“I heard every last curse word as I tamed your mane. Half of them I didn’t even know, and I’ve been in the barracks since I was seven. Come along.”
“Is my entire existence going to be governed by you telling me where to go and when?” I ask, unmoving.
“I certainly hope not,” Rinni calls, already in the other room. “I have more important things to do than babysit you. So please grow quickly into your new station.”
“Babysit? Is that any way to speak to your queen?” I say, stealing one last look at myself in the mirror. The queen. I am the queen. If I tell myself it enough times, maybe I’ll believe it. Maybe it’ll sink in that this whole situation is my new reality.
“Start acting like a queen and I’ll start speaking to you like one.” Rinni’s voice is more distant. I hear the door to my apartments open. “Now, unless you know your way to the throne room, I suggest you hurry up.”
Hiking up my skirts to my shins, I do so.
We wind back down the stairs and through another endless series of rooms, up another set of stairs, through a library, across a hall, then up one final set of stairs into a small antechamber. Rinni presses her ear against the door.
“Eavesdropping is unbecoming for a general—or knight—what are you again?”
She shoots me a glare. “I’m making sure he’s not in the middle of something important.” Rinni opens the door and waves me in.
The throne room of the fortress is at its center, above the main atrium, so far as I can tell. The back wall is made of the same stained glass as the atrium below. But the careful latticework of lead branches out around wider panes here. I can see the hills and valleys beyond.
As far as the eye can see is brown and gray. The forests are as barren as the fields. The trees are just as withered as those I saw in the city. I lay eyes on a cold and cruel world.
The panorama is obscured by two large thrones. The throne to my right is made of redwood. It’s organically shaped, as if a tree rooted into the stone of the room and grew into the shape of a chair.
The redwood is in sharp contrast to the cold iron throne at its side. A man, as harsh and unfeeling as the chair in which he sits—as the crown on his brow—stares down at me. Eldas drags his eyes over every inch of my body in judgment.
“You did well, Rinni. Even the roughest stone can take to polish, it’d seem,” Eldas says finally. I rotate the labradorite ring around my finger. It’s as though I’m standing on trial.
“I’m glad I meet your standards,” I say dryly.
He purses his lips. Tension radiates from him in a tide that almost knocks me over. “I’d appreciate it if you begin to keep your remarks to yourself.”
“Excuse me?”
“There is much to be done, and the most important thing for you to remember is that the queen has one duty, one job.” He motions to the throne next to him. “Let’s see what you can accomplish… Sit.”
I grip my skirts so tightly that I leave wrinkles when my fingers unfurl. But I keep in my frustrations at the notion that I am merely here to exist like a doll. I’m too tired to argue. I can keep my mouth shut and look pretty for a while as the king holds audiences, or makes decrees, or watches jesters dance on their heads, or whatever it is that Elf Kings do.
The heels of my shoes clop loudly on the floor as I trudge over.
“Queens should float, not walk like a horse.” So he’s allowed to make remarks but I’m not? I tilt my head to the side, pressing my lips shut in a firm line. He smirks, understanding my silent game. “Good, I’ll take the horse. At least they’re silent.”
I whinny to spite him and I think I see his eye twitch.
I twirl, my skirts billowing around me as I stand before the redwood throne—my throne—and sit.
The second I am seated on the throne, I burn with invisible flames. Magic overcomes me for the second time in one day, scraping me raw. My vision tunnels, blurs, and then expands wider than I’d ever thought possible.
I see the roots of this throne—this tree—snaking down through eons of stone and mortar. They sink deep into the