night, I lie on Cardan’s enormous bed in his enormous bedchambers. I spread out, kick at the covers.
I look at the golden bridle sitting on a chair beside me, glowing in the low lamplight.
If I got it on the serpent, I would have him with me always. Once bridled, I could bring him here. He could curl up on the rug in this very room, and though it might make me as much a monster as he is, at least I wouldn’t be alone.
Eventually I sleep.
In my dreams, Cardan the snake looms over me, his black scales gleaming.
“I love you,” I say, and then he devours me.