Page 11

Chapter eleven

A Morning Prayer

C ass didn’t seem to mind sharing a room with me. It was made easier by the fact that the enormous room had two sets of everything contained within it. Two Queen-sized beds stood side by side with about three feet of space between them, two full sized armoires, two dressers, two closets, and a conversation pit of cushions and fluffy pillows in the center. Our washroom was just off to Cass’ side, complete with a porcelain claw foot tub and every modern luxury a palace could afford. On my side, the wall was gone completely, open to the vast expanse of empty sand leading right up to the cliff wall. It was all white, of course, right on brand.

“I’m starting to doubt what you said before about not all the courts taking their color so seriously,” I told Cass that night as I emerged from the washroom after having taken a proper, unrushed bath and sliding into a set of silk pajamas that were exactly my size. After a long day, that felt like the best bit of magic I’d seen.

Cass snorted at my joke, setting aside the bottle of purple nail polish she had been using to touch up her toes. A moment later, the bottle disappeared entirely with a snap of her fingers.

“The Wanderers aren’t the worst. I’d say it’s tied between these guys and the Rivals,” she told me.

“The Rivals?” I asked, cocking a brow as I slid under the warmest comforter I’d ever felt.

“Red,” she told me.

“You aren’t including your court among the obsessors?”

She looked up at me, raising a brow in question. I rolled my eyes.

“Oh, come on,” I teased. “The constant black, all of you. It’s like you don’t possess another color in your wardrobe at all.”

“We don’t,” she said with a shrug. “Besides, black is slimming.”

I chuckled.

“Lark and I,” she continued after a moment, “we have to wear it. It and nothing else because of who we are. For Rook, it’s a choice but whether he does it because of his black soul or because of his loyalty to Lark, I don’t know.”

“What did he do?”

Cass hesitated. My eyelids were already drooping but I waited to see if she would answer, anyway.

“Rook is… from here, originally,” she answered after a moment. “He was born in this court. Let’s just say that the good folk of the Light Court don’t take it very well when someone leaves.”

“So why did he?”

Cass’ eyes were on me then. I felt them burning against my skin almost as badly as her brother’s always seemed to. I was prying, I knew, but I was desperate to know more about the people I seemed to have allied myself with.

“Something you should remember,” she said then, her voice turning serious. “People who claim to be the most good are also usually the most hypocritical.”

I didn’t have time to process that in my exhausted state before I fell asleep in the most comfortable bed I’d ever laid in.

The morning came without warning and I woke up feeling as though I’d never slept. After the most grueling forty-eight hours of my life, it turned out I would need more than five of sleep. But we didn’t have the time because Semyaza strode in at seven in the morning, flinging our curtains wide and letting in the morning sun. Cass grumbled and buried herself in her sheets. I echoed the sentiment, trying to throw an arm over my eyes to shield them. But Semyaza wasn’t having it.

“You’ll miss your morning prayers,” she chided, pulling back my covers and grabbing my arms to help me upright. I just watched her, confused and half asleep.

Prayers? Who did gods pray to?

I half expected Cass to laugh and throw a pillow at our meddling sentry but instead she rose from her bed reluctantly and shuffled off to the washroom. After a moment of poking and prodding from Semyaza, I followed.

I didn’t dare ask for an explanation the whole time we freshened up and dressed. It seemed like requesting such a thing might be offensive, to Semyaza at least. So I just brushed my hair and dabbed on a bit of makeup, turning just in time to see Semyaza entering the washroom again, another white gossamer monstrosity draped over her arm. This one was true to toga fashion, with a strap over one arm, leaving the other exposed, and cascading down the legs to trail on the floor below.

She raised a brow but Cass snapped her fingers and another gown of shimmering gray appeared on my body. It was loose and flowy, much like the toga, but with embellishments that I had a feeling the sentries of the Life Court might consider vain.

Semyaza’s face screwed up into an expression of rage and she tossed the white gown on the floor, ballerina slippers sliding out from beneath it and skittering across the marble, before storming from the room in a dignified huff.

“She just keeps trying, doesn’t she?” I asked with a sigh.

“She will,” Cass replied in warning, striding up to me where I stood in front of the mirror. “Hold your ground. You don’t have to be anyone you don’t wish to be here, Ren.”

Cass wore a dress as well, this one black and sparkling but covering all the sensitive areas and trailing to the floor like mine.

“Is that why Rook left?” I asked, prying further, again, than I should.

Cass stiffened again, so much so that I almost felt bad for asking. She was only trying to help me, after all.

“Hypocrites are hypocrites. No matter how much white they wrap themselves in or how many rules they bind to their court. It’s not so different here from the mortal realm, Ren. Remember that. People lie everywhere.”

I decided not to point out the fact that she hadn’t answered my question about Rook at all as she took my arm and led me from the washroom.

“Prayers?” I asked in a whisper as we paused in our room for Cass to collect her shoes.

“To the sun and the moon and whatever else these people decide to worship,” Cass told me with a roll of her eyes as she slid into her black stilettos, using my shoulder to keep herself upright as she did and I wondered why she didn’t just use her magic to transport them onto her feet. “We aren’t active participants in the religion but the Queen’s guests not attending morning prayers would be a slap in the face of the Court.”

I nodded in understanding and followed Cass out of our room into the hallway beyond.

“Besides, it will be a good chance to catch up with Lark,” she told me. “If my brother has a plan, he’s been entirely too close-lipped about it. I intend to loosen them.”

I couldn’t help my smirk at the determined look on Cass’ face as we made our way down the hall, joining the others flowing in from all areas of the palace, all with long flowing hair, all dressed in wispy white.

We made our way, like a herd of cattle, to the courtyard in the center of the palace, open to the elements above and teeming with all manner of flora and fauna that I knew for a fact rarely thrived in the desert. Magic was at work here.

It was easy to see why something like this might be considered holy. Scattered amongst the fertile beds of soil and potted plants were porcelain statues of male and female Fae that must have lived millennia ago. Or still were, I reminded myself, shivering at the thought. Immortality was not a concept that I was quite comfortable with yet. But it was a wonder. What these people must have seen, what they knew.

Maybe worshipping the sun wasn’t so crazy after all.

Cass followed a line of people as it branched off and circled around the back. When the man in front of us stopped walking, turned toward the nearest statue, and knelt to his knees, we did the same. I had a brief moment of disappointment that I would get my pristine dress dirty in the mud beneath me but it faded when I remembered this wasn’t my dress. And these weren’t my people.

“It took you long enough,” Cass snapped below her breath and I turned to see that Lark had followed us down our line.

He was kneeling next to me, so close that our elbows were touching as well as our thighs. My face burned and I lowered my head, pretending to be lost in reverent prayer, to hide it.

“I need you to go to Rook after breakfast,” Lark whispered back to his sister without looking at her. From afar, it would look as though he were simply bowing his head in prayer. I readjusted myself to look the same and bumped into him with my hip.

“Why?” Cass hissed back.

“It isn’t safe for him to stay here. Sophierial has her suspicions. And I need him to go to the Court of Rivals, anyway.”

“Rivals?” Cass asked, her gaze snapping toward her brother briefly before she remembered her prayers.

“Taurus never came for me,” Lark explained. “He could have but he didn’t. If I can reason with him—”

“He’ll tear Rook apart.”

“Rook can hold his own.”

“He nearly killed Ursa.”

“Ursa’s intentions were murderous herself.”

“Lark—”

“I just need to know, Cass. If the time comes, I need to know how many of my siblings I actually have to kill.”

She fell silent at that. We all did. I shuffled back and forth on my knees, trying to ease some of the pressure on my joints, quite certain a rock was lodged somewhere in the sand beneath me. No one else was fidgeting, though, so I grit my teeth and fell still. Did these people not have knee joints either? Perhaps I should have attended more mass with my uncle. At least then I would be used to this infernal kneeling.

“I’ll go to Rook,” she promised after a moment. “But you need to tell me how long you intend to stay here.”

“As long as it takes.”

“As long as what takes, Lark?”

“The Queen is open to a partnership with the Court of Blood and Bone. I just have to… woo her.”

“So now we are fraternizing?” Cass asked with a sigh, rolling her eyes at Sophierial’s chosen term. Lark grimaced.

“We’re doing what we’ve always done, sister,” he replied, his voice low, dangerous. “We’re doing what’s best for our people.”

Neither of them spoke again through the duration of the morning prayers and, as hard as I tried to focus on the rituals taking place in front of me for academic purposes, I couldn’t help but think about what had been said amongst my companions. Fraternizing with the Queen. And Lark hadn’t denied it.

It shouldn’t have mattered. He was free to fraternize with whomever he wished. But for some reason, I couldn’t help but be miserably irritable for the rest of the day.

Cass left after breakfast, as instructed, and didn’t return until lunch. I spent the time in between pacing my room, bored but afraid to emerge and face Semyaza. I tried not to think about Rook, alone in a city he seemed to have a shaky past with, or Cass shadowstepping in and out of the palace in a way that was likely against the rules, or Lark doing God knew what with God knew who. I just sat and waited. And then waited some more.