“You’re bleeding,” she says.
“Get me…” I start and then stop, realizing that I need to stitch up the wound, that I didn’t think of that. Maybe I’m not as okay as I thought I was. Shock doesn’t always hit right away. “I need a needle and thread—not thin stuff, embroidery floss. And a cloth to keep putting pressure on the wound.”
She frowns at the knife in my hand, the freshness of the wound. “Did you do that to yourself?”
That snaps me out of my daze for a moment. “Yes, I shot myself with an arrow.”
“Okay, okay.” She hands me a shirt from the bed and then goes out of the room. I press the fabric against my wound, hoping to slow the bleeding.
When she gets back, she’s holding white thread and a needle. That thread is not going to be white for long.
“Okay,” I say, trying to concentrate. “You want to hold or sew?”
“Hold,” she says, looking at me as though she wished there was a third option. “Don’t you think I should get Taryn?”
“The night before her wedding? Absolutely not.” I try to thread the needle, but my hands are shaking badly enough that it’s difficult. “Okay, now push the sides of the wound together.”
Vivi kneels down and does, making a face. I gasp and try not to pass out. Just a few more minutes and I can sit down and relax, I promise myself. Just a few more minutes and it will be like this never happened.
I stitch. It hurts. It hurts and hurts and hurts. After I’m done, I wash the leg with more water and rip off the cleanest section of the shirt to wrap around it.
She comes closer. “Can you stand?”
“In a minute.” I shake my head.
“What about Madoc?” she asks. “We could tell—”
“No one,” I say, and, gripping the edge of the tub, kick my leg over, biting back a scream.
Vivi turns on the taps, and water splashes out, washing away the blood. “Your clothes are soaked,” she says, frowning.
“Hand me a dress from over there,” I say. “Look for something sack-like.”
I force myself to limp over to a chair and sink into it. Then I pull off my jacket and the shirt underneath it. Naked to my waist, I can’t go any further without pain stopping me.
Vivi brings over a dress—one so old that Taryn didn’t bother to bring it to me—and bunches it up so she can guide it over my head, then guides my hands through the arm holes as though I were a child. Gently, she takes off my boots and the remains of my pants.
“You could lie down,” she says. “Rest. Heather and I can distract Taryn.”
“I am going to be fine,” I say.
“You don’t have to do anything else, is all I’m saying.” Vivi looks as though she’s reconsidering my warnings about coming here. “Who did this?”
“Seven riders—maybe knights. But who was actually behind the attack? I don’t know.”
Vivi gives a long sigh. “Jude, come back to the human world with me. This doesn’t have to be normal. This isn’t normal.”
I get up out of the chair. I would rather walk on the wounded leg than listen to more of this.
“What would have happened if I hadn’t come in here?” she demands.
Now that I am up, I have to keep moving or lose momentum. I head for the door. “I don’t know,” I say. “But I do know this. Danger can find me in the mortal world, too. My being here lets me make sure you and Oak have guards watching you there. Look, I get that you think what I am doing is stupid. But don’t act like it’s useless.”
“That’s not what I meant,” she says, but by then I am in the hall. I jerk open the door to Taryn’s room to find her and Heather laughing at something. They stop when we come in.
“Jude?” Taryn asks.
“I fell off my horse,” I tell her, and Vivi doesn’t contradict me. “What are we talking about?”
Taryn is nervous, roaming around the room to touch the gauzy gown she will wear tomorrow, to hold up the circlet woven with greenery grown in goblin gardens and fresh as the moment they were plucked.
I realize that the earrings I bought for Taryn are gone, lost with the rest of the pack. Scattered among leaves and underbrush.
Servants bring wine and cakes, and I lick the sweet icing and let the conversation wash over me. The pain in my leg is distracting, but more distracting yet is the memory of the riders laughing, the memory of their closing in beneath the tree. The memory of being wounded and frightened and all alone.
When I wake the day of Taryn’s wedding, it is in the bed of my childhood. It feels like coming up from a deep dream, and, for a moment, it’s not that I don’t know where I am—it’s that I don’t remember who I am. For those few moments, blinking in the late-afternoon sunlight, I am Madoc’s loyal daughter, dreaming of becoming a knight in the Court. Then the last half year comes back to me like the now-familiar taste of poison in my mouth.
Like the sting of the sloppily done stitches.
I push myself up and unwrap the cloth to look at the wound. It’s ugly and swollen, and the needlework is poor. My leg is stiff, too.
Gnarbone, an enormous servant with long ears and a tail, comes into my room with a belated knock. He is carrying a tray with breakfast on it. Quickly, I flip the blankets over my lower body.
He puts the tray on the bed without comment and goes into the bath area. I hear the rush of water and smell crushed herbs. I sit there, braced, until he leaves.
I could tell him I’m hurt. It would be a simple thing. If I asked Gnarbone to send for a military surgeon, he’d do it. He’d tell Oriana and Madoc, of course. But my leg would be stitched up well and I’d be safe from infection.
Even if Madoc had sent the riders, I believe he’d still take care of me. Courtesy, after all. He’d take it to be a concession, though. I’d be admitting that I needed him, that he won. That I’d come home for good.
And yet, in the light of the morning, I am fairly sure it wasn’t Madoc who sent the riders, even if it was the sort of trap he favors. He would have never sent assassins who hung back and who rode off when the numbers were still on their side.
Once Gnarbone goes out, I drink the coffee greedily and make my way to the bath.
It’s milky and fragrant, and only under the water can I allow myself to weep. Only under the water can I admit that I almost died and that I was terrified and that I wish there was someone to whom I could tell all that. I hold my breath until there’s no more breath to hold.
After the bath, I wrap myself in an old robe and make it back to the bed. As I try to decide if it’s worth sending a servant back to the palace to get me another dress or if I should just borrow something of Taryn’s, Oriana comes into the room, holding a silvery piece of cloth.
“The servants tell me you brought no luggage,” she says. “I assume you forgot that your sister’s wedding would require a new gown. Or a gown at all.”
“At least one person is going to be naked,” I say. “You know it’s true. I’ve never been to a single revel in Faerie where everyone had clothes on.”
“Well, if that’s your plan,” she says, turning on her heels. “Then I suppose all you need is a pretty necklace.”
“Wait,” I say. “You’re right. I don’t have a dress, and I need one. Please don’t go.”
When Oriana turns, a hint of a smile is on her face. “How unlike you, to say what you actually mean and have it be something other than hostile.”
I wonder how it is for her to live in Madoc’s house, to be Madoc’s obedient wife and have had a hand in all his schemes being undone. Oriana is capable of more subtlety than I would have given her credit for.
And she has brought me a dress.
That seems like a kindness until she spreads it out on my bed.
“It’s one of mine,” she says. “I believe it will fit.”
The gown is silver and reminds me a little of chain mail. It’s beautiful, with trumpet sleeves slashed along the length of the arm to show skin, but it has a plunging neckline, which would look one way on Oriana and a totally different way on me.
“It’s a little, uh, daring for a wedding, don’t you think?” There’s no way to wear it with a bra.
She just looks at me for a moment, with a puzzled, almost insect-like stare.
“I guess I can try it on,” I say, remembering that I had joked about being naked just a moment ago.
This being Faerie, she makes no move to leave. I turn around, hoping that will be enough to draw attention away from my leg as I strip. Then I pull the gown over my head and let it slither over my hips. It sparkles gorgeously, but, as I suspected, it shows a lot of my chest. Like, a lot.
Oriana nods, satisfied. “I will send someone to do your hair.”
A short while later, a willowy pixie girl has braided my hair into ram’s horns and wrapped the tips with silver ribbon. She paints the lids of my eyes and my mouth with more silver.
Then, dressed, I go downstairs to join the rest of the family in Oriana’s parlor, as though the last few months haven’t happened.
Oriana is dressed in a gown of pale violet with a collar of fresh petals that rises to her powdery jawline. Vivi and Heather are both in mortal clothes, Vivi in a fluttery fabric with a pattern of eyes printed on the cloth, and Heather in a short pink dress with little silver spangles all over it. Heather’s hair is pulled back in sparkling pink clips. Madoc is wearing a deep plum tunic, Oak in a matching one.
“Hey,” Heather says. “We’re both in silver.”
Taryn isn’t there yet. We sit around in the parlor, drinking tea and eating bannocks.
“Do you really think she’s going to go through with this?” Vivi asks.
Heather gives her a scandalized look, swats at her leg.
Madoc sighs. “It is said we learn more from our failures than our successes,” he says with a pointed look in my direction.