Briar nodded into my shoulder. “I’m okay,” she breathed, pulling back and looking me in the eye. “We’re okay.”
We’d rehearsed that moment in our minds for twenty years and still it had felt overwhelming. The vaulted ceilings, sparkling jewelry, and press of so many people . . . nothing could have prepared us for it. The world was different when we were being watched. No longer did we exist as ourselves, but rather a projection of their own assumptions and beliefs—Briar the beautiful princess, and me the lowly guard. It made me stand differently, move differently, trying to contort myself into who I thought they expected me to be.
“Let me show you to your chambers,” Maez offered.
Briar and I took a simultaneous deep breath, making the guards chuckle. Whenever we acted in unison, it seemed to elicit the same response. We appeared like complete opposites, but in many things, we were the same. I released my sister from our hug and grabbed her hand. It was as sweaty as my own.
“We’re okay,” I echoed to her as we followed Maez into the heart of the palace.
Seven
My feet dangled through the balustrade, floating in the open air as I ate my lunch. The doors to Briar’s bedroom sat open at my back, welcoming the warm, perfumed air from her chamber. From my vantage point, I could see the entire city of Highwick—the rolling forests bordering fine townhouses and out further to the crammed human quarter. Thin trails of smoke curled into the air from the many smokestacks, the wind carrying them away from the Wolf part of town.
The sound of a string quartet floated up to the fourth-floor balcony where I sat. They’d play and pause, tuning their strings, breaking into jaunty melodies, and pausing again. I recognized this current song from its very first notes.
“‘The Sleeping Queen,’” I said with a huff. “A little on the nose, don’t you think?”
Briar sauntered over from where she stood by the mirror, trying the same two earrings back and forth as if the fate of our kingdom rested on her selection alone. “It’s a famous song about our parents. Why wouldn’t they play it at my wedding?”
I pulled my head back through the railing and gave my sister an incredulous look. “Because they died?”
“I think it’s nice to remember them on my wedding day. We’re in a foreign kingdom with different customs than our own pack. It’s nice to have this little part of Olmdere.” She shrugged. “And our parents loved each other. We should still celebrate that, even though it ended.”
I didn’t know if my heart could take hearing it in full. I’d heard it around Allesdale before—hummed by washwomen hanging clothes on the line, trilled by a lute in the local tavern, but to hear a proper rendition . . . Something about the joyful notes scratched against my ears. The song was about their happily ever after, about them defeating the sorceress who ultimately killed them. It was a lie preserved in melody.
“It should be a sad song,” I muttered. Every time I heard those notes, they’d cling to me for days, turning my mood sour as I remembered all we had lost. Every vibrato and dip, every pause and crescendoed note was a mocking sound that haunted me over and over.
“They were happy though,” Briar said, leaning against the balcony door. “They had happiness for a long time before Sawyn returned.”
“Which only makes it more cruel.” I leaned back on my hands, my eyes following the lines of smoke as they blurred into the clouds. “Why did Sawyn wait so many years after father broke the sleeping curse to return? Why didn’t she just retaliate instantly?”
“She’s filled with dark magic,” Briar said, as if that could excuse everything. “Who knows what that twisted power does to a person? Maybe she needed time to regain her strength. Maybe that compulsion for violence builds slowly, festering over years.”
“But—”
“No one knows, Calla,” Briar snapped, clearly getting frustrated. “How many centuries has it been since the last sorcerer? We don’t even know what compelled her to turn toward the darkness in the first place. The only people who might’ve known are long dead.”
I twisted around to look at Briar. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes wide, as if she, too, had wondered about these things. But Briar had the good sense to hide it. Before the rise of Sawyn, monsters and sorcerers were myths of the past—things that didn’t exist in the world anymore. We knew little about Sawyn. There wasn’t a single note of where she came from or who she killed to turn herself into a sorceress.
That was where the dark took hold: the first kill. It was a teetering precipice anyone who killed could fall into, one that soldiers trained to withstand. Those with enough of it in their souls could turn just as we could turn into Wolves. It was a one-way shift, a magical change, that the world knew little about. Lean into the darkness and forever be consumed.
Sawyn had been swallowed whole, and then turned her dark hunger on my family, my pack, my kingdom.
Why, why, why?
The strings started playing again and I was relieved it was a different tune. Even so, the brand of “The Sleeping Queen” burned into me. I was glad I didn’t have to hear those final sweeping notes, but the lyrics looped over and over in my mind, replaying before reaching the final refrain—the happy ending that never came.
I lounged on my sister’s bed, a bowl of candied almonds tucked beside me, as I watched the seamstresses fit Briar into her wedding dress. Briar’s room took up an entire wing of the palace. As her personal guard, I had been appointed a room within the wing, connected through an internal door to her bedchamber.
Sumptuous jewel-toned fabrics decorated my sister’s suite. The wealth of Damrienn was clear from the silver-framed mirrors to the gem-studded jewelry box on the mantel. It was decadent and, compared to what I had lived with my entire life, ostentatious. I reminded myself again, though, that with these fanciful riches also came an army of Silver Wolves, who would help reclaim our kingdom.
With only a moment to splash water on our faces, a team of dressmakers had arrived at Briar’s door. It had been a long journey to Highwick and, though I’d slept, I’d hoped we’d get some rest. It hadn’t dawned on me the wedding would be the moment we arrived. And now the evening was nearing, and the ceremony would take place at exactly midnight—the time of our birth. Symbolically it made sense. And the more I thought about it, politically, too. A good warrior should be prepared for an ambush, and I had totally missed this one.
Not that it mattered all that much—it was inevitable, so better to get it over with. Instead of dwelling on it, I thought about what midnight would bring. I loved that Briar and I had different birthdays even though we were only born minutes apart. Today Briar was twenty years old and tomorrow I would be, too. We each had a full day to be celebrated by Vellia as children, and I realized this was going to be my first birthday without her. The faery’s absence hit me anew.