Tatterfell is waiting for us. She takes down my hair and strips off my dress, carrying away Nightfell and putting me into a shift. Another servant sets down a tray holding a pot of hot tea and a plate of venison bleeding onto toast. I sit on the rug and eat it, using the buttered bread to sop up the meat juices.

I fall asleep there, too. When I wake, Taryn is shaking me.

I blink hazily and stumble to my feet. “I’m up,” I say. “How long was I lying there?”

She shakes her head. “Tatterfell says that you’ve been out for the whole day and night. She worried that you had a human illness—that’s why she sent for me. Come on, at least get in bed.”

“You’re married now,” I say, recalling it suddenly. With that comes the memory of Locke and the riders, the earrings I was supposed to give her. It all feels so far away, so distant.

She nods, putting her wrist to my forehead. “And you look like a wraith. But I don’t think you have a fever.”

“I’m fine,” I say, the lie coming automatically to my lips. I have to get to Cardan and warn him about the Ghost. I have to see the Court of Shadows.

“Don’t act so proud,” she says, and there are tears in her eyes. “You disappeared on my wedding night, and I didn’t even know you were gone until morning. I’ve been so frightened.

“When the Undersea sent word it had you, well, the High King and Madoc blamed each other. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. Every morning, I went to the edge of the water and looked down, hoping I could see you. I asked all the mermaids if they could tell me if you were okay, but no one would.”

I try to imagine the panic she must have felt, but I can’t.

“They seem to have worked through their differences,” I say, thinking of them together at the beach.

“Something like it.” She makes a face, and I try to smile.

Taryn helps me into my bed, arranging the cushions behind me. I feel bruised all over, sore and ancient and more mortal than ever before.

“Vivi and Oak?” I ask. “Are they okay?”

“Fine,” she says. “Back home with Heather, who seems to have gotten through her visit to Faerieland without much drama.”

“She was glamoured,” I say.

For a moment, I see anger cross her face, raw and rare. “Vivi shouldn’t do that,” Taryn says.

I am relieved not to be the only one to feel that way. “How long have I been gone?”

“A little over a month,” she says, which seems impossibly brief. I feel as though I have aged a hundred years beneath the sea.

Not only that, but now I am more than halfway through the year and a day Cardan promised. I sink back on the cushions and close my eyes. “Help me get up,” I say.

She shakes her head. “Let the kitchens send up more soup.”

It isn’t difficult to persuade me. As a concession, Taryn helps me dress in clothes that were once too tight and now hang on me. She stays to feed me spoonfuls of broth.

When she’s ready to go, she pulls up her skirts and takes a long hunting knife out of a sheath attached to a garter. In that moment, it’s clear we grew up in the same house.

She puts the knife onto the coverlets beside a charm she takes from her pocket. “Here,” she says. “Take them. I know they’ll make you feel safer. But you must rest. Tell me you won’t do anything rash.”

“I can barely stand on my own.”

She gives me a stern look.

“Nothing rash,” I promise her.

She embraces me before she goes, and I hang a little too long on her shoulders, drinking in the human smell of sweat and skin. No ocean, no pine needles or blood or night-blooming flowers.

I doze off with my hand on her knife. I am not sure when I wake, but it’s to the sound of arguing.

“Whatsoever the Grand General’s orders, I am here to see the High King’s seneschal and I won’t be put off with any more excuses!” It’s a woman’s voice, one I half-recognize. I roll off the bed, heading dizzily out into the hall, where I can look down from the balcony. I spot Dulcamara from the Court of Termites. She looks up at me. There is a fresh cut on her face.

“Your pardon,” she calls in a way that makes it clear she means nothing of the sort. “But I must have an audience. In fact, I am here to remind you of your obligations, including that one.”

I recall Lord Roiben with his salt-white hair and the promise I made him for supporting Cardan half a year ago. He pledged to the crown and the new High King, but on a specific condition.

Someday, I will ask your king for a favor, he said.

What did I say in return? I tried to bargain: Something of equal value. And within our power.

I guess he’s sent Dulcamara to call in that favor, though I do not know what use I am to be when I am like this.

“Is Oriana in her parlor? If not, show Dulcamara to it, and I will speak with her there,” I say, gripping the railing so that I don’t fall. Madoc’s guards look unhappy, but they don’t contradict me.

“This way,” says one of the servants, and with a last hostile look at me, Dulcamara follows.

This leaves me time to make my unsteady way down the stairs.

“Your father’s orders were that you not go out,” one of the guards says, used to my being a child to be minded and not the High King’s seneschal with whom one might behave with more formality. “He wanted you to rest.”

“By which you mean he didn’t order me not to have audiences here, but only because he didn’t think of it.” The guard doesn’t contradict me, only frowns. “His concerns—and yours—are noted.”

I manage to make it to Oriana’s parlor without falling over. And if I hold slightly too long to the wooden trim around windows or to the edges of tables, that’s not so awful.

“Bring us some tea please, as hot as you can make it,” I say to a servant who watches me a little too closely.

Steeling myself, I let go of the wall and walk into the parlor, give Dulcamara a nod, and sink into a chair, although she has remained standing, hands clasped behind her back.

“Now we see what your High King’s loyalty looks like,” she says, taking a step toward me, her face hostile enough that I wonder if her purpose is more than speaking.

Instinct wants to push me to my feet. “What happened?”

At that, she laughs. “You know very well. Your king gave the Undersea permission to attack us. It came two nights ago, out of nowhere. Many of our people were slain before we understood what was happening, and now we are being forbidden from retaliating.”

“Forbidden from retaliating?” I think of what Orlagh said about not being at war, but how can the land not be at war if the sea has already attacked? As the High King, Cardan owes his subjects the might of his military—of Madoc’s army—when they are under threat. But to deny permission of striking back was unheard of.

She bares her teeth. “Lord Roiben’s consort was hurt,” she says. “Badly.”

The green-skinned, black-eyed pixie who spoke as though she were mortal. The one that the terrifying leader of the Court of Termites deferred to, laughed with.

“Is she going to live?” I ask, my voice gone soft.

“You best hope so, mortal,” Dulcamara says. “Or Lord Roiben will bend his will to the destruction of your boy king, despite the vows he made.”