The place was spectacular. As with so much of Dhuinne, it, too, was choked with living things, the invading plants almost appearing to move as they battled and strained to grow longer, lusher, more colorful than their neighbors. The room was delineated clearly into three zones. The far end was raised on a platform a couple of feet above the area inside the double doors. But the raised area was also divided down the middle, separating the left and right sides of the dais. Each side held a long wooden seating area like a judge’s bench.
An open area lay in front of the split dais. The guards hauled me toward it, passing pew-like seats on either side of the aisle we were traversing. The seats were mostly full from what I could see through all the leaves. The pews held a mix of people, while the raised sections at the front appeared segregated by sex—females on the right and males on the left.
My shoes fell soundlessly on more of the weird Fae moss—the blue-green of the natural carpet broken here and there by tiny white flowers poking through. I’d heard the low murmur of people talking amongst themselves when the doors first opened to admit my guards, but the chamber became very quiet the moment the Fae inside noticed my arrival.
The guards dumped me in the empty area at the base of the platform, and without their support, my knees crumpled immediately. At least the moss made for a soft landing, though I felt strangely bad about having crushed some of the little white flowers.
“The prisoner, as requested, Honored Ones,” said the guard on my left, as both bowed low.
One of the male Fae on the raised platform stood, looking down his nose at me. My heart stuttered and sped up as I recognized Caspian, dressed now in fine robes rather than the utilitarian clothing I’d grown used to seeing over the past couple of days.
“Why is the creature not restrained?” he demanded, contempt dripping from his words.
The female Fae in the centermost seat on that side of the dais spoke in a dry voice. “Perhaps because she is clearly too weakened to do anything, including stand up.”
I wasn’t sure if the undercurrent of amusement beneath the words irritated me or relieved me, but at least she hadn’t referred to me as an ‘it.’ I focused on her as best I could, hoping that the distraction would stop me from panicking over Caspian’s presence. She was as beautiful as Albigard and Caspian were handsome, with pale skin and threads of golden chain shaping her fiery red hair into an artful tumble of curls.
My nerves were just about at their breaking point after the last couple of days, but oddly, I didn’t seem to have the same instinctive aversion to the female Fae gathered on the right side of the platform as I did to the males I’d met.
A distant buzzing noise was overtaking my hearing again as my brief burst of adrenaline faded, rendering the conversation between Caspian and the woman a meaningless jumble of sounds. I craned around, trying to get a better read on the people seated in the lower part of the room.
The audience, I thought bitterly, picturing a bunch of seventeenth century peasants gathering to watch the casual entertainment of a witch trial. They weren’t all peasants, though—my eyes fell on Albigard sitting on one of the benches in the front row. His gaze flicked over me as though I was only of the barest interest to him.
I was way too far gone to try and figure out if there was any danger in letting the people here see us interacting, or if he just didn’t give a shit now that he’d delivered me into the Court’s hands. I stared at him fixedly for the space of several heartbeats, but his face was a smooth mask, mirror-like in its cool perfection.
I looked away when movement from the front pew on the other side of the aisle caught in my peripheral vision—a small, dark form. Distant surprise prickled at me as I recognized—of all things—the cat from the cottage where Dad was being kept. Or, at the very least, a nearly identical cat—black with a diamond-shaped patch of white on its chest, and slanted green eyes.
Of course, the presence of a cat in a courtroom might just be proof that I was finally losing it. Not really a stretch at this point, I supposed. Christ. Could this just be over soon, please?
Light flared behind me. I turned to face the dais again with a choked gasp of fear, as the glow of magic lit one of the red-haired woman’s hands. She flicked it toward me carelessly, but I was too weak to even attempt to scuttle out of its way like some pathetic insect.
The ball of light sank into my chest before I could do more than draw breath. The familiar itchiness crawled across me, but no pain followed. Instead, energy suffused my limbs. I swallowed, finally able to work up a bit of saliva—my throat clicking audibly as the buzzing, ringing noise in my ears subsided.
“—that better, demonkin?” the woman asked, raising a swept eyebrow at me.
“W-what did you do?” I rasped, climbing unsteadily to my feet.
The magic conveyed the same sense of artificial wellbeing that you sometimes got from heavy-duty painkillers—not the cheap over-the-counter stuff. The sense of your body being on borrowed time, feeling all right but not really all right.
“Nothing of import,” said the woman. “This would be a sad excuse for a Court if the subject were unable to speak and answer questions.”
“Thank you,” I said cautiously. “I think.”
Caspian narrowed his eyes. “I protest this waste of resources on a creature that should not exist
