Page 65 of Beneath a Shattered Sky
I suck my lower lip between my teeth as I consider it. As much as I enjoy watching him overbalance and crash into things while he tries—and fails—to fight me, the lack of practice is going to make me rusty.
“Fine, accepted, whatever.”
Twenty
Rhoswyn
Stifling a yawn behind my hand, I try not to let my tiredness show as I hurry towards the throne room. Behind me, Drystan lets out a low chuckle, like he wasn’t one of the three directly responsible for keeping me up well into the night and then waking me at the crack of dawn.
I haven’t even had a chance to properly bathe, let alone do my wing exercises, but here I am, wearing one of my guys’ shirts as a tunic as I stride towards the throne room with Wraith and Drystan for company. Given that the last time a minor royal summoned me didn’t go well, I almost feel under prepared.
The immense wooden doors are opened by trolls, revealing a room that’s about as opposite from the glittering halls of Siabetha as can be.
It’s dark. The tall windows are thin and barely allow any of the pale dawn into the room, and the only decorations are the long banners that hang from the ceiling to brush the floor, all in various shades of red, orange, and black.
And in the middle, on a throne carved from an enormous, withered, dead tree, Cressida sits, listening to the report of a redcap wearing a kettle hat.
“And the movements to the west are getting bolder. They’ve tried twice to take the chain towers protecting the Eyslin and Apporas estuaries.”
Cressida notices me and holds a hand up for silence. “Dismissed. We’ll discuss this later.”
The redcap bows, shooting a distrustful look my way before he leaves the way I entered.
“Nicnevin.” Cressida stands and descends from her throne towards me.
Her face is pinched with an expression that doesn’t bode well for the rest of our time together. Today the long folds of her knee-length robes and her tall boots disguise the brace she wears entirely, and I wonder for a second if her legs are something she hides from her court.
If they are, why show me?
“Come. The throne room is not a hotbed of spirits.”
She summoned me before dawn to train?
She sweeps past me without another word, leading the way out of a side door and down a smaller passageway.
“How much practice have you done by yourself?” she asks, as I hurry to keep up.
“A little,” I admit. “A lot of the time… it’s Danu using me in a rage. But I can bring my grandmothers into the physical realm, and I use Titania’s healing gift often enough.”
Cressida shoots me a confused look over her shoulder. “And how are you coping with the other spirits?”
My stomach drops. “What other spirits?”
Her eyebrows climb higher on her forehead. “Necromancers normally see more than just three spirits.”
“I mean, I summoned a couple on the wall of Elfhame,” I say. “By reading their names. And I saw the ones we took to the Otherworld at Samhain…”
She waves my words away. “But what about other spirits? Come now, you’ve visited three major cities on your travels and you’re telling me you haven’t seenanyother ghosts?”
What does she want me to say? “I’ve not seen any other spirits. I only just learned to read auras recently.”
I can’t see her face, but I can feel her frown as she shoves open another door and leads us out onto a staircase that wraps around the trunk of the palace tree.
“Yet you’ve used your grandmothers’ gifts?”
“Yes,” I admit. “But they’re not like other spirits. Danu appointed them my Guides. They’ve been with me since I was a baby.”
“Raised by the dead but unable to see the rest of them?” Cressida mutters disbelievingly as we reach the bottom of the stairs, then she leads me out onto the leaf-strewn carpet of the forest. “And the priestesses would have us believe Danu doesn’t play favourites with her children.” She scoffs.
