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She frowned as she uncorked it and sniffed, pulling away and nearly sneezing. Placing the cork back into place, she handed it to me as if it were hot to the touch. “Smells awful, like some kind of poison. Are you sure they’re telling you the truth? What if you give the last of this to Drystan and it just kills him? Faeries can’t be trusted, you know that.”
I had to admit the thought might have crossed my mind on the hours-long journey back to Karn that night a year ago. “What reason would they have to lie to me? Besides, faeries can’t lie.”
Neera snorted with bitter laughter. “We’refaeries, Kyre, and we lie all of the time.” She hurried to the stove and set a kettle on over a small fire, taking out two large mugs before mixing some herbs she plucked from the ceiling.
She had a point, so maybe the rumors weren’t exactly accurate. Maybe humans just liked to tell themselves that faeries couldn’t lie to make themselves feel better about chance encounters with them. Perhaps it made them feel safer, thinking they couldn’t be deceived, but there were other ways to tell a lie.
After the tea was done, we moved to the floor by the fire, where a thick, fur rug glowed softly in the warm light. Neera leaned backwards against the armchair, clutching her mug between her hands. I mimicked the action, blowing on the swirling steam gently. The smell of sweet spices filled my nose, and my stomach rumbled. It’d been two full days since I’d eaten last, and it was beginning to catch up with me. Neera’s stare into the fire was far away, and she chewed on her bottom lip slightly.
“You’re worried it won’t work. I get it,” I said before taking a small, tentative sip of my tea. A part of me worried the same thing, but I had nothing left in me but hope.
Releasing her lip, she shrugged. “I just know how easily this could go wrong.” Setting her mug on the floor beside the rug, Neera pulled her knees up to her chest and placed her chin on them. “If the queen’s guard finds out you’re sniffing around Drystan again…”
“They’ve suspected,” I said confidently. "But they'll never catch me."
She probably didn’t even know that I'd gone back into the castle a month after my exile to steal some of my old clothing, some jewels to sell to get me through the winters, and a handwritten book my father had gifted me before he died.
“You’re taking such a big risk with this, especially if The Hunt is already coming to collect.”
“My whole life is a risk,” I said with a long sigh, setting my own tea to the side. Reaching behind me, I dragged a handmade quilt off of the sofa and draped it around my shoulders, still shivering. “I’ve been taking dangerous risks every day since leaving that castle, ever since I was forced to steal just to feed myself.” I looked at her, willing her to understand. “I’m tired, Neer. So damn tired.”
Tireddidn’t even begin to cover how I felt, but it was the simplest way to describe it. I was tired of struggling to survive, tired of living in the shadow of the queen who’d taken everything from me, tired of waiting day after day for Drystan to wake up and being disappointed over and over again. If a risk was what I had to take to end this cycle, then I’d do it gladly.
“You’re thinking about going to the castle, aren’t you?” Her voice was already filled with knowing, and I only blinked back at her, too tired to deny it. Yes, I was going. I’d promised Drystan I wouldn’t waste a second. The only reason I was here instead of in his chambers right now was so that I could thaw out first.
Actually, I would have to wait until sunset the next day, because there were only a handful of hours left in the night, and once the sun was up, the castle would be alive with activity. I couldn’t take the risk. Somehow I’d managed to defy the faeries already and buy myself a whole day.
Neera groaned. “If you’re going to be reckless despite my advice, at least let me ask Dane to help you get inside. One last time. It has to go perfectly or all of this will have been for nothing.”
Before I could hide it, I grimaced at the thought ofDane—pompous, bootlicking, brownnosing Dane. Neera knew I disliked the guard she’d been seeing in secret for the past year. She met him in the market last spring when he came into her shop, looking for a cure for a stomach sickness. He’d been back every day since, and the two of them made my own stomach turn.
Dane was, for lack of a better term—simpleminded. He was a follower, a soldier who did exactly what he was told, when he was told to do it. For some reason, though, Neera had stars in her eyes when she spoke of him.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she said with a laugh, shoving my leg with her foot. “If you just gave him a chance, you’d realize there’s a lot more to him than just his looks.”
I smirked wickedly. “Sure there is. It’s called coin and a big cock.”
Neera gasped, cursing at me for insinuating that she was after his fortune or…otherthings he’d been blessed with at birth. Dane’s father was a lord who’d paid handsomely for his youngest son to get a foothold into the queen’s services.
“Laugh all you want, but he might be your only chance at getting into the castle without being seen. His scent might even mask yours if you're being hunted by faeries.”
I folded my arms over my chest, weighing my options. In all honesty, I didn’t have many. I supposed I hadn’t put much thought into how I would get inside again. When Drystan had first fallen ill, I hadn’t been exiled yet, so I could come and go as I pleased. Now, I was to be imprisoned on sight if I stepped even a single foot on castle grounds without a summons from the queen.
For the last eleven months, I’d been paying exorbitant amounts of coin to a young maid who fed him a single petal for me at the start of each new month. She needed the money and was more than willing to do me this favor, and she was young enough that she didn't quite understand how much danger she was putting herself in. But the last dose needed to be tonight, and I didnt have the resources to get in touch with the maid. I would have to do this myself.
Dane would help me if she asked him to. My friend had had that man wrapped around her little, pixie finger from day one of their clandestine affair. As much as I disliked him, I couldn’t exactly look a gift horse in the mouth and turn my nose up at it, could I? I needed all of the help I could get.
“Fine,” I said, lifting my mug and throwing back the rest of its contents in one heavy swallow. “You may enlist the help of your little…human servant.” I wiggled my fingers her way, scrunching up my nose in distaste. “But I’m going to need something much stronger than this tea before I see this through.”
Laughing, she swiped my mug from my hand and stood to her feet. “NowthatI can do, my friend.” Turning, she poured us both a pint of ale from the cupboard below the chimney and passed one over. She raised her mug, and I met it with my own. “A toast,” she declared with a broad grin, “to not having our heads chopped off and spiked to the castle gates when this all inevitably goes sour.”
“Hear, hear!”
I supposed I could drink to that…
Kyre
Up so high on the mountain peak, the air was thin but fresh. I watched as the clouds began to turn pink, giving way to orange as the sun started to set.
