thirteen years, and you keep choosing to face them, to fight them, to
walk back into their homes. I know bravery is real because I see you
choose it every day.
I’m afraid I will be one more person who fails you.I knowI think
you’re afraid of that too.Please don’t runI can’t ask you to choose
me this usto stay, but I want to be with you more than I fear losing
you. If you want me to chase you, I will chase you. If you want me to
find you, I will find you. If you’ll have me, I will choose you every time.
Maybe I’ve finally learned to be brave.
The absolutebastard. I’m—I’m going to—I’m going to save him, just so I can strangle him for making me cry again. I might kiss him first. ButthenI’m going to strangle him.
He must have been in the middle of tracing this onto the mirror when he fell asleep. He wasn’t giving up on me. And now . . .
How can he ask me to stay, when I’m so close to losing him?
The veranda door rattles. A black cat is pawing at the glass. I let Ragne in.
“What has happened?” she yowls, tail bushed out as she leaps up onto the desk. “Thekoboldis sick, and I smellnachtmären, and—what is wrong with the Emeric? Why is everything wrong?”
“Adalbrecht got him.” I scrub my face on a sleeve, wincing as the linen catches on jewels bristling over my forearm. “He knows everything. There’s amahrin Emeric’s ear, and if we don’t do as the margrave says, he’ll die.”
Ragne’s ears flatten to her skull. Then she bumps my elbow with her head. “What can we do?”
I take another breath, tilting on a knife’s edge.
If I don’t use each of usexactlyright, this lock will break.
I’ve failed as a thief. I need to do this as a liar.
I shove the message-mirror at Ragne. “We can’t do anything alone. Can you get Gisele and Joniza? Bring them up through the servant corridors. You can take them behind the waterfall as a bear.”
Ragne turns to an enormous black owl, the silver mirror-case flashing in her talons as she flies back out the open door. As soon as she’s gone, I shut it and begin pacing, mumbling to myself, working through the snags of the lie I am about to spin.
I talk through the loops and threads and knots as the fire burns down to eerie blue coals; I take a spill-stick from the copper urn on the hearth and light enough candles to see by, but even those flames are blue. I don’t know what Adalbrecht did to Poldi. I don’t know if a bowl of honey and grits will save him.
Every so often Emeric’s hand twitches, or his lips part, or he shifts in the chair, and I hold my breath. Once, he mumbles something that sounds like my name. But he doesn’t wake up.
I don’t know what I’ll do if he won’t wake up.
By the time Gisele and Joniza arrive, dawn is only a few hours away. Ragne arrives after them, bundled into her dressing gown. The temperature in the castle is plummeting; it’s a shallow heat rolling off the blue flames, and it does not last.
Gisele runs over to Emeric and shakes his shoulder, pale. “Is it true?” she asks. “Ragne said there’s amahrin—in—”
“If we don’t do what Adalbrecht wants, it’ll grow until it kills Emeric.” My voice is shaking. “He used thenachtmahrto see into Emeric’s mind. He knows the entire plan, so we need a new one.”
Joniza is still standing in the doorway, strung tight as a bow. “Without him, there is no plan.”
“No, we can—we can pull this off still.” I give her and Gisele both a strained look. “We don’t need the Godly Court. Barthl said representatives from the Imperial Court will be at the gala, so we can fool Adalbrecht into revealing himself there. He has Klemens’s tattoo on his back and a horseshoe on his heart, we can prove everything if we make him show those. Gisele, you can pose as my maid, and I’ll be you, and Barthl will get the skull. We can—”
“It won’t work,” Gisele says slowly. “It’s not enough.”
