“Oh, you have the same expression as your mother when she’s been fooled.” Sira bursts into a laugh, whether in genuine amusement or simple cruelty, I can’t decide. “You know, in the Above, Aurelia and I used to play these little games on each other all the time. She once tricked me into eating a delectable moonberry pie, but it tasted of mud. Then I covered the soles of her feet with thistlebind. She stuck to everything for a week.” Sira lets out another string of laughter.
Were my mother and Sira oncefriends? I couldn’t imagine playing those kinds of pranks on someone I cared about.
Sira’s laughter fades, and she taps her chin. “Aurelia always thought herself so clever. I got the best of her in the end though.”
My hands clench into fists beneath the table; she’s speaking of the bargain she used to trap my mother. Perhaps if I can get her to speak more of it, I’ll find a loophole. Fae bargains are all about their wording. “The Prince of Thorns told me your magic far exceeds even the queen’s.”
He never said that, but she’s vain enough to believe it. A smile spreads across her face. “Of course it does. It’s the reason your mother came to me, to learn a power only I understood.”
“To save my father’s life,” I say.
“To bind one’s life to another.” Sira stands, gaze faraway. “Everything in our world is woven together by life and spirit. You need to pull back the veil from your mind to see the threads.”
“Can the Prince of Thorns do this?” I ask. What I want to know is how she did it. The more I learn of her powers, the more we can undo her.
“Perhaps, but he is a child of the Below,” she says. “The fae of the Above have an easier time of spotting what would stay hidden. We can see the spirit of things as you see mist rise from a lake in the morn. But the light on land makes it harder to see.”
A part of me understands what she means. I’ve seen the souls of fae when I reached across the oceans to connect to the sirens and when I turned the Deep Guard to snowy owls. I saw the threads that make up Astrid when I tried to turn her back from hare to fae. But I’ve never tried to see the spirit of other living things in the Vale: the trees, the flowers, the grass. Or Castletree itself.
I itch to try it, but with Caspian’s bargain holding my magic at bay, it’s nothing but a prickling beneath my skin.
“We’ll see how Castletree holds up once we take the surface,” Sira continues. “Perhaps if you keep being so good, we’ll let it stand. It’ll need redecorating, of course, and the Queen’s Tower needs to go. The only magic left in the Vale will be mine and my son’s.”
My stomach twists, and I try to control my breathing. The thought of Sira touching Castletree sickens me. I feel vulnerable without the comfort of my magic simmering below my skin.
Sira, still smiling, waves her goblet. “This is empty.”
The other goblins have returned to the kitchen, so Heidigog dutifully steps forward and grabs the bottle of inky nectar. The first few drops land in the goblet, the consistency more like oil than wine. Then Heidigog’s hand slips. The bottle tips too far, and nectar splashes over Sira’s sleeve.
For a moment, silence. My pulse pounds.
Sira sets down her goblet with eerie grace. Then she flicks her fingers. Shadows slither from beneath her chair like living smoke, curling toward Heidigog.
The goblin whimpers, stumbling back. “I–I’m sorry, Your Majesty. Please, I?—”
Sira barely looks at her. “You are a disgusting disgrace.”
Her shadows strike.
Heidigog shrieks as the darkness wraps around her wrists and ankles, lifting her off the ground. The tendrils squeeze, twisting and tightening as if testing how much she can take before her bones snap.
No, Heidi!I clench my fists under the table, nails digging into my palms. My breath comes fast, shallow. I’m supposed to be Caspian’s thrall. Powerless.
If I give myself away, I’ll never get the rose back from Caspian. This is about so much more than just one person’s pain.
If I move, if I so much as flinch wrong?—
She will know I’ve been lying. Know I’m not just another broken thing in Caspian’s collection.
Heidigog lets out a thin, choked cry. The shadows wind higher, curling around her throat.
Something inside me snaps.
I lunge from my seat, throwing myself between Sira and the goblin, arms outstretched. “Stop!”
Sira’s eyes flash, sharp as cut obsidian. “Youwould question my judgment? Why?”
Heidigog falls to the ground, trembling.
