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“It’s dangerous?” I ask, thinking back to what Fiona said about the Unseelie being beastly and monstrous.
“Getting there certainly is. What were you going to do—go on foot? Through the Emerald Forest? My dear, you would’ve been eaten by a troll or mauled by gryphons before you even got out of Seelie.” While I imagine my horrible death at the jaws of various fantastic beasts, Destan smiles with relish, seeming to enjoy my alarmed expression. It’s a familiar reaction. I’m starting to get used to the way the fae always try to find amusement at others’ expense. Destan might be friendlier than most, but he still has that instinct. He liked scaring me just now. I change tack.
“Have you ever been there, the Unseelie Court?”
He laughs again. “Stars, no. Not if I want to keep my head.”
I wonder who, exactly, would be doing the decapitating, but we’ve arrived at the kitchens. When Destan steps inside, the Low Fae who completely ignored me yesterday all bow and greet him.
“Don’t mind us,” Destan insists, and they eagerly dive back into the flurry of activity they were busy with before. I doubt any of them much fancy playing host to a High Fae. This time I head straight to the room Fiona showed me, more in the know than Destan about where to find food for humans. I don’t mean to eavesdrop, but can’t help but overhear a green-skinned cook with mossy hair berating a short, impish looking creature.
“It’s tainted, again! Utterly inedible.”
“It’s nothing I’ve done,” says the imp. “Your kitchen must’ve stored them wrong or something.”
“It’s the third time this month. We didn’t make the clementines bitter, you’re bringing them to us that way. I don’t know what you boys are playing at, but I’m not paying for bad goods.”
They descend into a heated argument as we step away, only for everyone to be drowned out by the booming voice of Halima.
“There you are,” she says, striding towards us. “You could’ve at least told me you were taking her, Destan. I was having flashbacks to Dawnsong tearing the palace apart again looking for her.”
“Who’s Dawnsong?” I ask.
“Prince Ruskin Dawnsong,” Destan quickly throws out, as if it’s obvious. “And she needs to eat, you know. Although I see how that might’ve slipped your mind, right after you forgot she can’t have our food.”
Halima rolls her eyes at him as I process what Destan said. So Dawnsong must be…a family name? One of the rhyme’s lines comes to me with renewed clarity: ‘I have a deal that will make the dawn sing.’ In the old fairy tales names are rumored to have some kind of power. I’d assumed that “Blackcoat” was what evoked Ruskin in the poem, but I’m starting to suspect that’s just a nickname we humans have conjured up for him over the years.
“Anyway, she’s in the court dining hall tonight.” Halima nods towards me. “His Highness is there, and he wants her to dine with him to keep her out of trouble.”
“What? Why?” Destan asks.
“He finally listened to me when I said I’m not some nursery sprite hired to watch infants all day.”
“No, I mean, why’s he dining at court?” Destan looks troubled.
Halima shrugs her broad shoulders. “One of those nights.”
At first I don’t know what this cryptic answer means, but the picture gets clearer when they take me to the corridor beside of an impossibly large dining room. Through the entrance I can see how it looks like it’s sprung up beneath an orchard. Between the trees I catch glimpses of High Fae milling about inside, taking seats at rows of long tables nestled amid the trunks. Halima and Destan stop short of the entrance, however, and I get the sense we’re waiting for something.
I don’t need to ask what, because that feeling hits me again—power and danger making the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
Ruskin stalks down the corridor towards us with a face that looks like thunder, his brow heavily furrowed, an angry buzz of magic seeming to creep across the floor in his wake. This must be what Halima meant when she said it was “one of those nights.” Ruskin seems like a different creature to the calm, composed man who handed me medicine in my room and touched the hem of my dress. That moment had felt intimate and charged with strange possibility. Now when his thin cat-eyes fall on me I see only the dark figure of Styrland’s tales and the ruthless prince who commits murder in a garden full of party guests.
“Gold Weaver,” he says, closing the distance between us. “Why haven’t you begun your work? I would’ve thought you’d realize you had better things to do than lie in bed all day.”
I shrink back from him and the overwhelming force of his presence instinctively, even as I try to justify myself.
“I was trying to—” But my protests about needing to heal don’t make it out. He closes in on me, driving me up against the wall as I try to back away from him.
“When will you understand that there is no use resisting?” His face is inches from mine, staring down at me as he rests a large hand on the stone above my head. “You will give me what I want, and you would be wise to deliver it sooner rather than later.”
I realize my heart is hammering in my chest, but my eyes are inexplicably drawn to his lips and the silky timber of the words that come from them. It’s bewildering to have such menacing warnings delivered by such a beautiful mouth.
Something holds taut and quivering between us, as I force myself to glare back at him and calculate what I might say that would allow me to keep both my dignity and my life.
“I thought this was a dinner invitation, my Lord. I’m afraid I didn’t expect us to talk business tonight.”
My palms are sweaty as I speak, but I carefully moderate my tone so that it’s nothing but perfectly polite. I’m not cowering even as he has me cornered, but I can’t be accused of provoking him either. Not explicitly anyway.
