Page 79 of A Court of Hearts and Hunger
Then his footsteps resume, scuffing against the stone steps and fading into the distance.
24
When the Queen pronounces the juggler’s doom, I glance at Clara.
She’s still painting. By all appearances, she is immersed in her work, oblivious to everything else.Good girl.I wish I could whisper those words in her ear.
At least Caer has slunk away into the crowd. When I arrived, he was fawning over her. I should consider that a victory, but when I saw his hand sliding down toward her breast, I thought I would have to leap onto the platform and rip his throat out with my teeth.
Which might put a slight kink in our plan.
“Take a seat there.” The Queen points to a stool near her throne, and I seat myself gracefully, with a smile in her direction.
She doesn’t react. She wouldn’t be the first person oblivious to my charm, but it’s unfortunate. It’s so much easier to trick someone when they’re attracted to me.
The Queen taps her claws on the arm of her throne, drinking in the amusement I’ve provided. One thing is certain—this kind of magic would never be allowed in the calm, restrained Court of Delight. The Unseelie Fae who shrank in size are being half-crushed by the ones who grew taller. But the ones being stepped on take their revenge almost immediately, exploding to huge heights to deal with their tormentors. It’s half brawl, half orgy. Most entertaining.
The merriment barely falters as guards drag the skinny juggler up the steps of the dais and lay him down before the throne, chaining his arms and legs to metal loops protruding from the platform. I can smell the caustic bite of the iron, and the faerie begins to shriek as the bands contact his skin. The guards’ hands are heavily gloved, probably to protect them against the metal’s poisonous effects.
The juggler writhes, and pulses of green light rocket from his chest, striking the Queen and one of the guards. The guard’s breastplate sizzles, half-melting at the spell’s contact. But the green pulse that strikes the Queen has no effect at all.
She is invulnerable, intelligent, and malicious.
So much worse than the Rat King.
Fuck me.
The Queen kneels beside the faerie, whose magic is gushing out of him now, all of it centered on her as he tries to defend himself. None of it has any impact on the Queen. She sinks her claws into his chest and cracks open his ribcage as easily as I might break open a melon.
Her hand plunges inside. Collects his heart and pulls it free, with a stretching, snapping, squelching noise. Gore spatters her white dress.
Clara is hunkered down behind her easel. May the gods help my sweet, beauty-loving girl to refrain from vomiting all over her painting.
The Queen is chewing into the heart now, smearing both her pale cheeks with thick red blood. I turn away, on the pretense of watching the antics of the revelers.
The entire Dread Court has devolved into chaos as the Unseelie think of new ways to employ their size differences. The sexual possibilities are being thoroughly explored, as I knew they would be. Whole bodies are being stuffed into various orifices, while other Fae wrap their legs and arms around certain oversized body parts. It’s a debauched, unnatural mess. Fortunately it won’t last much longer. This magic is short-lived.
When I glance back at the Queen, she has stretched her jaws wide, unhinging the lower one so she can stuff the rest of the heart into her gullet whole and swallow it down. Her jaw snaps back into place.
Clara looks whiter than ever, but she’s still painting.
The Queen motions to her guards. “Take the carcass to the holding area until his change is complete, then release him beyond the wall. I’m not keeping this one.”
This one?
Then she keeps some of her other victims? Where? And by all the gods, why?
When the magic is spent, the revelers seem a little—deflated. My turn to entertain them is over, and I’m waved aside, off the platform, while musicians cluster on the steps before the throne, beginning a wild dance tune. The Unseelie, like all Fae, are great lovers of music, though the style differs greatly from the songs played in my cousin’s court. This particular melody is violent, heart-pounding, ecstatic, and fiercely sexual. I would love to be able to dance to this music with Clara—not necessarily in this company, however.
I mingle with the other guests, darting between them, swerving around them, evading those who attempt to touch me. A dance of avoidance, I suppose. Now that I’m done entertaining for tonight, my nerves wind themselves even more tightly, like the strings of a lute, stretched to the breaking point.
Like a doe scanning the forest for the hunter, I search the crowd for the faces I most dread seeing—faces from that terrible night. I fear the sight of them, yetnotseeing them is somehow worse—as if they are lurking in hiding, wait to pounce on me.
I will eat and drink nothing in this place. I will not smoke, or sip, or sample anything I’m offered. I’ve warned Clara not to touch any food or cup that hasn’t passed through Ygraine’s hands or mine first. I only hope she is able to abide by that. The Dread Court doesn’t always give newcomers a choice.
For now, though, Clara sits in dubious safety on the Queen’s dais, while I pretend to enjoy myself.
If I must attend some sort of party, my tastes lie somewhere between the elegance of the Court of the Delight and the gleeful abandon of this place. But most of all, I long for privacy—and for the occasional privilege of hunting my frisky beloved through a dark forest, making love to her in the floral haze of a quiet garden, or curling up with her in our own warm home, while a storm throws sheets of rain against the windows.
