folding screen blocked our view of most of the room. Thick sheets of frosted ice composed the panels of the screen, obscuring the room beyond, but not completely obstructing it. I could see shapes moving on the other side, but I could only discern their general size with no details that betrayed which was the queen and who was attending her.
“My queen, may we enter?” Falin asked, not moving beyond the entry.
“Come, Knight,” the queen’s voice said from beyond the screen.
Falin turned toward me and tapped a single finger over his lips, as if I needed a reminder to keep my mouth shut. Then he walked around the screen. He knelt as soon as he reached the main part of the room, head bowed and down on one knee. I considered curtsying, but I didn’t want to get stuck in a curtsy again. I took a knee as well.
Peeking up through my lashes, I took in the room. It was small and appeared to be some sort of dressing room. The queen sat primly on a backless chair, the skirt of her very full ball gown billowing around her. Three fae deftly worked her dark curls into an elaborate updo on the top of her head with shimmering silver pins and combs. It struck me as odd. Couldn’t she save a lot of time and annoyance by using glamour? Though she was the regent supreme at the revelry tonight, so maybe that warranted something more real.
The queen, whose back was to us, regarded us in the reflection of an enormous ornate mirror that took up nearly one entire wall of the room. Her rosebud lips compressed into a thin line as her gaze fell on me.
“Lexi, really. That is so very unladylike. Get up,” she said, and I counted that as a win as I climbed to my feet. Her gaze swung in the glass toward Falin. “I see you’ve lost your princely tagalong. I don’t suppose you found a good reason to kill him?”
“No, my lady.” Falin hadn’t been given permission to rise yet, so he remained kneeling.
“More’s the pity. And your trip outside our lands, I trust it had to do with the case?” There was a frosty edge to the question, an unspoken expectation and a warning if it hadn’t been.
“We were following a potential lead.”
“And?” One of the queen’s dark eyebrows arched daintily where it was reflected in the mirror.
“We are still early in the investigation,” Falin said, his voice even and matter-of-fact. I was glad he was the one answering the questions. If it had been me, I likely would have sounded defensive or apologetic. Incurring the queen’s wrath for visiting the summer lands would have added insult to injury after how badly deceived I’d been by the Summer King.
The queen waved a hand and the attendants working on her hair stepped back. She turned so she could look at us directly. She made the move look effortless, though I had no idea how she managed it under all the layers of her gown. Maybe it was just centuries of practice.
“That isn’t good enough,” she said, rising to her feet. “I must welcome all the courts in less than an hour’s time, and I have no idea if one or more is plotting against us.”
“Don’t you always assume they are scheming against you?” I asked, and then cringed as her gaze moved from Falin to me. Why couldn’t I keep my big mouth shut?
The queen regarded me, assessing. “Yes. For the most part, I assume every fae in Faerie is watching to take advantage if I so much as stumble. Which was proven justified when every monarch but my dear sister sent challengers for my throne during my recent . . . illness.” And by illness, she meant when she’d been being poisoned by her nephew, but I was smart enough not to point that out. “But an opportunistic challenge is far different from colluding to instigate a war between my court and another. I must know if this was isolated or if someone thinks they can manipulate me.”
“We do not have enough information to say, yet.”
“What do you know?” she asked, gliding across the room, her skirts making soft shushing sounds as she moved.
Falin still knelt on one knee, head bowed, and the queen laid a hand on the crown of his head as if he were a dog. I had to wonder if she tended to leave him kneeling because it helped her