“Follow me!” Piffle-Mouse said, scurrying back down the side of the chair.
I rose and stretched, walking casually to her, placing a kiss on her head and murmuring something about tea and chocolate. She gave me a quick smile and nodded, returning to the book immediately.
My heart thundered in my chest. It wasn’t like Piffle to shy away from announcing himself to her. He loved her too in his way, their friendship one I admired.
I closed the library doors behind me to find the little Changlingfae ready to burst into tears. “It’s all my fault!” he cried. “I should never have sent the letter! I should not have done it!”
I sat on the bench along the wall, careful in my next words. “What letter did you send?”
He began to pace back and forth across our new red carpeting. “One the Mistress meant for the fire. She’d been so wrought with it, you see, and tossed it carelessly. But it missed the flames and I couldn’t help but pick it up and by then I was reading her words and, OH!” He buried his face in his hands, sobbing uncontrollably.
“Piff,” I soothed, “if you sent one of Reshina’s letters to whom I think you did, why are you telling me now?”
“Because she’s here!” he squealed, eyeing the library doors when he realized how loud he’d been. “She’s right outside the gates to Heartstone! She’s begging to see the Mistress! It’s all wrong! All gone wrong!”
I stood on solid feet, taking his shoulders into my hands. “Listen to me.Whois at the gates, Piff?”
He stuttered on his next breath with guilt across his brows. “It is Seraphine DuPont, sire. The mistress’s daughter-in-law and Prince Korven’s wife!”
HUNT.KILL.
“No. None of that.”
BLOOD. HUNGER.
“You don’t need those things anymore.”
ALWAYS NEED. BRINGER?
“She is below. Safe. But this is important, Beast. You must try to let me speak through you again.”
I peered through the eyes of the Beast, finding the spot of red at the black gates. Seraphine’s blood raced through her veins despite the bitter cold.
“Where is she!” her voice called, echoing across our lands as the Beast approached. The unfamiliarity struck somewhere deep inside. I’d hardly heard her voice when we’d met over a decade before. “I need to speak with the Ravenfae Goddess Reshina! Or Arthur! Get Arthur! Please! He’ll know who I am,please, if you have any sense of what I’m saying…to…you…”
Her words trailed as the Beast stood fully before her. She took a step back, far enough from the fence that he wouldn’t be able to reach her through the bars. Even through the Beast’s muted color in his vision, I could see that she was just as beautiful asthe day I’d intended to save her all those years ago. Her now pointed ears told me she’d somehow become fae. Another story for another time, perhaps.
I urged my voice through the Beast. “SPEAK.”
Her chest rose and fell rapidly in her cloak, the hem soiled in inches of mud. “I must speak with Reshina. It is imperative that I do so. Now.”
“WHY.” I’d meant it as a question, but the tone did not deliver.
Seraphine wrapped her arms around her chest, her face crestfallen. “She must know the condition of her daughter, Morella. We,”—her eyes darted across the snow behind me, flickering over the walls of the gray stone castle—“need her help.”
She bolted to the gate, wrapping her fingers around the frozen posts. “Please! Her life is in danger! We’ve tried everything! We’ve been searching for Reshina forweeks. Her daughter needs her, please, please let her go!”
“CANNOT.”
Seraphine’s face flared in rage as she rattled the bars. “Then bring her to me! Or allow me passage to that castle and I will speak to her!” In an uncharacteristic fit, she banged on the bars of the gate, kicking at the metal until it clanged. “If you do not allow me through, I will find a way through myself!”
In a flash of skirts, she turned, running along the edge of the fence. “Reshina!” she screamed. “Reshina!”
“Let her through,” I urged.
BLOOD. SWEET. NEW.
“If you let her through, I will speak to Reshina about letting you bite her again.”
