Seventeen - Felix
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“Don’t look atme like that!” My tail puffed out. Isa looked at me like I had either been lying to her this whole time or I was the biggest idiot alive. I paced in front of the node. “No one in the family has known. Do you have any idea how many of my ancestor’s journals I’ve read in the past months? Not a single one has mentioned using the node for truth-reading, including Valois’s son.”
“Yet you did it accidentally last night.”
I stopped, facing her. “I was thinking about how much I wished I could have had your insights as I talked to Marc, and I pulled on the node power. I’m guessing most of my ancestors haven’t wished they could truth-read while at Rose Castle, since it mostly seems superfluous.”
“Why didn’t you just ask me to stay if you wanted my insights?”
Damn it. I didn’t want to tell her. Not when I still didn’t understand what it meant that Marc claimed Edwin hadn’t signed the contract. It was a truth, but it didn’t explain why Isa’s father left her trapped here.
I moved back to the chair facing Isa. “It doesn’t really matter now, does it? You weren’t there. Now I need help to interpret what I saw.”
“Then tell me what Marc said.”
“I need to understand the colors I saw, not go over his words.”
Isa’s brows came together. “It will be a lot easier if you tell me about the conversation. That way I have a feel for what sorts of misdirections he might have employed and can do the same thing while you truth-read me to test my theories. Why don’t you want to tell me about it? You know I can’t betray your secrets. Or does this have nothing to do with breaking the curse?”
I sighed. “Fine, but remember that I tried to spare you.”
“Just tell me already.”
“I sent Marc to Leort with a contract for your father to sign that would free you from helping me break the curse.”
Isa inhaled sharply, then let the breath out slowly, her shoulders dropping. “He refused to sign?”
“That’s what I’m trying to understand. Marc didn’t even mention that Edwin hadn’t signed when he dropped off the contracts I need to witness. The contract simply wasn’t there. So, after supper, I asked him about it. All he said was that your father didn’t sign and didn’t tell Marc why. But from what I saw, it wasn’t a fully true answer to my questions. I just don’t understand how he was misleading me.”
To my surprise, Isa let out a relieved breath. “At least there is still a chance my father isn’t as much of a bastard as it sounded like a moment ago.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that your contract with Marc didn’t require him to deliver the contract to Edwin.”
I quickly went over everything Marc had said since returning from Leort in my head. He had never said he gave Edwin the contract. Perhaps Isa’s father hadn’t signed because he never saw it. And Isa figured that all out without even needing to truth-read the secretary.
“Why would Marc refuse to deliver the contract?” I said aloud, though mostly I was asking myself. “He is clearly not working in my best interests, but why would he want to keep you trapped here?”
Isa’s teeth sank into her lower lip, leaving me to battle very inconvenient—and impossible—thoughts. I had dreamed of regaining my human form with more frequency and fervor since she had arrived at Rose Castle.
She met my eyes. “Who suggested using the phrase ‘younger daughter’ when you wrote my contract?”
I blinked. “Marc. He pointed out that names can be tricky things in a contract and defining a relationship would be more exact.”
Isa nodded, clearly expecting my answer. “All right, I still don’t know why, but Marc wanted me here from the beginning. Or at least he didn’t want Sofia.”
“What makes you so sure? Didn’t you say lots of people mistake you for the older twin?”
“They do. But when I met Marc for the first time, he called me Isabel. You hadn’t introduced me. Unless you told him the evening before about what had happened?”
I shook my head. I hadn’t even noticed that Marc knew her name, and I knew I hadn’t told him. Isa caught all the slips I ignored. “You don’t miss much, do you?”
Isa laughed. “I miss plenty, but not usually the little details that keep a story from adding up. Instead, I miss things like my sister’s birthday.”
My ears pricked forward. “Wouldn’t it be the same as yours?”
She nodded. “Twice,” she admitted. “I’ve forgotten twice.”
“Just to clarify, did you also forget it was your birthday on those occasions?”
She pressed her lips together for a moment, then shook her head.
I laughed. “How did Sofia react?”
Isa’s lips twitched. “In typical Sofia fashion, with complete understanding and an apology for not reminding me.”
“And since the second time, does she now remind you every year?”
“Oh no, she knows it would embarrass me if she had to keep reminding me. Instead, she always gets someone else to bring it up in conversation with me a week before and the day of.”
“Uh, wouldn’t that be more embarrassing?”
“Absolutely. But Sofia doesn’t realize I know she puts those people up to it.”
“Let me guess, you’d tell her, but then she’d feel so bad she wouldn’t continue the reminders and you are afraid you still need them?”
“You catch on quick.”
A purr rumbled through my throat for an instant before the words suddenly stabbed at me. I might understand Isa, but I had overlooked so much when it came to Marc. I still wasn’t catching on where he was concerned. “Why do you think he is doing this?”
Isa followed my mental jump without hesitation. “I don’t know. You depend on him for contact with the outside world, but he is still only an intermediary. Perhaps he thinks you will give him more authority if the curse lasts much longer?”
“That could explain him wording the contract to bring you here instead of Sofia, if he thinks a truth-teller is more likely to break the curse. It doesn’t explain why he wouldn’t take the opportunity to send you away, though. Even if you can’t break the curse, you are still helping me.”
“Maybe we should ask him.”
“Even with the truth-telling enchantment and your talent at truth-reading, I don’t know that we’ll get the answers we need. Marc will talk around everything like he usually does, and if we push too hard, he’ll refuse to answer at all. I’d rather he not know how much I distrust him unless I am guaranteed to get answers.”
“Then use the node to guarantee those answers. Truth-telling can force a person to speak. If you can draw on the node to truth-read, then you can draw on it to make Marc answer our questions.”
She was right. That was the basic function of a node-tie, after all. It gave anyone in the correct bloodline access to a particular shape of magic, whether or not they were a mage. So long as I was within range of the node, which extended far beyond the enchantments on the castle hillside, I was the most powerful truth-teller on the continent.
But I had intended to use the node’s power that way last night if needed and ended up truth-reading Marc instead. What if I tried and failed? It didn’t matter that I had used the power when I was younger; it wasn’t a skill I practiced. So much of magic was based on instinct and I didn’t trust my instincts currently.
Questioning Marc with the assumption that I could force him to speak and then failing could be worse than questioning him without planning to use the power at all. But I knew he’d evade my questions if I didn’t use the magic.
I looked over at Isa, then finally admitted the truth. “I’m not sure how to use the node to truth-tell.”
She raised a brow. “Looking at me won’t help. Try. Pull on the power, but focus on truth-telling instead of reading this time.”
I tried. I tried over and over, but rather than pure node power, I pulled on the strands of power already tied to Truths. I summoned food, and furniture, and, in one surprising instance, a pile of stones.
Isa grabbed one of the green stones, turning it over in her fingers. “Are these uncut emeralds?”
I inspected the pile, batting the stones around to catch the light at different angles. Many pieces of family jewelry were set with emeralds, but I didn’t know why there would be a cache of uncut stones anywhere in the castle. Still, “I think they are.”
Isa instantly returned the one she had inspected to the collection I had spread across the floor, snatching her hand back like she was afraid I’d accuse her of theft if she touched it for even a heartbeat longer.
I batted it across the floor back to her foot. “Take it.”
“What?”
“Take it. Consider it overtime pay. Or an apology. Both.”
“I can’t take an emerald!”
“It’s not like I’ll miss it. I didn’t even know I owned it. You could take the whole pile, and I wouldn’t care.”
“I’m not taking a pile of jewels.”
“I figured, which is why I’m only trying to give you one.”
She hesitated.
I sat back. “Consider it a gamble. Maybe it is an emerald, and maybe it is just a green rock.”
I was certain, however. Those were emeralds. Ones that hadn’t been called in with the general summoning enchantment. I hadn’t recognized the strand of power I had accidentally pulled on in that last attempt to truth-tell. But I’d know it if I saw it again.
Reluctantly, Isa bent down and picked up the stone. She looked at me for a moment before slipping it into her pocket. Then she crossed her arms. “Well, clearly it is going to take more time before you master truth-telling. I don’t think you need me until you can consistently pull on the node itself, so I’ll resume my research.”