Page 9 of Autumn Queens & Shadows

“Clown,” I whispered under my breath.

“Pretty bird,” he murmured back, and then faded away.

Chapter three

Violet Daisies

Malik

Every shadow inside Tenebrose had stopped and was currently standing very still as I felt for hers. Thora had remained in one place for the past hour, by her window. Her silhouette casting the most perfect shadow onto the dark night outside. I could have forgotten everything else, but I’d never be able to forget that. How many days and nights had I spent chasing that same shadow. Sometimes without her even knowing.

She was angry with me. And she had all the right. How would I tell she could be angry at me as much as she wanted, but she also had to forgive me for whatever reason she was angry at me. I couldn't understand how she was angry at me for leaving. How can anyone be angry about losing dead weight? On the contrary, she should have been the happiest I’d forced myself to leave, that she could finally be rid of what was holding her down. I just wished the fact that she was this angry about it didn’t make me grin to myself like a lunatic, wondering if she had missed me, if she had thought about me to the point of madness like I had.

I sighed, trying to roll on my bed and failing because of the two who had squeezed me between them. “Is this necessary?” I asked.

Sam shifted to look at me, and so did his sister on the other side of my bed. “It is a sleepover.”

“I never agreed to it.”

Rain scooted closer, yawning, her big bright grey eyes boring into me all innocence, glistening and beady. If she had not blinked when I met her earlier, I would have thought she was not real. “Can we not? I like sleepovers.”

I sighed again. “Anything for you, baby doll.”

It went all silent for a while, but both had not stopped staring at me.

“What now?” I asked, looking between both of them.

“Aunt Thora really doesn’t like you, do you know that?” Sam whispered, and Rain nodded, yawning again and pulling close to her chest the creepiest three limbed doll with three strands of yarn for hair and only one button for an eye. The second she was asleep, it was going outside in a burning pile. Right after a Crafter exorcised it.

“Your aunt and I are friends,” I said, covering Rain and her doll with a blanket so the button eye was not staring directly at me.

“Were,” Sam said. “You used the incorrect tense.”

For the uncountable time tonight, I sighed once again. “Don’t read people. It’s rude.”

“It’s not. No one knows when I do it. That’s the polite thing to do.”

Rain threw a small arm around my neck, suddenly overtaken with sleep. Gods, how could a small child snore this loudly.

“She didn’t want to marry Erik,” Sam said. “I liked Erik. He rarely lied. He didn’t hide how he felt. And he liked my aunt. He liked her a lot.”

“He did?” I asked, trying not to sound too detached.

“Does it matter?” he asked, laying on his back and staring at the ceiling with a look eerily similar to my brother’s—unfeeling and cold. The curse of the Castemont’s had not skipped him either though I’d really prayed it had. “He’s dead now.”

“Sam—”

“I know what death is, what it means. And ma already spoke to me about it, she told me what it should mean to me, too. You don’t have to say anything.”

Noise blared outside of the castle walls, and I jerked upright.

“Go,” Sam said, lifting a cloud of black around the room. “Rain and I are safe. I know how to keep us safe.”

He suddenly resembled another Castemont boy I knew—a boy who had told me that same sentence many times before when I’d been afraid.

Once I made sure to have shadows circling their room, I ran out, searching down the corridors filled with guards all rushing outside. Two massive shadows fell over the castle grounds poorly lit by bland moonlight and some odd torches on the far walls. The frost dragons pierced through the angry skies heading for the city and dozens of wolves prowled towards the castle gates at her command, so she couldn’t be far.

“What happened?” I asked a guard.