CHAPTER TWO: THE FAREWELL BANQUET (4)

That was the worst part. The worst part was that even with the order in my hand, even with the seal breaking under my thumb, the thought of her throat under Ian’s blade made my stomach do something I refused to examine.

“Your Majesty?” Ian was watching me. “Well? Execute her. It’s right there. It’s right there.”

I folded the missive. I put it inside my coat, over my heart.

“No,” I said.

“No?”

“Not yet.” I looked across the hall, where the human caterer — Leo, or whoever he really was — was watching me with the gentle, patient interest of a man who had just placed a very large bet. “Someone in my house is playing a game. They armed her. They framed her. And they want me to kill her before she can tell me who.” I turned away. “Let them wonder why I didn’t.”

EIRA

I found the blade in the soup.

It was the third course — something creamy and gray that the Shadowkin considered haute cuisine — and I was mid-spoonful when my hit something small, hard, and mine. I fished it out on the edge of my spoon and stared.

Blade three. The one I’d hidden in the plumbing. The one I’d watched disappear from my room at dawn.

It was sitting in my soup like a garnish.

The whole hall could see me. The whole hall watched me lift the tiny blade out of my broth and hold it up, dripping, to the candelabra light. Across the table Ian went rigid. Beside me, a Shadowkin dowager made a sound like a deflating balloon. And on the dais, Kaelen Thorne set down his fork with a thoughtful, unreadable slowness.

“Princess,” he said, loud enough for everyone, “is there something wrong with your dinner?”

I looked at the blade. I looked at him. I did the math out loud in my head: Someone in this palace searched my room, took my hidden weapon, and planted it in my meal — in front of everyone — to frame me for an assassination attempt I hadn’t even committed yet. To make sure I was guilty of something. To give the monster’s court a reason to drag me out by my hair.

Or — a colder thought, creeping up my spine — to make sure I couldn’t tell who was really doing it. I couldn’t accuse the kitchen. I couldn’t accuse the caterer. I couldn’t even accuse the Shadow King, because from his face you’d think the blade in my soup was as much a mystery to him as it was to me.

I smiled. It was the princess smile. The one that had buried three Light spies.

“Nothing at all, Your Majesty,” I said, lifting the blade in a tiny, charming toast. “I just realized I forgot to eat my vegetables.”

A ripple went through the court. Nervous laughter. The kind people laugh when they’re one verdict away from a funeral.

Kaelen stood.

The hall hushed. He descended the dais, slow, kingly, and stopped at my chair. He looked down at me. I looked up at him. Through the bond I felt the strangest thing — not anger, not triumph. Warning. He was warning me. The way a man warns a stranger not to step off a curb.

“Princess Eira Vail,” he announced, to the whole hall, “has honored us with her presence these past days. The Light Court sent a gift. It would be rude to return it.” He placed one hand, lightly, on the back of my chair. “She will remain here. As my guest of honor. Indefinitely.”

Indefinitely. The word landed like a cell door closing. The nobles murmured. Hostage. The word hung in the air without being spoken. He wasn’t keeping me for peace. He wasn’t keeping me for the Accord. He was keeping me. And every Shadowkin in the room understood exactly what that meant.

I stood. I let the soup-blade drop to the table with a tiny, delicate clink. I looked up at the man who had just turned me into a permanent exhibit in his museum of gloom, and I smiled my sharpest, brightest, most treasonous smile.

“Fine,” I said.

He tilted his head, almost curious.

“Hostages can kill too.”

For one suspended second, something moved in his face. Not rage. Not the glacial displeasure of a king threatened by his prisoner. The corner of his mouth — that crack in the glacier, the one I’d seen in the throne room — twitched.

He almost smiled.

Then he turned, and the court swallowed him whole, and I was left standing in the wreckage of my banquet, holding a soup spoon and a grudge, while somewhere behind me the human caterer — Leo, or whatever his name really was — let out a long, low, frankly delighted whistle.