Page 88 of A Divided Duty

“It started almost as soon as they threw me in here,” she said, voice flat. “They come back every few hours and drag me around the courtyard, and when they put me back, it’s worse.”

“They who?”

“The Riders,” she said. Her head drooped, and she looked down at her knees as she said, “My mother.”

“Your—what?” That couldn’t be right. Luna had been hurt, so badly hurt that she would have died if I hadn’t interceded. She couldn’t possibly be involved with this.

Or could she. Acacia was her Firstborn: if she hadn’t been anticipating how badly the Riders would hurt her mother, she could have assumed Acacia would be able to heal her, somehow. Maybe by transforming her into something. Maybe a tree. Spending a few weeks gowned in bark probably wouldn’t bother her as much as it would bother a lot of us, and when she woke up, Raysel would be properly adjusted to her new life here in her grandfather’s lands.

It was a chilling thought. Luna had been such a loving mother, once. But even then, she’d been willing to go against what Raysel wanted in order to achieve what she wanted Raysel to be: she’d married her traumatized, not yet fully adult by fae standards daughter off to Connor to secure a political alliance, and she’d never asked Raysel how she felt about it. I’d never even gotten the impression that she cared.

That was when she’d still been wearing a Kitsune skin, when she’d been mammalian enough to experience emotions the way her husband and daughter did. What was it like for her now, when she was purely vegetable? I couldn’t dismiss the possibility that Luna had been an active participant in her own assault.

Drawing my shell knife from its sheath, I blew out my candle and tucked it into the pocket of my jacket before I ran the edge of the knife across my thumb, pressing down to cut deep enough that the wound would still be open by the time I raised it to my mouth. Blood exploded over my tongue, hot and copper-bright with fresh-cut grass taste of my magic.

I swallowed, shunting the magic in the direction that would let me see the spell affecting Raysel. Nothing happened. I cut my thumb again, pushing harder to see what I was dealing with. And this time, the web obligingly appeared.

It was granite-gray and blotched with green-and-white patches, like lichen clinging to stone. It wasn’t just wrapped around Raysel: it was wrapped through her, penetrating the surface to snake beneath her skin and deep into her core. That explained how the transformation could be profound enough to impact the magical signature of the transformed. Most spells, even transformation spells, were like a Selkie’s coat of sealskin: they rested atop the person they affected, but the person was essentially the same beneath them. How that could work when someone was changed into a squirrel or a songbird—or even a cat—I didn’t know. Faerie isn’t big on the idea of conservation of mass.

Here, though, the spell was worked through Raysel’s flesh, like some sort of elaborate fishhook piercing. By the time it was finished, it would be almost impossible to tell where she stopped and the spell began. I stepped forward, holding the image of the gray web wrapping itself around her firmly in my mind as I offered her my hands.

“Come on, Raysel,” I said softly. “Let me take you home. Everyone’s waiting for you. I almost had to tranq-dart Chelsea to stop her from trying to follow me.”

“I can’t let her see me like this,” she objected. “You can’t let her see me like this. Please, Toby. I can’t.”

“Just come with me,” I said, still holding out my hands. “Just trust me. Don’t you trust me by now?”

Raysel looked at me with wide, complicated eyes, their new colors making them difficult for me to read. Then, slowly, she unwrapped her arms from around her legs, moving like it pained her. And maybe it did, if the bark had covered part of her back, stiffening her into something more rigid than she normally was.

Then she stood, and I saw her hands. One of them was entirely wooden, withered and thin, while the other looked more like something you’d find on a living young woman. She noticed me looking and flexed her fingers, which moved slowly, but did move. She still had at least that much control.

“See?” she asked, bitterly. “You shouldn’t be wasting your time with me. It’s too late.”

“It’s not too late,” I said. “The spell is almost all the way through you, but I can still see patches of just-Raysel. I think I can remove it, but we need to start now.” My pretty dreams of saving the remaining Riders and children were just that: dreams. The more I studied the spell wound through Raysel, the more I thought that unmaking their transformations might be impossible by now, the threshold for unmaking them long since passed. I might be able to save the trees. Maybe.

Raysel stepped toward me, holding out her hands. She winced when I took them, clearly waiting for me to recoil from the feeling of wood against skin. I laced my fingers through hers, holding firm.

“This may hurt a little,” I said, and bit the inside of my cheek.

Now that I knew where to look for the strands of the spell wrapped around and through her, they were easy to find, bursting into gray-green light behind my eyelids. Cautiously, I reached for the largest thread that I could see, a piece that looked almost like yarn, as big around as one of my fingers and tangled around one of her hip bones. I caught it with my mental fingers and pulled.

Raysel screamed, trying to yank her hands away. I clamped down, holding them tight.

“Sorry,” I said. “Let me try something different. Just hold on.”

I bit my cheek again, this time chewing until I had a mouthful of blood before I swallowed. The lines got brighter and more solid, until it felt like I would be able to see them even if I opened my eyes. I kept them closed, reaching out with my mental hands, and when I touched the largest thread, I began following it back to its beginning—or its end, depending on how I wanted to look at things.

Spells have to be tethered in something. Most transformation spells are tethered in the person they’re meant to change. This spell was ongoing, slow, and tied to the Children’s Hall. It had to have a root.

Following the thread gradually took me away from Raysel, until it sank into a nearby wall, connecting back to whatever terrible core of power was feeding this ongoing web of transformative energy. I reached for the point where the thread touched the wall, and plucked it loose, giving me one end to do with as I liked.

Raysel flinched like I’d just poked her with a pin. “Toby?” she asked, sounding unsure. “What did you do?”

“Nothing, yet,” I said. “Give me a moment.”

I bit my cheek again, hard enough that I flinched, and began carefully unraveling the thread from where it was wrapped around her. Every other spell I’d undone had been cast quickly, even Titania’s, and had been best broken with brute force, snapping the strands until the whole thing collapsed. This was different. It was slow and deliberate, more like a curse than a spell, and sunk too deep into Raysel for me to rip it away in the customary manner. But as I unwound the main thread, the smaller ones snapped off, fluttering uselessly as they protruded from Raysel’s body. I could come back for those, I knew, and so I just kept detangling.

I don’t know how long it took, but eventually, I pulled the last few inches of that primary strand out of Raysel’s body. It began to dissolve as soon as it was separated from both the magic that made it and the magic it had been stealing from Raysel, and I threw it aside, turning my attention to the smaller threads.