“Do you miss the mortal world?” he asks. I am relieved to discover his breath isn’t coming entirely easily.
“No,” I say. “I hardly knew it.”
He attacks again, his sword a silvery fish darting through the sea of the night.
Watch the blade, not the soldier, Madoc told me many times. Steel never deceives.
Our weapons slam together again and again as we circle each other. “You must remember something.”
I think of my mother’s name whispered through the bars in the Tower.
He feigns to one side, and, distracted, I realize too late what he’s doing. The flat of his blade hits my shoulder. He could have cut open my skin if he hadn’t turned his blow at the last moment, and as it is, it’s going to bruise.
“Nothing important,” I say, trying to ignore the pain. Two can play at the game of distraction. “Perhaps your memories are better than mine. What do you recall?”
He shrugs. “Like you, I was born there.” He stabs, and I turn the blade. “But things were different a hundred years ago, I suppose.”
I raise my eyebrows and parry another strike, dancing out of his range. “Were you a happy child?”
“I was magic. How could I fail to be?”
“Magic,” I say, and with a twist of my blade—a move of Madoc’s—I knock the sword out of the Ghost’s hand.
He blinks at me. Hazel eyes. Crooked mouth opening in astonishment. “You…”
“Got better?” I supply, pleased enough not to mind my aching shoulder. It feels like a win, but if we were really fighting, that shoulder wound would have probably made my final move impossible. Still, his surprise thrills me nearly as much as my victory.
“It’s good Oak will grow up as we didn’t,” I say after a moment. “Away from the Court. Away from all this.”
The last time I saw my little brother, he was sitting at the table in Vivi’s apartment, learning multiplication as though it were a riddle game. He was eating string cheese. He was laughing.
“When the king returns,” the Ghost says, quoting from a ballad. “Rose petals will scatter across his path, and his footfalls will bring an end to wrath. But how will your Oak rule if he has as few memories of Faerie as we have of the mortal world?”
The elation of the win ebbs. The Ghost gives me a small smile, as though to draw the sting of his words.
I go to a nearby stream and plunge my hands in, glad of the cold water. I cup it to my lips and gulp gratefully, tasting pine needles and silt.
I think of Oak, my little brother. An utterly normal faerie child, neither particularly called to cruelty nor free of it. Used to being coddled, used to being whisked away from distress by a fussing Oriana. Now growing used to sugary cereal and cartoons and a life without treachery. I consider the rush of pleasure that I felt at my temporary triumph over the Ghost, the thrill of being the power behind the throne, the worrying satisfaction I had at making Vulciber squirm. Is it better that Oak is without those impulses or impossible for him to ever rule unless he has them?