Page 147 of Promise of Darkness
The goblet hits the bars with a clang, and a half dozen Unseelie burst into laughter at Thalia’s furious look. She cuts me an icy sneer, and I slip my mask from my face just long enough to wink at her.
Thalia freezes.
Then I slip back into the shadows until I can be certain no one is watching me too closely.
A troll found my act amusing and repeats it, with mead spraying across the crowd. A pair of hobgoblins take offense to being drenched, and suddenly a fight breaks out, knives flashing and the troll’s club rising in the air.
Blaedwyn laughs as half the dancers are swept aside in a sudden melee.
I dart forward, capturing Thalia’s attention.
“Sing,” I mouth.
Thalia grabs at the bars of her cage, staring at me desperately. From the draw of her brows, she has no idea what I want her to do.
I point to the sword, then to Blaedwyn, then to her. And then I pretend to sing.
A hobgoblin slams into me, spinning me out of the way. “Clear the path,” it snarls.
By the time I look back, Thalia is nodding.
The troll ends the fight with a sweep of its mighty club. Three of the Unseelie fall, and this time they don’t get up.
“Fight me,” it roars, huffing and snarling with rage, but the crowd is eyeing those broken bodies, and almost as one, the argument dies before its begun.
“Take it outside, Brutu,” Blaedwyn calls. “Before you break any more of my tables.”
Trolls have little intelligence, and this one is worked into a rage. But it takes one look at her, with her glittering, merciless eyes, and then it stomps away through the crowd.
“Queen Blaedwyn,” Thalia suddenly calls, rattling on her cage bars. “I warn you to let me go, or else see your court suffer.”
All eyes turn toward her.
Blaedwyn leans forward on her throne, her elbows resting on her knees. I need her to move away from the throne, but she merely smiles. “Why, the little bird has finally found its voice again. Pray tell, little bird, what shall you do if I deny you?”
Thalia visibly swallows. “I shall sing death down upon your people, and drive them mad.”
The entire crowd roars with laughter.
Blaedwyn pushes to her feet, sauntering toward the middle of the dais. “The only ones who can sing death are bound to the sea or locked away with the Father of Storms. The saltkissed cannot walk the earth, little bird.”
“But I am not wholly saltkissed,” Thalia says in a firm voice.
And then she starts to sing.
The first few notes are pure bliss. Her voice. Sweet Maia, her voice. But then the octave shifts, and suddenly every pane of glass left in the windows high above us shatter.
Unseelie scream and bellow, fleeing for the doors and finding themselves trapped. Glass shards rain down upon the crowd, and finally, Thalia stops, her song cutting off with a sharp note.
“Do you want to hear me go higher?” she suggests.
Blaedwyn alone stands unstunned. Her eyes narrow, as I slip behind the dais.
“It’s a lovely performance,” Blaedwyn calls, snapping her fingers for one of her servants as though she has no worries in the world. “Though I think I shall call your bluff. For that is what it is, is it not? If you could sing death, little bird, then you would have struck my riders down in the forest where you were captured. No saltkissed allows herself to be taken alive. No. I think you’re lying.”
She takes a goblet of mead from the server’s platter.
I slip from the shadows and crouch behind the throne, my back set to the bleached wood. Every inch of me is tense, waiting for the merest hint of an outcry, but none comes.
