Lio slowly climbed the stairs.
‘You are not a fool,’ said Theodora. ‘You knew straight away that my empire was a sham. Before you even found the debt letter, you knew. You are, and have always been, clever.’
‘Is that a compliment?’ asked Lio. He sat on the top step.
‘Don’t get used to it, Robert. Dorothy will live, so I am feeling more sentimental than usual.’
Lio laughed. He blew his nose and then he said, a little sadly, ‘You know, we could have been friends back in Caelin Forest.’
‘I despised you,’ said Theodora.
‘And I, you,’ said Lio. ‘Opal loved you more than me, and I knew it.’
‘Opal never loved anyone,’ said Theodora.
‘Maybe.’ Lio roughly wiped his eyes and Theodora climbed up the stairs and sat beside him. She handed him a fresh handkerchief out of her pocket and he took it.
‘Part of the reason I didn’t throw Opal out was because of you,’ said Theodora. ‘Every day, Opal became more bitter and vindictive. Dorothy had to excavate her anger from some buried part of herself to evenfindher human magic, but Opal? She is fury, made manifest. She felt the world owed her; felt that she deserved to dole out her cruelty to whomever she wanted. If I wasn’t her plaything, I think she would have found you, Lio. I think you would have been the one with a girl in the attic.’
Cate and Moira were camped on the roof of Hemmington’s department store. This was the daemon’s domain. They had cast spell after spell; they had even set their own wards, but still Opal had hidden away in the fortress of polished glass and gilt railings. Cate’s daughter was a creature of the forest. She had grown up barefoot among the fallen twigs and toadstools. What had this city done to her?
The witch sat on the edge of the building, staring out at Alliaster’s horrible smoke, the city’s spires like daggers’ edges ready to spear any young and innocent body that touched them. She wove her threads all the while, knotting them, untying them, retying them, the outcome changing only ever in fibrous differences. She Saw the contract, the elevator, and then was barrelled over with that old vision once more. The knife wet with blood. Her daughter’s slain body . . . How her threads tortured her with that false prophecy. Cate set down the scarlet yarn.
Then, Cate sensed for the second time that a young woman was scrying her.
‘What do you want?’ asked Cate, and Moira realised quickly that Cate was not speaking to her.
‘For Opal to get help,’ said Theodora through the scrying. ‘She needs to be saved from him.’
‘You cannot manipulate me again,’ said Cate, closing her eyes.
‘Opal sought out Salamander of her own accord,’ said Theodora. ‘Cate, perhaps you can still save her from all of this.’
‘And how would that assist you?’ asked Cate, staring down over the patrons cascading in and out of the department store. ‘Opal’s words were correct in that horrible place you built to cage her. You lie as easily as you breathe.’
‘Please,’ said Theodora, ‘hear what I am saying.’
‘No,’ said Cate, ‘I trust my daughter, and she hates you.’
‘What do your threads tell you?’ pleaded Theodora. ‘That Opal will be safe? That she will be happy once Salamander captures me and takes my shop? That you can break into Hemmington’s and simply whisk her back to the forest and she will love you again? All she wants is to be special, Cate, and Salamander’s third-in-charge is powerful. Casimir will not let Opal overthrow him easily.’
‘I have seen him,’ said Cate. ‘The one with the dark eyes and the tattoos.’
Catherine Weyer’s Sight had always been foggy when it came to Opal, but she closed her eyes now and pictured this Casimir, holding a thin stack of paper. Opal’s contract.
‘I want to be free from this,’ said Theodora’s voice on the wind. ‘Your daughter is violent and vengeful, just as you were once, and she is on a knife’s edge of making the same kind of mistake that started all of this.’
‘Opal would never do what I did,’ said Cate darkly.
‘She could,’ came Theodora’s voice.
Cate shook her head.
‘I have nothing more to say to you.’
‘Cate,’ said Theodora quickly. ‘My heart is broken for Agytha. I did not mean to hurt her. I am so incredibly sorry for all of it, but, please—’
‘I do not care,’ said Cate. She threw out a hand and the connection was lost, and somewhere in the house on the corner of Wren Court and Ethel Avenue, a scrying glass broke all over Theodora’s bedroom floor.
