I suppose there was no hiding the way I had looked when we watched the tournament. And—I mean, you know how I felt. “She’s the one who’s angry,” I said. “She’s angry all the time. And she makes everyone angry at both of us.”
“Sometimes it’s easier to be mad at the people close to us,” Vivi said, “than to be mad at the people who deserve it.”
Princess Rhyia shot three small birds and cooked them over the fire. We ate them with soft cheese and a bottle of wine. I was so hungry I licked my fingers afterward, chewed on the bones. Vivi noticed and gave me half her bird. When I demurred, she rolled her eyes at me.
It still wasn’t enough.
That night Locke came to my window and called for me, but I pretended to be asleep. I was too hurt, too raw. I didn’t want to hear whatever he would say to me if I asked about you.
He called and called, but I wouldn’t go down. Finally he gave up.
And yet, it was impossible for me to rest. After an hour of tossing and turning, I threw on a cloak and sat on my balcony. I listened to the night owls calling to one another.
Then music started up near the Lake of Masks. I heard a singer begin a tune I hadn’t heard before, a song of heartbreak. Of a girl who walked the earth by starlight. Whose aspect was mortal but with beauty divine. Her cruelty had pierced his heart.
I was listening to Edir singing about me.
Locke had been as good as his word. He had shown me how to make Faerie love me. He had shown me how to be the shaper of a story. He had done more than that, even. He had shown me how to achieve something like immortality.
I sat there in the dark for a long time, listening. And then I turned around and walked to Locke’s estate.
You’ve been there, I know, so you’ve seen it, like a fairy-tale castle with a tower of the sort Rapunzel might have been imprisoned in. During the day it’s pretty, but in the dark, it was intimidating.
Be bold, be bold.
With a shudder, I drew myself up, wrapped my cloak more tightly around myself, and knocked on the heavy front door with all my strength.
I saw a light blaze in one of the high rooms and I knocked again.
The door opened and a thin, tall creature—a servant of the house, I presumed—opened the door.
“I would see Locke,” I told him with as much haughtiness as I could bring to bear.
Be bold, be bold, but not too bold.
He gave me a steady look and I stared back, trying not to notice how pale and sunken-eyed he looked, like one of the dead. But then he swept a bow and indicated without speaking that I ought to come inside.
I was brought to a little parlor that was shabbier and dustier than I’d expected. Another servant, this one small and round, brought a decanter of some purple liquid and a small glass.