The Favorite's Ring

The court doesn't disperse so much as recede, like a tide pulling back to show you all the sharp things it left on the sand.

Isolde is gone. One moment beside the throne, the next not, and the big silent driver is at your elbow instead.

"Bram," he says. It takes you a second to realize it's his name. "Captain of the guard. Come."

He leads you out of the ballroom through a side door, down a corridor hung with paintings you'd normally kill to get within three feet of. A Dutch interior. A Venetian harbor. A portrait that might be a Gainsborough, and your appraiser's brain flinches and wonders if it's real.

"Is she coming back?" you ask.

"Her Majesty has business."

"With Lysander?"

Bram says nothing, which is an answer.

He leaves you in a library that smells of leather and pipe smoke and old paper. A fire is going. A man is waiting by it, pouring tea into two cups.

"Ah," he says warmly. "The appraiser. Ethan, isn't it? Sit, please, before you fall down. You look like a drowned cat."

He's older than the others, or looks it. Silver hair, a neat grey beard, reading glasses pushed up on his head. A cardigan. An actual cardigan, with leather elbow patches. Of all the things you've seen tonight, the cardigan is somehow the hardest to process.

"Aurelian Voss," he says, handing you a cup. "Chancellor of this court, for my sins. Which are numerous. Drink. It's only tea. I promise not to poison you on your first night; it would be terribly bad manners."

You drink. It's good tea. Your hands stop shaking a little.

"I'm going to guess," Aurelian says, settling into the chair across from you, "that nobody has explained to you what just happened."

"She said I'm her Favorite. Everyone looked like they wanted to eat me."

"Several of them did. Several of them still do." He smiles kindly. "Let me explain, and then you can decide how frightened to be."

A Favorite, Aurelian tells you, is an old tradition. Older than Halden. Older than the country.

"A Queen chooses one mortal to stand beside her. Advisor, companion, confidant. It's a mark of extraordinary trust, and of extraordinary protection. Under our law, any vampire who harms the Queen's Favorite, who so much as draws a drop of their blood, forfeits their life. No trial. No appeal." He sips his tea. "She would do it herself. She has done it before."

"So I'm safe."

"From direct attack, by anyone with sense. Lysander used mortal hirelings tonight for that reason." Aurelian's eyes are sympathetic over the rim of his cup. "But there are gaps in any law. Mortals can be hired. Accidents can happen. And there's the Conclave."

"What's the Conclave?"

"At the autumn equinox the whole court gathers. Forty nights from tonight. They vote to confirm the Favorite, or to strip the title." He sets down his cup. "If you're confirmed, you are hers for as long as she wishes. If you're stripped, you lose every protection at once. And you'd be a mortal who knows exactly what we are."

You let that sit.

"What happens to mortals who know?"

Aurelian looks at the fire. "Usually," he says gently, "they forget. Usually."

"And the rest of the time?"

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves."

The door opens. A woman in red walks in without knocking. The one who dropped her glass. Up close she's even more beautiful, dark curls, bare shoulders, a mouth made for saying cruel things beautifully.

"Uncle Lysander," she says, "is being shouted at. Very quietly. I find it unbearable to watch." She looks you up and down. "So this is it."

"Aveline," Aurelian says mildly. "Be civil."

"I'm always civil." She circles your chair. "Sixty-five years. Sixty-five years she's had no Favorite. Half this court has spent decades trying to earn that ring. Poems. Gifts. Duels, once, in 1974, it was very silly." She leans down until her lips are near your ear. "And she gives it to a mortal who smells like wet cardboard."

"It was a box," you say. "I was carrying a box."

Aveline straightens. Something flickers across her face that could almost be amusement.

"Enjoy your forty nights, darling. I don't expect you'll need all of them."

She leaves. The door clicks shut.

"She wanted it," you say.

"She wanted it very badly," Aurelian agrees. "A Favorite can't be touched. For someone like Aveline, with as many enemies as she has, that's worth more than gold." He stands and offers you a hand. "Come. You need sleep. The ring will be brought to you."

"What ring?"

He smiles. "You'll see."

The guest suite is bigger than your whole apartment. A four-poster bed. A fireplace. A bathroom with a claw-foot tub. Tall windows looking down over a terrace and a garden of black roses glistening in the rain.

On the bedside table, on a square of grey velvet, sits a ring.

Silver band. A stone carved into a six-petaled rose, so dark red it looks black until the firelight catches it. Black garnet, your brain supplies. Georgian, probably. Real.

You don't put it on.

Your phone has nineteen missed calls. All Meera. You call back and she picks up before the first ring finishes.

"Where are you? You said you'd be home by one. It's three-thirty. I was about to call hospitals. I work at a hospital. I was about to call myself."

"I'm okay."

"You sound weird."

"I got fired."

"Oh no. Okay. We can deal with fired. Come home, I'll make the bad pasta."

You look at the ring on its velvet. At the window. At the roses.

"Pree," you say. "If I told you I was at a house on Cinder Hill with a bunch of vampires and their Queen just made me her... something, what would you say?"

There's a long pause.

"I'd say come home right now, Ethan, because either you've been drugged or you're in a cult, and I'm not sure which is worse."

"Yeah."

"Are you safe?"

"I don't know."

"Then get out." Her voice cracks. "Please. Just get out."

You promise you will. You hang up.

You go to the window and push it open. Rain blows in, cold. Below is the terrace. Below that, the rose bed. It's a long way down, but there's a drainpipe, old iron, bolted into the stone. You've climbed worse. You were a reckless kind of boy.

You put one hand on the sill.

Your phone buzzes on the bed behind you.

Unknown number.

You go back and pick it up, and your heart stops for a second as you read the preview on the lock screen.

You're thinking of leaving.