“No.”
“Why?”
Her fingers curled around his. Jack met the silver gaze squarely, rings clutched in his free hand. Lune stared at him for a moment, then shook her head, curls dancing. “I have not the time to explain.”
“You have time for nothing else. This is the thread upon which your kingdom hangs, Lune. Your people cannot endure more of the Cailleach’s assault—and why should they? For the sake of a creature I know to be your enemy?”
The point edging her sleeve shivered briefly; then she pulled free of his grasp. “Not for his sake,” Lune said. “For the sake of the Onyx Hall.”
Now it was Jack’s turn to raise his eyebrows. “The same Onyx Hall that twice almost became a Dragon’s meal? This is how you protect it?”
Lune winced. “I never anticipated that. Had it been just the Cailleach…”
“Then London would not have burnt. But it has, and the Onyx Hall very nearly joined it. So tell me, Lune, just how you are protecting anything by protecting Ifarren Vidar.”
She bowed her head, half-ringed hand closing over the gloved one. “Because that is how faerie sovereignty works,” she said, weary and flat. “I cannot bend to Nicneven’s will and still be Queen. If she had threatened something other than my realm, perhaps. If she had threatened me. But the Onyx Hall is the lever she would use to move me. And if I succumb, then I acknowledge her power over it. I admit that she could destroy it, and give in to prevent that. Which means I surrender it to her.”
Lune lifted her gaze at last, and he saw to his great shock that tears rimmed the lids of her eyes. I did not think she could weep. “She would obliterate this place. But resistance, it seems, will bring about the same end.”
Some day, when the two of them sat at peace before a comfortable fire, Jack would question her more; Lune’s explanation opened up a wealth of ideas he had never considered before. But he wanted that comfortable fire to be inside the Onyx Hall, and that meant finding a way out of this trap.
“Let me do it,” he said, with sudden inspiration. “Let me give her Vidar. Then you acknowledge nothing—it is all my doing!” And if it cost him his title, so be it. He didn’t mind, so long as he could still come among the fae.
But Lune flinched again, as she had done when he suggested sending knives after Nicneven. “No! She would kill him.”
Jack spread his hands in bafflement. “He’s a condemned traitor, Lune! From what I gather, you were about to sentence him to death yourself, before you decided it was somehow more merciful to stick him in an iron box for all eternity. You would not kill him then; you will not kill him now. Why?”
Lune turned her back on him—to conceal, Jack thought, the emotions she was too weary to hide behind her accustomed mask. The long, stiff line of her bodice kept her back straight; above it, her shoulders were rigid with unspoken tension. “You have heard of Invidiana?”
“Some, yes.”
“She did not hesitate to kill any she could not use. Any who threatened the security of her power. Killing Vidar…” Lune’s breath wavered when she released it. “He said it to me himself, during his trial. It is what she would have done.”
Jack’s lips parted, but no words came out. He blinked several times, trying to encompass what she said, trying to find some response that would not send her out of the room in a rage. Finally he bowed his head, tucking the forgotten rings into his pocket, lest he drop them. “Let me see if I understand. We have here a fellow who has been traitorous to every sovereign he ever served. He betrayed Invidiana to her enemies and sold Nicneven to the Irish; in fact, he will sell anyone to anybody if it might gain him power. He confessed his guilt during his trial. Your own people want him dead. And you can buy peace for your entire realm simply by letting Nicneven carry out the sentence you intended to deliver—had he not said the one thing that would convince you it was wrong. But because he said it, you will not do what you should.”
Lune stiffened even further. “Invidiana—”
“Is gone! Will you let her shadow dictate your choices?” Jack buried his hands in his hair, and realized too late he had just destroyed Lewan Erle’s careful arrangement. To Hell with elegance. “Are you Lune, or merely not Invidiana?”
She spun to face him, eyes wide. But what answer she would have given, Jack never learned, because at that moment Valentin Aspell bowed himself into the room. He could have strangled the Lord Keeper.
The serpentine fellow’s words, though, explained his intrusion all too swiftly. “Your Grace, my lord—the Gyre-Carling has arrived.”
Lune had spent hours planning what she would say to Nicneven, and now all the words had fled.
Are you Lune, or merely not Invidiana?
No respite, no time to regain her equilibrium. They could not afford to keep Nicneven waiting. Side by side, Lune and Jack Ellin hurried through the Onyx Hall to the great presence chamber, where they would receive the Gyre-Carling of Fife.
Her subjects were flooding toward the chamber as well, humble and grand alike. Lune even thought she glimpsed the Goodemeades, before taller figures hid them from sight. “We must keep everyone back,” she murmured to Aspell, noting more than a few vengeful expressions. I should order them out, and hold this audience in private. But that would only raise questions, undermine their trust in her. If they even trust me at all, after what they have endured.
I do not even know if they should.
Her breath was coming too fast. “Where is the Onyx Guard?” she demanded, noticing for the first time their absence.
Valentin shook his head. “Madam, they are not returned.”
Worry clutched at her gut. She had felt the collapse of St. Paul’s, but knew nothing more. Prigurd, and her loyal knights—they could all be slain, and she unaware.
More concerns she could not address. For now, the Gyre-Carling was all, and the threat of the Cailleach Bheur. Ahead loomed the bronze doors, and beyond them the great presence chamber, where Ifarren Vidar’s spirit lay trapped in iron beneath the stone.
Will you let her shadow dictate your choices?
Quickly as they moved, they were only just in time. One of Aspell’s underlings hurried up to his master’s side and said, “My lord, the embassy approaches.” Running her thumb over the nearly bare fingers of her good hand, Lune hurried onto the dais, Jack at her side. Like actors upon a stage, her courtiers rushed into their places. The last settled just as her herald bellowed out, “The embassy of Fife: her Majesty the Gyre-Carling Nicneven!”
For the first time in decades of conflict, Lune saw the face of her enemy.
Nicneven could never have passed for an Onyx courtier. Her face—neither handsome nor unhandsome—had a wildness to it that made Irrith look tame, from the sweep of her cheekbones to the high wings of her brows. The garb she wore would not have seemed out of place in Scotland these thousand years or more, a kirtle of intense woad blue and leather shoes cross-gartered on her legs. But for all her rustic dress, she carried herself with the presence of a queen.
Lune met the fierce eyes of the Gyre-Carling and understood the truth of Cerenel’s words. This was not the cold, passionless evil of Invidiana. Nicneven simply held fast to the old ways of the fae—and hated the lord who had betrayed her.