Scheit. No idea what she’s asking about. I give a slow, imperious blink. “I shouldn’t say.”
Sieglinde von Folkenstein delicately brushes some crumbs from her mouth. “Please,Prinzessin, my husband might let me get a topaz one while we’re in Minkja. Can’t you at least tell us the jeweler?”
Oh. The ruby teardrop. My lips thin in a warning smile. “I am sworn to secrecy.”
“Seriously. How does it even stay on?” Irmgard leans forward and wraps a hand around my collarbone. There’s a thorn-sharp glint in her eye.
Sieglinde also scoots closer. So do the other women, crowding in, cut-glass gleams in every gaze, every gaze locked on the ruby. “Tell us,” one urges. “Tell us, Gisele. It’s not fair you have the only one.”
“It’s not fair,” Irmgard echoes, that spidery rage punching one tiny, bristling leg through the surface.
There’s a faint manic haze, like—like when Yannec tried to cut the ruby from my face. It’s Eiswald’s curse spilling blood on the roots of their greed, forcing it into full, savage bloom. This is the price of their want: to be devoured.
Irmgard’s finger suddenly jabs in my face. “Can I touch it?” She doesn’t wait for an answer, pushing at the teardrop until it aches against my cheekbone, and I am almost thirteen again, and she is laughing as I step on the nail she hid in my shoe—
“Oops,” I say flatly, and dump my goblet ofglohweindown the front of her gold satin dress.
She flies back with a little shriek. The haze breaks.
“Oh, Irmgard,” I coo, “you’ve had anaccident.”
Irmgard stares at me, breathing hard, fury scuttling behind her eyes, until—she lifts her voice. “Markgraf, ourdearGisele isn’t feeling well.”
The littlesnitch. A large hand wraps around my upper arm.
“My sweet bride,” Adalbrecht says sternly, “I fear you are still ill. Let’s get you back to your sickbed, hmm?”
He practically drags me from the settee before I can say another word.
“I’ll return shortly!” he calls over his shoulder, voice merry and hard. “Just tending to my poor ailing snowdrop.”
But when we reach the vestibule, he doesn’t head for the stairs to the riverfront wing.
Instead, he keeps an iron grip on my arm and steers us up the opposite set of stairs, toward his chambers.
I find myself thinking about my boot knife again, but for a very different reason now.
“I will give you a tonic to settle your nerves,” Adalbrecht says. “Since you find yourself so agitated by my guests.”
Oh,that’snot sinister at all.
But I can get out of this myself. Or at least, I can . . . manage it. He still needs a bride, after all, so whatever he’s giving me won’t be lethal. The worst part will be being alone with him, and even that—well, the pearls protect me. He’s brave enough cornering a servant girl alone in
Castle Falbirg; there are consequences if he harms Gisele.
I can handle this myself.
Adalbrecht’s guards shout a salute from the top of the stairs. He lifts a fist in what looks like a return salute—but then I hear a tiny, brittlecrunch.
I blink, convinced I imagined it. Then, as we pass the guards, two thuds echo down the hall. When I sneak a look back, they’ve both collapsed to the ground, eyes shuttered.
Before I can process that, Adalbrecht pushes open a door I’ve never bothered with and pulls me into his study.
I don’t know what I expected: Skulls on pikes? Bubbling cauldrons? Walls oozing with pitch? But really it’s quite . . . boring. Tall, arching windows with thick blue velvet curtains, Kunigunde’s distant stony crown in the Salzplatt visible through the lattice of diamond-shaped panes. Walls hung with stuffed animal heads and tapestries. Bookcases, maps, stuffed chairs by a respectable fireplace. Sunset drapes the room in red-hot light, like everything it touches is iron and this room is the forge.
Adalbrecht lets go of me and heads toward a credenza near the window, letting something drop from his fist onto the desk. I squint. I think I see fragments of bone, a tiny rodent jaw—
“This will put your mind at ease.” Adalbrecht is standing over a surprisingly robust collection of bottles on the credenza. Some are clearly mead and schnapps, others tinctures stuffed with sprigs of laurel, thyme, borage in liquids of different shades. He pulls out a bottle no taller than the length of my hand, something flickering like flame in the clear liquid.
