The Glass Court

You fall asleep with the shard under your pillow, which you will deny to your grave.

You wake with the conversation still in your head: the silver letters, the way they came slow when he was thinking and fast when he was teasing, the way he answered what you asked and dodged what he didn't want to. You read every line twice before you put it away. It isn't the debt. The debt doesn't make you do anything. That's the problem.

Pellwin bangs on the unlocked door at what passes for dawn. "Court," he says. "Wear the blue. He says you'll look less like a man about to stab someone."

"I'm not about to stab anyone."

"No," Pellwin says darkly. "I heard about the bramble."

The blue is a coat of soft dark wool with silver thread at the cuffs. It fits you exactly, which means someone measured you while you slept, which you decide not to think about. Your shoulder is stiff but closed; birch sap is apparently better than anything in Vael. The thorn on your wrist sits quiet under the cuff.

The throne room of Sablemere is a single glass dome, and the dusk pours through it in shades of violet and rose so the whole court seems to stand underwater.

There are perhaps a hundred fae in it. They go quiet when you walk in behind Pellwin, and the quiet has teeth.

The queen sits at the far end on a throne of black thorn grown into the shape of a chair. Queen Ysmaire Sablethorn looks forty and is said to be three hundred, black-haired, pale, and so still she could be carved. When her eyes land on you, you feel it in your spine, the way you'd feel a draft.

To her left, a young woman with ash-colored hair and freckles across her nose is grinning at you openly. That must be the princess. Lirien.

To the queen's right, lounging against a pillar, is Rhien.

He's in black today, with silver at the collar, and the circlet is on straight for once. He looks like he slept fine. He looks like he's been waiting for you to walk in. When you do, he doesn't smile, exactly. His eyes just go warm.

You look away first.

"So," the queen says. Her voice is low and carries without trying. "This is the knight my son pulled out of a wyvern."

"Majesty." You bow. The Ward taught you that much.

"You came through the Thornwall at dusk with a thorn-token and a knife." It isn't a question. "To kill him."

There's no point lying to a court that can't lie. "Yes, Majesty."

The silence sharpens.

"Honest," the queen says. "How unusual for Vael." She studies you. "And now?"

"Now I owe him my life."

"Yes. I see the mark." Her eyes go to your wrist, though your cuff covers it. "Debts are serious things here, Sir Knight. I hope you understand that."

"He explained," you say. "Very carefully."

Lirien laughs out loud, then covers her mouth. The queen doesn't look at her.

"Oh, I'm sure he did," says a new voice.

He comes out of the crowd like he's walking onstage. He's tall, golden-skinned, with copper hair braided back from a face so beautiful it looks unfair even here, where everyone is beautiful. His eyes are green as bottle glass. He's dressed in bronze silk, and he moves like a man who knows exactly who's watching.

"Lord Feronel Vennet," Pellwin mutters at your elbow, like a man naming a disease.

"Rhien always explains carefully." Feronel circles you once, slowly. He smells of amber. "He explained things very carefully to me, once. Years ago. Before he got bored." He stops in front of you and smiles. "So you're the new one. The pet assassin. I'd heard he'd started collecting strays, but a Vael knight is a bold choice. Does it sit when told?"

A few people laugh.

You've been insulted by better. You've been insulted by sergeants with gout. You just look at him.

"Feronel." Rhien hasn't moved from his pillar. He hasn't raised his voice. But something in the room changes temperature. "The knight is my guest. He is under my protection, my roof, and my name. Anyone who insults him insults me. Anyone who touches him answers to me." He tilts his head, pleasant as cream. "I'd hate for that to be you. We have history."

Feronel's smile stays exactly where it is. His eyes don't. "Of course, Highness."

"Of course," Rhien agrees.

The court breathes out.

Afterward, Lirien finds you on a glass bridge, looking down at a river that runs silver over black stones.

"Don't mind Feronel," she says, leaning on the rail beside you. Up close her freckles are gold. "He's been sulking since Rhien ended it. It was four years ago. That's nothing to us, but still."

"He made it sound like Rhien got bored."

"Feronel's very good at making true things sound like something else." She grins. "We all are. You'll get used to it." She studies you sideways. "You don't look like an assassin, Ethan."

"What does an assassin look like?"

"Less kind." She says it like a diagnosis. "I'm a healer. I see things. Little threads. You've got a lot of them going in strange directions." She taps the rail. "My brother's got the same ones."

"What does that mean?"

"Ask me after Longnight. That's the annoying thing about threads." She pushes off the rail. Then, at the end of the bridge, half over her shoulder, too casual: "He went to the moon-pool that night already knowing, you know. Ask him what."

She's gone before you can call after her.

You look for him. Of course you do.

You find him in a courtyard at the foot of his tower, where a dozen of the queen's wardens in grey leather are coming in through the gate, dragging something on a sledge between them. It's heavy. It's wrapped in canvas, and the canvas is stained.

"Highness," says the lead warden. "From the moon-pool. It was on the wyvern. We cut it off before we burned the carcass."

Rhien steps forward and lifts one corner of the canvas.

You see leather. Thick, black, buckled leather, the kind of harness you'd put on an animal you meant to guide. You see a flash of metal on one of the straps, a badge, catching the light.

Rhien drops the canvas.

His face doesn't change. You're learning that his face is the last thing to change. But his hand closes once at his side, and the thornvines on the courtyard wall shiver, all of them, at once.

"Take it to the lower vault," he says to the warden. "Lock it. My key and the queen's. No one else."

"Highness."

They drag it away. You step forward.

"What was that?"

He turns. He looks at you, and for the first time since you met him, he isn't playing. He looks like a man standing between you and a fire.

"Not tonight, Ethan," he says quietly. "You won't want to have seen it."