By the time we reached the trunk of the amaranthine tree, the bar was silent aside from a distant thread of music. I ignored the sound—it might have been coming from the endless dance. The dancers jumped and twirled and writhed in the corner of the bar, but I knew better than to get too close. Once you joined the dance, you had to dance until the music ended. The previous dance had lasted over half a millennium—until I’d cut the fiddler’s strings on my first visit here—and I had no desire to get caught up in the “merriment.” Besides, even if I was better on this side of the door, I was still exhausted.
Falin paused. His gaze skittered over my face but I couldn’t read his expression. He could have been memorizing my face because he thought this was the last time he’d see me, or simply judging if I’d make a dash for it rather than follow him into Faerie. Either way, it wasn’t reassuring.
He didn’t ask again if I was ready. Which was best, as I wasn’t but didn’t want to admit as much. I’d been to the outlying pockets of Faerie like the Bloom and the one in my father’s house numerous times, but Faerie proper? I’d been there only a few times and two out of three hadn’t gone particularly well for me. Seeing the queen also wasn’t at the top of my list of fun—or safe—things to do.
Falin held out a hand. I stared at his gloved palm for a moment. I could turn and try to run, but that would be rather pointless. I could shrug off his gesture and walk into Faerie all on my own, but doors tended to be strange in Faerie. While I might walk through only a moment after him, it was possible for us to arrive on the other side of the door hours apart. Contact guaranteed we’d arrive together. So, after a moment of hesitation, I placed my own gloved hand in his.
Then we walked around the tree, and though I couldn’t see the door, between one step and the next the world slid out of focus. The bar vanished, as did the dappled sunlight, the thin strands of music, and the tree itself. In its place was a pillar of intricately carved ice. The floor and walls were also ice, though there was no chill to the air nor was the surface slick. Above us stretched an inky black sky, broken with pinpoints of glistening white specks though I wasn’t sure if they were distant stars or falling snow that vanished long before it could reach our heads.
Entering the Bloom had made me feel slightly better, but entering Faerie proper felt like I shed a hundred pounds of exhaustion that had been attempting to drown me, and my vision cleared, the magic that damaged my eyes ineffectual here. I almost smiled as I looked around. Almost. Even the sudden physical relief wasn’t enough to stem my general anxiety of being in the winter court.
I expected Falin to lead the way, but he simply stopped, waiting. It didn’t take long to learn what he was waiting for. Two guards in snowy white cloaks and armor that looked to be carved from solid ice stepped out of seemingly nowhere into the hall in front of us.
“Knight. Planeweaver. Her majesty awaits you,” the one on the right said. His hand hovered over his large sword, but he didn’t draw it. I took a step closer to Falin, but when the guards turned and led the way through the maze of ice caverns, I followed without comment.
Though I’d been to the winter court before, I couldn’t have navigated the caverns on my own if my life had depended on it. They all looked the same: endless corridors lined with countless doorways and ice-carved sentinels that I knew from experience would come to life at the queen’s will. I glanced at some of the doorways as we passed, but they told me nothing. As far as I could tell, unless you knew where you were going, it was impossible to know what was on the other side of a door until you stepped through it. The last time I’d been here I’d stepped into what looked to be an empty storage closet and ended up in an enormous ballroom filled with courtiers. The time before Rianna had led me through what appeared to be a solid wall into limbo. Yeah, Faerie was not my favorite place.
I’d lost count of how many turns we’d taken when the two guards finally stopped in front of what appeared to me to be another indistinguishable door. While it may have appeared so to me, the choice caused Falin to lift one eyebrow, his critical gaze studying the guards. They bowed ever so slightly and backed away without a word, leaving us alone in front of the door.
“Is something wrong?” I asked as quietly as I could and still be heard.
Falin frowned, but after a moment shook his head. “No. This is not where I expected to be taken, but if this is where the queen wishes to have an audience with us, then it is her choice. Let’s go.”
He stepped through the doorway, vanishing the moment he passed the icy frame. I glanced around. Aside from the ice sentinels, I appeared to be alone. The two guards had disappeared down another corridor and there was no one else here. I once again considered turning tail and running, but where would I go? I had no idea how to get back to the pillar that marked the exit, nor any idea what lay beyond any of the doors in this or any other corridor.
Taking a deep breath, I stepped through the threshold.
Chapter 7