Vengeance Throne (The Callistra Chronicles #2)

THIRTY-THREE

Chapter Thirty-Three

Evara watched the working fae bustle about the fields, her eyes furiously tracking the frantic bodies as they hauled box after box of equipment into position for the wedding ceremony.

She stood alongside a hedge of her height exactly, hiding amongst the greenery. Even if anyone paid attention to the lurking figure at the edge of the field, they would not see her. All they would see was what they wanted to see; all they would see was someone they wouldn't remember come the next second.

Evara looked down then, taking in the glowing sigils on her arms. She had had no choice except to carve the symbols into her skin, but where they had been red and swollen and grotesque earlier, the lines were now pulsing with gold, as if she had injected liquid power into her veins and now they were lighting her skin from the inside out.

The queen of Airesi summoned all the magic that she had drawn from Callistra. She commanded it to furrow deep, deep, deep within her core until it filled her lungs so tightly that it hurt to breathe.

And then, she smiled.

***

Meanwhile, Pasiphae was fiddling with her skirts as she gazed out of the balcony windows, scrunching her fist into the fabric and then promptly releasing her grip, over and over again as her nerves buzzed haywire. When her hands were settled at her sides as they were now, they practically became buried within the layers and layers of tulle that flared out from her waist. The design was extravagant and regal and everything she needed to cultivate her image, but it had taken her almost an hour to put on, and then she had immediately wanted to take it off again.

It seemed like such a shame to get something as beautiful as this soaked in blood at the end of the day.

Pasiphae pulled her hands away from the dress with a resolute yank, using her twitchy fingers to slick back the loose pieces of hair flying about her face instead. A thin sheen of sweat was starting to mess up the intricate braids that Charlize had pulled, and as Pasiphae itched the tighter knots, more hair came loose.

Grimacing, she glanced over her shoulder to see if Charlize had noticed, but the faery guard was in the middle of a hissing match with Seth as they talked numbers: working out how many villagers at a time could be snuck along a back path within Court from the trees to the weaponry hall.

"We may like to pretend that these are experienced revolutionaries," Charlize was saying. "But they are not. They need to be as far away as possible from the nobles until they are equipped with weaponry, lest they are noticed and confronted."

With a worn out sigh, Pasiphae tuned out from their conversation. Her attention was better spent directed past the glass of the balcony doors, taking in the limited view from Seth's rooms, for despite the distance, she could discern the set-up for the ceremony very clearly from her vantage point.

A raised, circular platform waited at the very centre of the fields. Surrounding it, decorative arches rose tall into the sky, bearing a mixture of lanterns and vines upon the shapes that weaved along the alabaster. Carpets of organic flower petals were sprinkled into four paths running outward from the platform in the four compass directions, and where there was no path, chairs occupied the free space instead. Each seat was packed so tightly that Pasiphae imagined the nobles would have trouble moving into the centre of the rows.

Indeed now, the nobles were arriving onto the back fields in flocks, their jaws clenched tight and their eyes swivelling back and forth constantly for the first sign of danger. They had no choice except to order their knights stay at the edges of the set-up—to bring them forward into the rows upon rows of seats would be to upset protocol, and to spit in the face of the Crown Prince by insinuating they didn't trust him.