Chapter Twelve
Charlize was peering down at them from the balcony, whispering, "You want me to toss a rope?" like this was an everyday occurrence.
Pasiphae rubbed the goosebumps on her arms. The dagger was back in her pocket, staining the lining with jinn blood. Which was fantastic, really. She loved having strange, possibly venomous blood in her favourite cloak.
"What is that?"
Pasiphae turned to where Seth was looking, a note of disbelief in his voice.
"What?" she asked. "I don't see anything."
"Something..." Seth was frowning. "Something moved."
"If it was a shadow," Pasiphae said, taking ahold of the rope that Charlize threw down, "don't say I didn't tell you so."
She hauled herself up onto the glass landing, stretching her sore muscles. Inside the dark room, Pasiphae patted around the wall for the switch to turn the lights back on, but still couldn't seem to find it.
"It wasn't a shadow," Seth said indignantly, climbing up after her. "It looked more like smoke."
"I don't mean to question," Charlize said. "But I think smoke is supposed to move."
Pasiphae snorted, a short burst of amusement.
"Thanks, Char," Seth said, sliding the door closed with a solid click. He peered out to make sure there was no more smoke, then squinted at Charlize. "Go to sleep."
Charlize hurried off, taking the rope with her. She slammed her bedroom door shut loudly, inciting a lengthy groan from the middle room. It sounded a lot like Psyche being woken, which led Bel-Arh to crack open his door a peep and inspect what was going on before shutting it again. His face looked bored even in the low light.
The three guards seemed to have returned then. She would have asked where they had gotten to, but she had a feeling Seth wouldn't tell her anyway.
"Who's Kalis?" Pasiphae asked instead.
"Why are you asking me?" Seth retorted. He strode into the bathroom, triggering the automatic light that nearly blinded the both of them. When Seth had stopped stumbling, he started splashing water from the sink onto his face.
Pasiphae followed him closely, leaning against the doorway. "You obviously know who she is."
"What is really knowing someone though? Are you asking me about her title or her—"
"Seth!" Pasiphae interrupted.
He rested his hands on the basin, dripping water from his chin, staring directly ahead into his reflection in the overhead mirror. "She's officially the consort of one of the noble Unseelie fae, Aethel Norrenwall."
"Two fae can share a consort?"
He glanced at her sharply, and Pasiphae understood.
"Oh..."
Seth brushed by, kicking off his shoes.
"What does this have to do with the illness then?" Pasiphae continued. "All we've figured is that Warin leaves Khotadi often and has a secret consort."
"And maybe the secret consort can tell us why he keeps leaving," Seth said. He dived onto the bed in the corner, slumped at the far edge, his face buried into the pillow.
"We should be following up with more leads. This could turn out to be completely unrelated." Pasiphae didn't receive a response. "Seth?" Silence. "And where am I supposed to sleep?"
Without lifting his head, Seth moved his arm and pointed at the space beside him.
"It's not weird unless you make it weird," he said, words muffled. Then, looking up, he announced theatrically, "We're going to be working together for a long while. Don't you trust me?"
Pasiphae rolled her eyes. She pinched out the disks in her eyeballs and set them down on the table, where she also placed her collar after snapping it off at long last, freeing her stiff neck.
She put her cloak on the bed, keeping the fabric in a heap between them so her dagger was in reach.
Simple precautions.
"Don't complain if I kick you in my sleep," Pasiphae warned, pushing aside his leg roughly to make space. She lay down, pulling over the bed covers.
Pasiphae allowed a beat of silence to fall before breaking it. "You know what I want to know?"
He made a low, displeased noise to ask without words why she was still talking, and signify No, not really.
"What determines a faery's title?" she asked, unfazed. "You can't be born a guard, can you? But you can be born a noble."
She didn't think Seth was going to reply when her questions were met with silence. But then, he heaved a sigh, and turned so he was lying on his back like she was.
"You're born in all except for guard," he said with a yawn. "You know how fae magic works: magic pulls from magic nearby. Workers become guards to be apart of the Court, to get closer to the nobles."
"And that elevates their status?"
"Status is just another word for power."
"Why are some nobles lower than other nobles?"
"What?"
Pasiphae made some vague gestures with her hands, blinking up at the high ceiling. "You know, how some nobles are surrounded by other entourage nobles?"
"Oh," Seth said. "Power again. Some family lines are especially revered. There are still high nobles and low nobles within the class."
"How do humans fit into all this?"
Seth threw an arm over his eyes. "By Callistra, I've been awake for days, let me sleep."
"Consorts are treated as pets, right? But surely, in being at Court, they hold more power than peasants who are being beaten to death on the streets."
Seth shook his head, creating bristling noises with his hair against the pillow. "We're talking literal power. Not figurative. Humans will always be at the bottom. They're powerless."
Powerless. Just as she was.
"No more questions?" Seth said drily. "Great, now—"
"Who is Nata Sangallard?"
He sat upright suddenly, staring down at her with a sharpness. "Where did you hear that name?"
"One of those screens at the club," she replied levelly. "She has the royal surname, but I've never heard of her before."
Seth tapped his fingers on his knee, and collapsed back down again. "We met once."
"Really?" Pasiphae tried to run calculations in her head.
Seth nodded, noticing her frown.
"When we get to ten years old, our ageing slows dramatically to about a year per decade. I was technically only still seventeen when she was ten. She was a nice kid."
Pasiphae waited, sure that Seth still had more to say. And she was right.
"She was Morgana's daughter."
Now it was Pasiphae's turn to bolt upright. "What?" she exclaimed. "Medeis has a policy of isolation, yes, but surely I'd know if the Unseelie royals had an heir."
Even Pasiphae knew that the Unseelies were infamous for being unstable. It was why fears of crumbling peace heightened with time, as Morgana and Prees got older and older with no children to take the throne once their life span finished. The Seelies had one heir, a Crown prince, ensuring the longevity of their kingdom.
"The existence of royal children is usually only declared once their ageing slows," Seth explained wearily. "This way, it's certain the heirs are sound of mind. She was days away from presentation, but it was too late. Only those within Khotadi knew of her existence, so only the Unseelie knew that she had been murdered. Supposedly."
Pasiphae forced her voice steady. "What happened?"
"Stories are all kind of unclear." Seth glanced over, and Pasiphae made sure to erase any traces of guilt, even though she didn't know what she should have been guilty about.
"They say a witch assassin wanted to destroy the country: slipped in during Khotadi's midnight sun and blasted Nata with so much magic she just fell dead."
Pasiphae blinked. "But she was found in Eo."
Seth blinked back. "How do you know?"
"The article," Pasiphae said quickly. "It was in the article."
"I don't know, the details after her actual death become speculation rather than confirmed reports. The palace announced vague details and a period of mourning, but it became forgotten quickly. The witch could have taken the body."
"How could that be?" Pasiphae asked. "If a witch really had killed the faery heir, why didn't Morgana retaliate? I can hardly believe that an Unseelie would let the witches off that easily."
"The nobles thought so as well," Seth agreed. "They thought the queen would seek justice for their princess, but Morgana shut down the subject every time it was brought up."
"Did she even care?"
"Hard to say." Seth shrugged. "I heard—and I don't know how reliable this is—that the queen almost seemed satisfied. Like the death of her daughter had opened up some life-long revelation for her."
Pasiphae had no words left after that, and Seth quickly dozed off.
Pasiphae was left to stare at the ceiling again. Could the council members really have not known that the dead faery was Crown Princess Nata Sangallard of the Unseelie throne? Did Meira know? Surely someone had to have raised suspicion in the disposal of the body, particularly in seeing her wings, which would have had the same royal exuberance as those of Morgana's.
Pasiphae had been too traumatised and confused to take in much during the time, but she knew the incident had been brushed over quickly, with the story spreading that Pasiphae had been the one attacked, since she showed obvious signs of distress. The fact that they were both children only further confused what had happened.
It sounds like a forsaken riddle, Pasiphae thought bitterly. A witch and a faery are both found at the edge of the forests. One is alive without any memory, and the other, dead.
What could people even conclude?
The fae failed to mention that the "witch assassin" had only been fourteen years old. She was missing two weeks of memories. Could she really have planned a take-down of the Unseelie heir?
Pasiphae slept swimming in her void of memories that night.
***
"Witch. Witch, wake up."
Psyche was shining an electronic lantern into Pasiphae's face.
"What gives?" Pasiphae rasped, pushing herself up to her elbows. There was dried drool smeared to one cheek and her hair stuck to the other. "And what are you shining at me?"
Psyche moved the light beam into her own face. "My torch? Hurry up, the morning shifts start in half an hour." She bent over Pasiphae and gave Seth a nudge.
"What morning shifts?" Pasiphae rubbed her eyes. There was a murmuring outside their main door, activity already picking up. "Deaths, it can't be morning already."
Seth was twitching in his half-sleep state. Psyche gave him a harder shove, and with a start, he threw up his arms, shouting, "Mother, don't!"
He woke with a jerk of his entire body then, instantly alert.
Pasiphae's mouth opened and closed, and Psyche gave her a look as if not to mention it. Seth threw the blankets off.
"What time is it?" he asked roughly.
Psyche frowned. "The time when all the consorts on rotation are getting up to help the palace staff. I sincerely hope you didn't fail to mention the part where the witch has to be a kitchen hand."
Seth winced. "I failed to mention it."
Morning shift? Palace staff? Kitchen hand? Pasiphae alternated her blank stare from Psyche to Seth.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I thought I heard you say I had to be a kitchen hand."
"You do," Psyche replied, dragging her out from under the sheets. She had already prepared cosmetics on the table, and Pasiphae's eyes had barely fully opened before Psyche was shoving the disks back in.
"I can't just not go?" Pasiphae asked. "Since I'm not really a consort?"
By then, Seth had gotten up, putting his peacoat on. He stretched his neck as if there was a crick he couldn't get out. "We're not the only spies in this Court. You keep up your appearances, we keep up ours. Besides, what better place to collect information than from the humans who refuse to lie?"
Pasiphae pulled on her cloak, muttering under her breath of things not entirely nice.
Seth hardly seemed to hear her. "The humans are mostly like to know which of their fae are straying from their schedules," he said. "They're going to be mopey and they're going to be irritated from the abandonment. You can use that to your advantage, but don't push too hard."
"I got it," Pasiphae yawned. "It's really not that hard to do some talking."
She opened their door and, to her surprise, was greeted by the sight of a steady line of consorts moving towards one destination. There were far more at Court than she had expected. Surely, she would have no trouble blending in.
"Forgetting something?"
Pasiphae turned at Seth's voice. He was waving around the collar that every slow body passing their door wore.
She snatched the collar, prompting a lopsided grin from the faery holding it. Her hip checked against the open door, Pasiphae frowned harder just to make a point against Seth's cheeriness as she snapped on the overbearing stick of metal.
The smell assaulted her nostrils, pressing a cough from her throat, but she choked it down and shut the door after her firmly.
Pasiphae fell in line with the procession, eyes ahead with the blankest of smiles. There were so many collars and flowers surrounding her that the scent seemed to be taking the slightest effect. She forced herself to focus, to remember that she was a witch and witches were born to be stronger, but like the last time she put on the collar, the bitter tang brought forward the tickling of memories: the vaguest flashes that brought further hindrance rather than clarity.
With her nose tickling and the flashes of images burning in her eyes, Pasiphae thought she could almost recall what Nata Sangallard looked like.