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I choked at the name. I only knew one person with that name, the name that inspired my own. Revera Oslow was my grandmother’s name. Edith rose and stepped across the makeshift platform, where a curtain that might once have been a skirt draped down, forming a partition. Edith lifted the curtain. A person lay on a small arm of the platform that reached out between the thick branches.
“She’s here.”
My pulse fluttered, and I scooted forward, drawn to the prone form. I didn’t feel comfortable enough to stand on the platform, so I crawled on my knees, careful to keep my bleeding palm lifted.
When I saw the face angled toward me in the mottled sunlight, I sucked in a breath that quickly turned to a quiet, joyful sob.
Nan looked up at me with her kind smile and reached for me. Tears leaked down her soft, wrinkled cheeks as I grasped her hand.
“I thought you…we all thought you were…” I couldn’t say the word, not now that I knew it was untrue. Nan’s funeral, the tears I’d cried…they suddenly felt like a violent blow.
“I know, my dear.” Nan’s voice was weak and fragmented, but it still brought a wave of joy to me that sent fresh tears down my face. “The king and his Guild puppets didn’t want anyone knowing what he had done to me. They rightly believed it would anger you, and they didn’t want you angry with him.”
“Of course I would have been angry. I’m angry now!” I slammed a fist into my lap. “Why did he throw you in here? Wait, why would the king worry about me being angry?”
Nan’s eyes closed and opened again, so slowly that my heart skipped a beat. She looked so tired and frail compared to the woman I’d known. If the king had thrown her in here back when we’d all thought she’d died, then Nan had been in this nightmarish place for two whole years.
She offered me one of her characteristic closed-lip smiles. “That will take some explaining, my dear.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Nan glanced at my hand, which was still bleeding, and the blood that had soaked into the lace bodice of my dress where I pinned my hand under my elbow.
“I believe Asher is preparing a healing salve for that.”
My chest pinched a little at the name, and I wondered if Nan knew his true identity. But I didn’t want to burden my grandmother with this knowledge, not knowing how she might react. She’d been trapped in here for two years—there was no telling the toll it had taken on her.
“His name reminds me of Archer,” I said with a twang of sadness.
Nan nodded, her hair tangling against her makeshift pillow of folded garments. “He shortened it to Ash when I told him the same thing two years ago. He didn’t want me to feel unnecessary sadness every time I used his name.”
I blinked in stunned silence.
“But despite his good intentions, I kept calling him by his real name,” Nan said with a smile. “It is just my way.” She sighed.
I looked around for Ash, but he’d disappeared. Edith and the younger girl remained on the platform, mere steps away, but they’d turned away to give us a little privacy.
“But you asked about the king,” Nan said, drawing my attention back to her. “There’s much to explain, but I’m afraid it should wait until you are less exhausted.”
“Nan, please. Why was the king afraid of me?” My heartbeat tapped like a soldier’s drumsticks inside my chest.
She offered the hint of a smile. “You have a unique kind of magic, Vera. It’s really my fault, I suppose.” Here she paused, mouth ajar, an almost apologetic frown on her face. “My magic is also unique, and highly valuable. I’m what is called a lock. It means I can lock spells in place without having to feed them constantly with energy.”
Ash had said he too could lock spells in place.
“Mind mages like me were recruited by the Guild before the war. I, of course, was too young at the time, and when I manifested my affinity after the war, mind magic was already banned. I never received proper training, but my father allowed me to practice on him. When Rebecca was born and never manifested any magic, I knew that the unique kind of magic I had would pass to one of my grandchildren.”
“How could you know that?” I asked. “Magic isn’t always passed on.” My legs pressed uncomfortably against the wooden boards beneath me, but Nan’s words kept me fixed to the spot.
“I suppose I didn’t know for certain, but I never doubted that it would,” she said. “The thing about a lock is that when their magic is passed on, it can change, and that person becomes what is known as a key. And I assume you can riddle out what a key can do?”
Adrenaline surged under my skin as the truth hit me. “Unlock spells.”
Ash had accused me of breaking locked spells, but I didn’t even know how to do magic. Much less purposefully unlock a spell.
Nan nodded, another close-lipped smile wrinkling her face.
My mind spun. A dark presence at my right shoulder startled me, and I flinched. Then Edith stepped up beside me, holding onto a branch over her head for balance.
