The Queen of Nothing (The Folk of the Air #3)(16)
I take a deep breath and draw myself to my full height. Then I head inside.
“Welcome back, my lady,” the female says. They are brother and sister, Taryn informed me. Nera and Neve. Their debt was to Locke’s father, but they were left behind when he departed, to serve out the rest of their time taking care of his son. They snuck around before, staying out of sight, but Taryn forbade them from doing so after she came to live there.
In the mortal world, I have become acclimated to thanking people for small services and now have to bite back the words. “It’s good to be home,” I say instead, and sweep past them into the hall.
It’s changed from what I remember. Before, the rooms were largely empty, and where they were not, the furniture was old and heavy, the upholstery stiff with age. The long dining table had been bare, as had been the floors. Not anymore.
Cushions and rugs, goblets and trays and half-full decanters cover every surface—all of them in a riot of colors: vermilion and umber, peacock blue and bottle green, gold and damson plum. The coverlet of a daybed is smeared with a thin golden powder, perhaps from a recent guest. I frown a moment too long, my reflection mirrored back to me in a polished silver urn.
The servants are watching, and I have no cause to study rooms with which I am supposed to be familiar. So I try to smooth out my expression. To hide that I am puzzling out the parts of Taryn’s life she didn’t tell me about.
She designed these rooms, I am sure. Her bed in Madoc’s stronghold was always massed with bright pillows. She loves beautiful things. And yet, I cannot miss that this is a place made for bacchanalia, for decadence. She spoke of hosting month-long revels, but only now do I imagine her spread out on the pillows, drunk and laughing and maybe kissing people. Maybe doing more than kissing people.
My sister, my twin, was always more lark than grackle, more shy than sensualist. Or at least I thought she was. While I walked the path of daggers and poison, she walked the no-less-fraught path of desire.
I turn toward the stairs, unsure that I am going to pull this off after all. I go back over what I know, over the explanation that Taryn and I came up with together for the last time I saw Locke. He had been planning to meet with a selkie, I will say, with whom he was carrying on an affair. It was plausible, after all. And the Undersea had so recently been at odds with the land that I hope Folk will be inclined against them.
“Will you take dinner in the grand hall?” Neve asks, trailing behind me.
“I’d prefer a tray in my room,” I say, unwilling to eat alone at that long table and be waited on in conspicuous silence.
Up I go, fairly sure I recall the way. I open a door with trepidation. For a moment, I think I am in the wrong place, but it is only that Locke’s room has changed, too. The bed is bedecked in curtains embroidered with foxes stalking through tall trees. A low divan sits in front of the bed, where a few gowns are scattered, and a small desk is cluttered with paper and pens.
I go to Taryn’s dressing chamber and look at her dresses—a collection less riotous in color than the furnishings she chose, but no less beautiful. I choose a shift and a heavy satin robe to wear over it, then strip off her dress of gossamer and glass.
The fabric shivers against my skin. I stand in front of the mirror in her bedroom and comb out my hair. I stare at myself, trying to see what might give me away. I am more muscular, but clothes can hide that. My hair is shorter, but not by much. And then, of course, there’s my temper.
“Greetings, Your Majesty,” I say, trying to imagine myself in the High Court again. What would Taryn do? I sink into a low curtsy. “It’s been too long.”
Of course, Taryn probably saw him quite recently. For her, it hasn’t been long at all. Panic drums in my chest. I am going to have to do more than answer questions at the inquest. I am going to have to pretend that I am a cordial acquaintance of High King Cardan to his face.
I fix myself with a look in the mirror, trying to summon the correct expression of deference, trying not to scowl. “Greetings, Your Majesty, you betraying toad.”
No, that wouldn’t work, no matter how good it felt.
“Greetings, Your Majesty,” I try again. “I didn’t kill my husband, even though he richly deserved it.”
There is a knock on the door, and I startle.
Nera has brought a large wooden tray, which he sets on the bed and then departs with a bow, barely making a sound as he goes. On it are toast and a marmalade with a cloying, strange scent that makes my mouth water. It takes longer than it ought for me to realize it’s faerie fruit. And they’ve brought it as though it’s nothing to Taryn, as though she eats it regularly. Did Locke give it to her without her knowing? Or did she take it deliberately, as a sort of recreational blurring of the senses? Once again, I am lost.
At least there’s also a pot of nettle tea, soft cheese, and three hard-boiled duck eggs. It’s a simple dinner, other than the weirdness of the faerie fruit.
I drink the tea and eat the eggs and toast. The marmalade, I hide in a napkin that I tuck in the very back of the closet. If Taryn finds it moldering weeks from now, well, that’s a small price to pay for the favor she’s getting out of me.
I look at the dresses again, try to choose one for the day ahead. Nothing whimsical. My husband is supposed to be dead, and I am supposed to be sad. Unfortunately, while Taryn’s commissions for me were almost entirely black, her own closet is empty of the color. I push past silk and satin, past brocade in the pattern of forests with animals peeking out from between the leaves, and embroidered velvets of sage green and sky blue. Finally, I settle on a dark bronze dress and drag it over to the divan, along with a pair of midnight blue gloves. I rifle through her jewelry box and pull out the earrings I gave her. One a moon, the other a star, crafted by the master smith Grimsen, magicked to make the wearer more beautiful.