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“We’re not twiddling our thumbs.” One of them lifted their hand of cards. “We’re gambling and getting drunk.”
“Who’s going to come in and see us anyway?” The other snorted. “Balor? He spends all his time lurking in the forest now, doing gods know what to the solitary Folk. Better them than us.”
“How about Bres, the mad drunk who can’t even hear us?” the first asked with amusement. “Maybe he’ll come in here and start smashing pots and pans together to prove he’s not deaf.”
“Or maybe Cethlen,” the other piped up. “Maybe the blind one will come in and see us slacking off.”
Their cackling laughter faded as I slipped under the kitchen door and made my way up the stairs to the main floor. The front hall was empty, though that wasn’t unusual, and the dining room was dark and looked like it hadn’t been used for a while.
The private wing of the palace was completely silent. I was tempted to go and see my room first, but instead I went in the opposite direction, towards the Carlin’s quarters.
She had powerful charms carved into the doorframe to prevent anyone from entering without her permission, but I was prepared to wait. She would have to leave her room at some point. She still had a queendom to rule, and she was too controlling to ever let anyone do it in her stead.
It was the middle of the night, so there were no other staff around, and I knew Cethlen usually retired at around ten-thirty—I had learned my brothers’ routines at a young age so I could avoid them as much as possible. Bres, apparently, ignored our mother completely now, so he would have no reason to come to this part of the palace. Balor would be out in the forest, and even if he wasn’t, it sounded like he had distanced himself from the Carlin anyway.
I scurried along the wall towards her door, prepared to wait just outside for as long as necessary, but stopped abruptly when I noticed the tiny gap behind the skirting board that lined the edge of the corridor. My spindly body slipped into it with ease, and when I found a crack between the unfinished stones, hidden by the wooden board in front, I followed it.
The Carlin’s rooms were even colder than the rest of the palace. I almost expected to see frost coating the walls when I emerged into a washroom. The pale walls and gleaming bathtub glimmered in the darkness like they were crusted with ice.
I saw candlelight flickering through the cracked-open door and headed that way, stopping on the threshold so my many eyes had time to take in the room.
She was in the bed. I went completely still, the tiny hairs all over my body responding to the sounds in the room. Her breaths were slow and steady. The candlelight obscured my vision, but I could see that she wasn’t moving aside from the rise and fall of her chest.
I waited a few minutes to be safe, then shifted into my true form and took silent steps deeper into the room.
Sloga was right. I had spent my whole life preparing for this moment. The Carlin had trained me for this moment. The familiar cold blanket of indifference settled over me as I stood and watched my mother sleep. I felt nothing as I looked at her. And I knew exactly what I was going to say when she woke.
“Cailleach Bheura Cruthachadh de Neoini.”
Her single eye flew open. Before she could move, I gave my first order.
“Do nothing except what I tell you to.”
Her lips thinned, bronze teeth flashing in her mouth, but she didn’t move an inch. She lay rigid in bed, staring up at the ceiling with seething fury.
“Stand up.”
She was climbing out of her bed a split second later, chest heaving with furious breaths as she stared at me. Her hands curled into shaking fists. Black blood dripped onto the cold stone floor as her talons bit into the meat of her palms.
We watched each other in silence for a long moment. Her pale blue nightdress hung loosely off her frame. She looked thinner. Older. Her white hair was wispy, and her empty eye socket appeared even more sunken. Just beneath her jutting collarbone, I could see a faint scar from the venom-coated arrow that Ash had shot into her chest.
Her cobalt eye flashed with a blend of fear and rage when I finally moved, pulling the dagger Ash had gifted me from its sheath on my belt. Her nostrils flared, breaths snarling out of her as I stepped closer. The dagger’s green-gold blade gleamed in the light when I flipped it and held out the black hilt.
“Take it,” I said quietly.
She was forced to obey, her bloody hand shooting up and long, taloned fingers curling around the hilt. When I let go of the blade, it trembled wildly in the air.
I stepped back several paces to protect my father’s clothes. The Carlin hadn’t moved, her hand still outstretched and quaking violently, causing candlelight to slide over the dagger’s blade.
I waited a long moment before speaking again to stretch out her fear, to make her truly feel it until she could feel nothing else. To make her feel just a fraction of what I had felt every time she appeared holding the whip she had used to torture me, her eye gleaming with malice.
“Cut out your heart.”
She inhaled sharply, just as her hand swung forcefully inward and plunged the dagger into her chest. A choked gasp escaped her when she tore it free and stabbed again, then twisted it until the trembling fingers of her other hand could wriggle underneath her split skin.
Her face turned grey, eye bulging from her head and mouth hanging open in a silent scream. Her thin arm shook with strain before a loud crack came from her chest. I swallowed back bile at the sight of her sternum poking out from under her skin.
Her breaths grew wet and choked as she snapped ribs in half so she could reach her heart. She swayed, her legs trembling, the front of her silk dress soaked with dark blood. It pooled around her bare feet.
