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He turned away from me, lost in his own madness as he sought one of the dusty books on his forgotten shelves. They had not been cleaned since the day the knife plunged into his back. I wondered silently if he knew I knew about him and my supposed betrothed. I wondered if he even suspected that I knew she had been in the room with him when Sorrow’s poisoned assassin’s dagger came for him.

“She must be one of the forgotten heretics, reborn when you destroyed the House of Magic. It says in this ledger that Túathal and his house routed them and fed them to the Tears, but what if they survived? Yes, that must be it. One of them crawled free of their prison and is now set loose upon Magh Meall, bent on freeing their kin from the prison of the Tears.” He was raving; a lunatic with a crown was the deadliest of creatures. He whirled on me, insanity pulling his face into a triumphant smile. “I don’t know why I didn’t see it before. Ah, my Raven, you always were the balm I needed to see the hidden paths. This is wonderful! The realm needs another enemy. I will announce it at the Grand Market Ball. I will declare the heretics have risen, and we once more go to holy war against them!”

“Sire. This is madness. There are no heretics. There are no escaped prisoners of the Tears. Nothing escapes the Tears. Declaring such declares a goddess inept! She is just a human. You were drunk on pleasure, and you lost your temper.”

He reached out and cupped my cheek, looking up into my eyes as if allowing a cherished pet to be a little naughty. “My sweet, stupid Raven. Always a score more handsome than intelligent. My love, it doesn’t matter if there are heretics or not. It doesn’t matter if a soul has escaped the Tears. Your Ard Rí has said it is so, and thus it is reality. While your golden pet will be a casualty, a war is good for the realm. It draws the squabbling peerage together and focuses them on a common enemy.”

“Daróg . . .” The warning was clear in my voice. “A war must be waged against an army. She is but one human.”

He merely smiled a viper’s grin and ignored me. “I will replace her, my Raven. You can return to my bed; I will share you with your betrothed. And when Rictus makes another golden cunt, I will let you try again.”

He leaned up on his toes and brushed his lips against mine. I recoiled, shoving him away from me. I had to tread carefully here; too many things hung in the balance of this lunacy. I wanted to scream that she could never be replaced. I wanted to shove my hand through his skull for the temerity of even suggesting it. I wanted to bellow that a mindless war was how we got into this position. I wanted to denounce my loyalty and tell him I would not lead the soldiers into fighting ghosts.

I could do none of that.

I was shackled by oaths. Shackled by love. Shackled by the mounting weight of my debts to everyone but myself. I was a beast of burden who pulled the plow without even a flick of the reins. It chafed me to my core.

“A war without an enemy is no war, Sire.” The even horizon of my words should have been a caution. It should have snapped him free of his mania and brought him back to reality. Any other time, even before the war, it would have.

“And that is why I will create one,” he purred, drawing a hand down my chest. “And when the war is underway, I will open the doors to my chamber, and when you return, soaked in the blood of the enemies I create for you, I will welcome you into my bed again. I will part those firm cheeks and sink myself to the hilt in you. I know how hard you get when you are mad with bloodlust.”

“The blood of specters does not interest me, Majesty. Nor does your bed.” I stepped away from him, out of his reach, but never turned my back on him. “I have told you, and I will not say it again. You and I will never be again. You lost rights to my flesh and to my heart when you betrayed me.”

“Not this old argument again, my Raven.” He exhaled, exasperated out of his madness. “I have told you a thousand times that my orders were to bring the House of Magic to heel. It was not to raze it to the ground. Your crimes were your own, and I will not share in them, nor will I bear the burden of your illiteracy further! I returned your title to you, even after all these years of you skirting accountability for your monstrous crimes. I cannot take from you the weight of your deeds.”

He was right, this was an old argument. One that we had fought tooth and nail over for two hundred years. Each field had been different, but we had kept returning to it nonetheless. “You can return my crown, my lands, my house, and my title, but what you cannot return is the Fae who were put to death for your animus, nor the dignity and honor that you stole.”

“Those lives are on your head, not mine!”

“So you say, Majesty. Then you will know why I will not allow more bodies to be heaped at my doorstep for this folly of invidiousness.” I bowed at the waist and pulled open the door, attempting to retreat before my true treachery was unable to be hidden.

He let me go, only a few steps beyond the door. “I’m sure the little dove will understand. After all, that is what doves cherish most, is it not? Peace?”

My sister.

I stopped, watching dust motes dance across the still corridor. He put me in an impossible position. My sister or my beloved. The passions of my heart or the blood of the innocent.

I was no human saint. I was a selfish creature by my very nature. I wanted to be more. I needed to be more. My little bug would not take a beast to her bed, certainly not a beast led around by a ring through its nose.

But I was also clever by nature. And perhaps, as the head of his army, this time not ignorant to the true abomination that wore the crown, I could keep the blades from her throat when I found her.

“Very well, Majesty. I will make ready to tilt blades against your phantoms.” I let the defeat in my voice and heart filter into my words. He would have his war, but this time it would be on my terms. Not his.

And this time, I would not be led by my cock, but my heart would lead me. Away from him. And into liberation. Into fulfilling my oath and being free of it, him, and the whole of the blasted courts.

Chapter 20

Cricket

Iawoke to a masculine hiss far above me and the singing complaints of every cell in my body. I peeled one eye open, my head still fixed on the hole I had fallen through. The dark outline of a man, backlit by the bright sun, was shaking a hand as if he had burnt it.

I grunted quietly, not sure if the man was friend or foe and not wanting to call attention to myself. Whoever it was was too large to fit through the hole I had come through, so I was at least safe for the moment.

“Are you awake down there, my lady Pearl?” The voice was almost familiar, like the warm breath of an autumn day, reminiscent of the summer that had passed into memory.

I squinted up at him, trying to make out anything other than the black outline of his body. I said nothing, though. Let them think I was dead until I determined who they were.

“Dammit, dog!” he hissed as he was yanked away from the hole, and a semi-transparent pool of ink floated into view. At its center, I could see throbbing darkness and the faintest outline of a dog’s head. It sniffed and whined, deep and low, the sound rattling the edges of the hole and sending a shower of pebbles falling on me.