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“Mother,” I insisted. “What is it?”
All at once, she halted. Then she grasped my hands, urging us across the suite to the fireplace, where she lowered us onto a settee.
Glancing at our threaded fingers, Mother mused, “Your father was better at advising you.”
“That is not true,” I objected. “You were equals.”
“Yes, well.” She spoke to our joined hands. “I’m not about to insult you by rattling off platitudes. And so I must simply come out with it.”
Something cold splashed through my stomach. “Please do.”
She had been speaking more to herself than me. Like the fidgeting and pacing, I could count on one hand the number of times Mother had ever done that.
Also, during only one other time had she looked this afflicted. Back when she’d had no choice but to disinherit and evict her daughter.
Awareness dawned on me. She knew what Winter wanted. In fact, the remorse blasting across her face signified that she’d already entertained some type of negotiation. And she’d done so not only without my knowledge, but without Poet’s.
It must have been when I was sick, while the jester remained by my bedside. No other window of time made sense.
Mother lifted her gaze as though it weighed a thousand pounds. “There’s been an arrangement.” But when she fell silent again, I pulled back to sketch her features, foreboding plaguing me anew. “Mother,” I pressed. “What did you do?”
At last, she met my eyes. “I gave Winter what he values.”
Knowing Jeryn and the rest of this continent, the answer came quickly. In Spring during the Peace Talks, the Dark Seasons had signed an amendment regarding the trade of born souls. I had used that to my advantage, to bring Nicu and Poet to Autumn.
Fools, and all that they are, shall be bound to their new Season.
As the amendment’s clause invaded my memory, nausea roiled in my stomach. The implication struck like a mallet, knocking my senses off kilter. Treachery, repugnance, and anarchy flooded my voice. The reply shot from me like one of my thorn quills. “No,” I hissed. “Mother, no.”
She winced. “Dearest, I had to.”
“You gave him people.”
“I gave him Summer’s prisoners.”
“You gave himpeople.”
“And for that, I saved my daughter,” she defended under her breath. “For that, Jeryn of Winter traveled a vast distance to cure a denounced princess who represents everything he despises. For that, he is here. For that, you will survive.”
The twenty prisoners I’d negotiated from Summer.
Nineteen, I corrected privately. Nineteen prisoners, now that one had burned to death.
Mother gave the rest of them to Winter, the court known to conduct brutal experiments on born souls. Reputedly, Prince Jeryn led those procedures. Summer had the largest population of maddened captives, and Winter valued that beyond wealth. For the second time, the trade amendment of the Fools Decree had been enacted—by Autumn.
And Flare. That woman in the dungeon, who couldn’t be much older than I was. The kind female with golden eyes and a fierce expression, who repeatedly sketched the same cluster of words into a pile of dirt. The one whose gaze had alighted when she saw me and Poet, who had finally entrusted us with her name.
She belonged to Winter now. I had checked in on the prisoners earlier, relieved to see Flare hadn’t been the one who’d gone up in flames. I had envisioned a hopeful future for her, only now to discover which heathen would claim her next.
“You gave him Flare,” I uttered. “You gave her to him.”
Mother’s initial confusion gave way to realization. “You’re on first name terms with the inmates.”
“Did you expect anything less from me?”
Her face transformed, a gleam of pride straying across her eyes. “Never,” she said. “It’s what your father would have done.”
Father’s memory eased some of the tightness in my chest. Yet only marginally. Poet and I had learned the names of every prisoner, and while some had been hostile, most were not. If anything, tonight proved the prisoners weren’t nearly as vicious as the free-roaming courtiers who claimed to be sanctimonious.
