“What do you want?” I ask him, forcing the words out. I am still thinking about Locke, still reeling from what he said and what he didn’t. “Go ahead. Insult me.”
His eyebrows go up. “I don’t take commands from mortals,” he says with his customary cruel smile.
“So you’re going to say something nice? I don’t think so. Faeries can’t lie.” I want to be angry, but what I feel right now is gratitude. My face is no longer flaming and my eyes aren’t stinging. I am ready to fight, which is far better. Though I am sure it’s the last thing he meant, he did me an enormous favor when he whisked me away from Locke.
His hand slides lower on my hip. I narrow my eyes at him.
“You really hate me, don’t you?” he asks, his smile growing.
“Almost as much as you hate me,” I say, thinking of the page with my name scratched on it. Thinking of the way he looked at me when he was drunk in the hedge maze. The way he’s looking at me now.
He lets go of my hand. “Until we spar again,” he says, making a bow that I cannot help feel is nothing but mockery.
I look after him as he weaves unsteadily through the crowd, not sure what to make of that conversation.
Bells begin to ring, signaling the start of the ceremony. The musicians quiet their fiddles and harps. For a long moment, the hill is silent, listening, and then people move to their places. I push toward the front, where the rest of the Gentry of the High King’s Court are assembling. Where my family will be. Oriana is there already, standing beside one of Madoc’s best knights and looking as though she wishes she could be anywhere else. Oak is off his leash and on Taryn’s shoulders. She is whispering something to a laughing Locke.
I stop moving. The crowd surges around me, but I am rooted to the spot as Taryn leans in and tucks a stray bit of hair behind Locke’s ear.
There is so much in that small gesture. I try to make myself believe it means nothing, but after the strange conversation we had, I can’t. But Taryn has a lover, one who is going to ask for her hand tonight. And she knows that Locke and I are… whatever we are.
Do you love me enough to give me up? Isn’t that a test of love?
Vivienne has come out of the crowd, cat eyes agleam, hair loose around her face. She takes Oak in her arms and swings him around and around until they both fall in a whoosh of Vivi’s skirts. I should go over, but I don’t.
I can’t face Taryn yet, not when I cannot get such a disloyal thought out of my head.
Instead, I hang back, watching the royal family assemble on the dais. The High King is seated on his throne of woven branches, wearing the heavy circlet, looking out from his deeply lined face with alert bronze eyes, like those of an owl. Prince Dain sits on a humble wooden stool beside him, dressed in all-white robes, his feet and hands bare. And behind the throne stands the rest of the royal family—Balekin and Elowyn, Rhyia and Caelia. Even Taniot, Prince Dain’s mother, is present, in a garment of shining gold. The only family member missing is Cardan.
The High King Eldred stands, and the entire hill goes quiet. “Long has been my rule, but today I take my leave of you.” His voice echoes through the hill. Rarely has he ever spoken this way, to a great assemblage of us, and I am struck both by the power of his voice and the frailness of his person. “When first I felt the call to search out the Land of Promise, I believed it would pass. But I can resist it no longer. Today, I will be king no more, but wanderer.”
Although everyone here must know this was what we’ve gathered for, still there are cries from all around me. A sprite begins to weep into the hair of a goat-headed phooka.
The Court Poet and Seneschal, Val Moren, steps from the side of the dais. He is stooped, spindly, his long hair full of sticks, with a scald crow perched on one shoulder. He leans heavily on a staff of smooth wood that has begun to bud at the very top, as though it were still alive. He is rumored to have been lured away from the mortal lands to Eldred’s bed in his youth. I wonder what he will do now, without his king.
“We are loath to let you go, my lord,” he says, and the words seem to take on a special, bittersweet resonance coming from his mouth.
Eldred cups his hands, and the branches of the throne shudder and begin to grow, sending up new green shoots to spiral into the air, leaves unfurling and flower buds bursting along the length of them. The roots of the ceiling begin to worm, lengthening like vines and crawling across the underside of the hill. There is a scent in the air, like a summer breeze, heavy with the promise of apples. “Another will stand in my place. I ask of you, release me.”
The assembled Folk speak as one, surprising me. “We release you,” they say, words echoing around me.
The High King lets his heavy robe of state fall from his shoulders. It crumples on the stone in a jewel-encrusted pile. He takes the oak-leaf crown from his own head. Already, he stands up straighter. There is an unnerving eagerness in him. Eldred has been the High King of Elfhame longer than the memories of many of the Folk; he has always seemed ancient to me, but the years seem to fall from him along with the mantle of rule.
“Whom will you put in your stead, to be our High King?” Val Moren asks.
“My third-born, my son Dain,” says Eldred. “Come forward, child.”
Prince Dain rises from his humble place on the stool. His mother removes the white cloth covering him, leaving him naked. I blink once. I am used to a certain amount of nakedness in Faerie, but not among the royal family. Standing next to the rest of them in their heavy brocade and embroidered magnificence, he looks exquisitely vulnerable.
I wonder if he’s cold. I think of my hurt hand and hope so.
“Will you accept?” Val Moren asks. The scald crow on his shoulder lifts black-tipped wings and beats the air. I am not sure if that’s supposed to be part of the ceremony.
“I will assume the burden and the honor of the crown,” Dain says gravely, and in that moment, his nakedness becomes something else, some sign of power. “I will have it.”
“Unseelie Court, night host, come forward and anoint your prince,” Val Moren says.
A boggan makes her hulking way to the raised dais. Her body is covered in thick golden hair, her arms long enough to drag on the ground if she didn’t bend them. She looks strong enough to break Prince Dain in half. Around her waist she wears a skirt of patchwork furs, and in one massive hand she carries what looks like an inkpot.
She paints his left arm with long spirals of clotting blood, paints it over his stomach, down his left leg. He does not flinch. When she is done, she steps back to admire her grisly handiwork and then gives a shallow bow to Eldred.
“Seelie Court, twilight folk, come forward and anoint your prince,” Val Moren says.
A diminutive boy in a wrapper of what looks like birch bark, his wild hair sticking up at odd angles, walks to the dais. Small pale green wings sit on his back. When he anoints Dain’s other side, he paints it in thick swaths of pollen, yellow as butter.