That does the trick. We divvy up blankets and blow out candles, and soon the dark fills with the soft snores I remember from Castle Falbirg. I watch the red embers in the fireplace, waiting for sleep to claim me, too, but for some reason it doesn’t come.
I don’t know if it’s the chill still lingering in the jewels or the other angle of familiarity to this, with Gisele in the feather bed and me by the hearth. Perhaps it’s the ache I can’t quite articulate, the one that knots in my belly every time Gisele or Ragne teases me about Emeric.
I don’t know how to explain it to them, that it just reminds me of what I’m not, what I will never have. That just because he and I are playing outside the rules of the trinity of want . . . doesn’t mean he wants a girl like me.
That girls like me, neither lovely of face nor sweet of temper, are not courted. They are simply used to pass the time.
I want him to chase me, because it means I’m more than that. It means for once in my life, I am seen.
I realize, suddenly, what is keeping me awake. It is what links all those things: fear.
It’s been over a year since I stole the pearls, since I threw myself into this grand lie, since I decided to set off on my own. It’s been almost four years since I paid the price for loyalty. Thirteen years since I watched my mother’s lantern vanish into the night.
And if you saw me now, sleeping by a fireplace, giving up everything for Gisele, letting new people into my heart, daring even an ember of hope . . . Well.
Only a fool would look at me now and think I had learned anything,anythingat all.
`
Most of Thursday goes by in a blur. Gisele and I trade duties: She does the stiff, awkward meals with her parents and Adalbrecht, I handle tea parties with the locals who’ve been buttering me up all year. She handles the final meetings with the decorators, I handle the final dress fitting.
We probably should have swapped those; I have to take care to keep the outbreaks on my hands and shins hidden. Worse is the sight of myself in brilliant Reigenbach blue, the swaths of brocade and ermine worthy of a queen. Worst of all is the weight of the Reigenbach family bridal crown, a massive work of gold, diamonds, and sapphires, which makes my head hurt after wearing it for just five minutes. All I can hope is that neither Gisele nor I have to put it back on.
At least her popularity is still climbing. The local nobility was already fawning over her as a proxy for the margrave; now aristocracy from across the empire are begging her to tell them, again, how she slew the wolf. The only who’s more annoyed than Adalbrecht is Irmgard von Hirsching.
A mirror-message calls us back to Fortune’s cathedral that evening, earlier than we’d planned. Joniza, Barthl, and Emeric are waiting for us in the clergy dormitory library, a close little room that’s mostly worn armchairs and overflowing bookshelves arranged around a fireplace. A square table has been dragged from the corner it clearly belongs in, charcoal sticks and papers spilling over its surface from a leather satchel. Emeric’s standing over it, scribbling furiously on a large sheet, a razor edge to his focus. The stiff lines of his shoulders say something grim has dropped into our laps.
“What’s wrong?” I sidestep into the room and drop my own satchel and cloak into an armchair that lets out a wheeze of dust and beeswax.
Emeric looks up at me, face taut. “You were right about Hubert. The margrave wanted something only he had. When the outpost was preparing his body for final rites, the priests found . . .” His voice hitches. “The tattoo was cut off his back.”
My stomach turns. “The one from the second initiation?”
Emeric nods. “The mark that bound Hubert to the Low Gods’ power. But not the one that bound him to their rules.”
“What can Adalbrecht do with that?” Gisele sounds ill.
“A lot, I suspect,” Emeric says tightly. “None of it good.”
“That must be how he’s delivering the free states,” Joniza says, tucked under a blanket in an armchair by the fireplace. “I bet he’ll do something to keep the Low Gods out of the picture. Maybe, since the mark binds him to their power, he can bindthemright back.”
Ragne climbs onto an armchair herself, this time perching on the sturdy back. I’m pretty sure she knows how chairs work by now and is just choosing to ignore it. “If he has bound himself to anything, then he must wear a mark of some kind on his body. Especially if he wants to use the powers of the Low Gods.”
I edge around the table to look at what Emeric’s writing. It’s different angles of the case, a series of lists, and the evidence we have. “You’re going to summon the court, then?”
He gives a thin-lipped nod. “With Hubert’s binding mark in the mix, it’s safe to say what he’s planning to do with it won’t be subtle. That means he has to do it after the wedding, so at least his right to the Blessed Imperial Throne can’t be challenged. If we call the court before Sunday, we beat him.”
This is it. This is how we take down the wolf.
But I can see Emeric’s hands are shaking.
I place one of mine on the paper. “Walk me through it.”
Emeric takes a deep breath and stands up straight, scanning his chart. “We can prove he’s bound himself tonachtmärenwith the skull from his study and, as Ragne said, whatever mark he’s bearing. Wemaybe able to audit the skull’s history of spellwork, but if we can’t, Ragne, myself, Gisele, and Vanja can still testify to themahrattacks. Even if we can’t prove he ordered them, there’s a clear pattern of targeting us when it benefits him. And his possession of Klemens’s tattoo will implicate him in that murder. We’ll establish motive with the letters from von Hirsching and the marital adrogation loophole. The letters, in context of everything else, also give us an implicit admis
sion of guilt.”
“Will that be enough?” Gisele reaches for Ragne’s hand.
