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Unfocused, my Sight catches a streak of images, blurry as a bird in flight. The sense in my mind settles, letting me pick out the threads bound to her soul. One is trembling with a need to be seen. It reaches for me as I reach for it.
The memory flares to life, vivid and frayed as if painted in terror:
A lady’s bedroom and a storm raging through the open veranda. The furniture is askew and soaked. The style of the room is unlike any in Auveny: turquoise-tiled floors, linens dyed with the rich hues of summer blooms, a curving, generous shape to the furnishings.
It reeks of rot.
Two women struggling. The taller one wields a glowing orbed scepter, her callous smile brought into relief every time she swings it.
She moves with unnatural grace. Her face is wrongfully young, as if the years have been removed from it.
A witch.
She forces the other woman to her knees.
The other woman lifts her head. Raya, hair and blood sticky on her face, nearly unrecognizable. “Help,” she mouths, voice weak.
The witch drags Raya across the tile floor. Raya claws and kicks and screams, but she’s pinned down by that scepter, crackling with golden energy. It’s not just a scepter: the orb is a cage, squeaking with fairies.
With her free hand, the witch brandishes a dagger from the inside of her cloak—
And plunges it into Raya’s chest.
My hands jerk away.
“You died,” I choke, staring at the Raya underneath me, alive and whole.
It’s strange that those memories had such a distant vantage point. Usually, threads are through a person’s eyes. Some can be more removed, but Raya’s threads almost seem like they’re from the perspective of a spectator.
Every angle of Raya’s face ripples with tiny differences that unsettle my mind, and I can’t really remember what she looks like. I focus on her gaze; glamours never alter the eyes. She doesn’t look exactly like the person I saw in my vision, only a semblance of her.
But someone with five fairies in her arsenal could make her look close enough.
“Who are you?” I breathe. “You’re not—you aren’t—”
The girl beneath me shakes her head furiously. “I’m not my Mistress Raya. You saw it, didn’t you? The real Raya isdead.”
Dante, Cyrus, and I surround Not-Raya in a damp nook of forest. Not-Raya had the foresight to bring a lantern, and it provides the only light for us. We let her scoop up her fairies, which scattered when I surprised her. They barely have the strength to fly. Cyrus offers his jacket when she shivers in her muddied gown, and she takes it with quiet thanks.
“My name is Nadiya Santillion,” she says, kneeling before the three of us, head bowed. “I was Raya’s handmaiden when a witch emerged from the Fairywood and attacked her manor.”
“Whatever you tell us, I will verify when I look into your threads again,” I warn.
“I s-swear this is the truth.” Her glamour has fully faded away. When she looks up, I see her real face for the first time. She looks much younger—closer to my age. Her features are less sharp and dainty. Freckles dot her nose and her ears stick out like a field mouse’s. “She called herself the Witch of Nightmares. She killed my mistress and she made me impersonate her. She said if I didn’t do it, she wouldkill the rest of the household. She told me to go to the Sun Capital and to take my mistress’s place at the ball. And you are right, Sighted Mistress: I released the beasts, but I—I didn’t know about them! The witch sent me along with two wooden chests and told me to toss them over the cliffs, into the capital’s river…. I suppose I did know she locked something bad inside, but I—I was scared. I wasn’t thinking. I just wanted it to be over!”
“Why would this witch ask you to do these things?” Dante asks.
“To start a war.”
The three of us standing share glances.
Cyrus crouches to Nadiya’s height. “How would you start a war?”
“That was all she said, Your Highness, and I don’t ask a murderer for explanations.” She chuckles in a squeaky, timid way—her nervous habit.
“Could just be the reasons we feared,” Dante murmurs. “Make Auveny think Raya—stars guide her soul—caused the beast uprising or might be sabotaging your chances for real love. It’d be easy to call Nadiya a disguised assassin—there’s plenty to make up if anyonewantedto blame Balica, like your father and the Council…”
“I know, I know.” Cyrus groans.
