And now that I have found in myself a taste for power, will I be loath to give it up?
I wipe wet hands over my face, pushing back those thoughts.
There is only now. There is only tomorrow and tonight and now and soon and never.
We start back, walking together as the dawn turns the sky gold. In the distance I hear the bellow of a deer and what sounds like drums.
Halfway there, the Ghost tips his head in a half bow. “You beat me tonight. I won’t let that happen again.”
“If you say so,” I tell him with a grin.
By the time I get back to the palace, the sun is up and I want nothing more than sleep. But when I make it to my apartments, I find someone standing in front of the door.
My twin sister, Taryn.
“You’ve got a bruise coming up on your cheek,” she says, the first words she’s spoken to me in five months.
Taryn’s hair is dressed with a halo of laurel, and her gown is a soft brown, woven through with green and gold. She has dressed to accentuate the curves of her hips and chest, both unusual in Faerie, where bodies are thin to the point of attenuation. The clothes suit her, and there is something new in the set of her shoulders that suits her as well.
She is a mirror, reflecting someone I could have been but am not.
“It’s late,” I say clumsily, unlocking the door to my rooms. “I didn’t expect anyone to be up.” It’s well past dawn by now. The whole palace is quiet and likely to stay so until the afternoon, when pages race through the halls and cooks light fires. Courtiers will rise from their beds much later, at full dark.
For all my wanting to see her, now that she is in front of me, I am unnerved. She must want something to have put in all this effort all of a sudden.
“I’ve come twice before,” she says, following me inside. “You weren’t here. This time I decided to wait, even if I waited all day.”
I light the lamps; though it is bright outside, I am too deep in the palace to have windows in my rooms. “You look well.”
She waves off my stiff politeness. “Are we going to fight forever? I want you to wear a flower crown and dance at my wedding. Vivienne is coming from the mortal world. She’s bringing Oak. Madoc promises he won’t argue with you. Please say you’ll come.”
Vivi is bringing Oak? I groan internally and wonder if there’s a chance of talking her out of it. Maybe it’s because she’s my elder sister, but sometimes it’s hard for her to take me particularly seriously.
I sink down on the couch, and Taryn does the same.
I consider again the puzzle of her being here. Of whether I should demand an apology or if I should let her skip past all that, the way she clearly wants.
“Okay,” I tell her, giving in. I’ve missed her too much to risk losing her again. For the sake of us being sisters, I will try to forget what it felt like to kiss Locke. For my own sake, I will try to forget that she knew about the games he was playing with me during their courtship.