Thirty-One - Isabel

???

Felix was lyingto me. Well, not lying in the strictest sense, but he was trying to misdirect me.

I couldn’t pinpoint when I had started hearing the truth of Felix’s words. Hearing the bells of my magic was more normal than the silence I had experienced speaking with Felix these past few weeks. I was fairly certain I had heard them before we went out into the rain to search for Frederic. But I hadn’t noticed, because the magic wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t know. I didn’t need magic to understand Felix anymore.

At least, not until he started misdirecting me about his reason for sending me back to Leort. Then he compounded his deceit while discussing how I might have gained a node-tie. Here I was, getting comfortable spending time with Felix—more comfortable than I’d ever been with anyone, my sister included—and he was looking for ways to make me leave. He wanted me out of the castle. He was uncomfortable knowing that I had a tie to his node.

In my room, I changed into dry clothes, annoyed to find that my wet outfit dried the instant I hung it up, though I remained damp. I took the time to braid my hair, knowing it would become a frizzy mess as it dried otherwise. Then I had no more excuses. I had to go face Felix again.

I climbed the stairs to his spire room with a growing sense of dread. Unless they had nothing to do with me or anyone I cared about, I didn’t ignore lies. Occasionally, when I knew the intent was benign and no harm could come of it, I let a white lie slip past. But usually, I confronted people; I demanded answers. Never had I hid from the truth.

I wanted to hide now.

I didn’t want to learn why Felix was so intent on sending me away. I didn’t want to understand what made him so uneasy about the fact that he had accidentally conferred a node-tie on me. I didn’t want to know that while I had been developing feelings for him, he still saw me as nothing more than a means to an end.

Though he had asked me to meet him in his spire room, Felix didn’t seem to be in a mood to enjoy the plush comfort of the room. He sat up straight in a rare spot of bare floor, the pillows and blankets pushed aside. His tail lashed back and forth, stilling only when he saw me enter the room.

“If I go to Leort, I can’t help you experiment with the node. We still haven’t determined why you can create Truths, but not reverse Lady Cecily’s curse.” The words poured out without conscious thought.

I didn’t want to leave. I’d like to contact my sister, but I missed little else about my life in Leort. As annoyed as I had been to leave, even the risk to my job wasn’t enough to tempt me back. My career as a constable felt less compelling by the day. People’s lies were easy to understand and not nearly as interesting as untangling the secrets of the Truthhold Node or analyzing contracts for loopholes.

I wanted to help Felix break the curse. I wanted to be here when he transformed back into a man, and not only because that would be proof we had succeeded. But he wouldn’t have a need for me once he was human.

Since staying at Rose Castle wasn’t a long-term option—not if Felix wanted me gone even before we broke the curse—perhaps it was time to move on. Not just back to Leort. I could go to Haiwella, where the magistrates wouldn’t hold my sex against me.

Felix tilted his head, his bright eyes seeming to look right through me. “Don’t you want to return home? If I can send you to Leort, you could even bring a new copy of the contract addendum Marc never delivered to your father. You could be free.”

My shoulders relaxed, and I sank onto the nearest pile of pillows. Perhaps Felix didn’t want me gone. Rather, he still felt guilty. He was trying to free me. It didn’t explain his misdirections when we had discovered my tie to the node, but it at least eased one worry.

It was time I returned the favor. I shook my head. “As angry as I was over how you brought me to Rose Castle, I’m not mad to be helping you break the curse. In fact, I’d be more upset if you sent me away now and I didn’t get to solve the puzzle.”

Felix’s ear twitched. “You could still help me. Just without the weight of the contract forcing your hand.”

“I appreciate the offer, but I think it is a moot point. There is no way under the terms of the contract that I can return to Leort with an addendum in hand. The magic will never see that as fulfillment of my terms.”

The duke threw himself onto the nearest pillow. “Damn it. You are right. I still think you going to Leort might be worthwhile, though. We need to know what Marc might be up to.”

My magic rang sharp. Either Felix still felt guilty and wasn’t admitting it, or he had another reason he wanted to send me away. “What do you think I’ll learn? If I confirm that Marc is in Leort—even if I confirm he is working with Lady Cecily—what does that do to help you?”

“We won’t know until we figure out their plans. That’s the problem. Cecily’s curse was an act of revenge after I rejected her. But what does that have to do with Marc? Is he the one who told her how to use the node? Why? What did he hope to gain? Finding out might not answer how to break the curse, but it could be just as important.”

“You need a spy in Leort, not me. Marc won’t answer my questions, and I can’t lock him up without cause.”

“A spy,” Felix whispered, his eyes losing focus. “A way to see what he is up to without his notice.”

I waited, but he said nothing else, his gaze still locked on something beyond the spire room. “Felix?”

He blinked, then leapt to his feet. “We need to search the storage rooms for the magic mirror.”

He ran out of the spire room before I could ask for clarification. I followed more slowly behind him, not wanting to trip and break my neck on the stairs.

Felix waited impatiently for me at the door of his suite, rushing out the instant I came near. He continued to rush forward, only to wait for me, over and over, until we reached the rooms on the third floor devoted to storage.

I opened the first door and stopped short. Compared to this, my sitting room was empty. Armoires, chairs, tables, even rolled-up carpets were packed together so tightly that there was no room for a person to walk inside. Every flat surface held ornaments, vases, and odds-and-ends.

While I gaped, Felix slithered through, popping back into view perched precariously atop the back of a chair halfway through the room. “Aren’t you going to help?”

“How? I can’t get through this, even if I knew what we were looking for. What are we looking for?”

“I told you, a magic mirror.” He leapt from the chair, landing somewhere out of sight with a clatter of metal against wood.

“Of course,” I muttered. “A magic mirror. How silly of me not to think that is a sufficient explanation.”

If the mirror had been created with the node’s magic, we wouldn’t be able to summon it, just like my pen. That didn’t mean I couldn’t summon every other object in the room. I began calling out each piece of furniture and all the knickknacks one by one, filling the hallway behind me. I carefully left an open path back to the stairs.

When I had cleared enough that I could stand in the center of the room, I spotted Felix again. He stood on the bed wedged into the corner of the room, his slight form dwarfed by the chests flanking him on the mattress. As I watched, the nearest chest popped open, and he rose on his hind legs to inspect the contents.

I called over the other chest to the area I had cleared and opened it. “I take it we are looking for a handheld mirror, if you think it might be in a chest?”

Felix glanced at me. “What other kind of mirror would we be looking for?”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, I don’t know, a stand mirror, or one that would hang on a wall?”

“Not very convenient to carry around that way.”

“You do realize that you didn’t tell me why we are looking for a magic mirror?”

“To spy on Marc. I completely forgot about the mirror until you mentioned spying. I’ve never seen it—let alone used it—but Duke Sebastien mentioned it in his journals.”

“Did he mention what it looked like?” I wrapped my fingers around the handle of a hand mirror at the bottom of the chest. The back was made of solid silver, embossed with intricate designs of roses, the vines trailing down and twisting together to create the handle. Once I touched it, I could sense the magic imbued into the metal and glass.

“No.”

I held up the mirror. “I think I found it.”

His eyes went distant, and I knew he was studying the magic clinging to the mirror. “Now we just need to figure out how to invoke the enchantment. I don’t remember what journal the mirror was mentioned in, so it might take a little time.”

“Or we could do this.” I concentrated on the magic in the mirror, listening for the trigger. It was easier than working with the enchantments floating all over the castle. There was only one spell on the mirror. I hummed and sent my power into the metal. I felt the magic take hold, but nothing happened.

“Do what?”

Felix’s voice echoed around me, the words coming from both the cat and the mirror.

I blinked. “What is this mirror supposed to do?”

My own voice poured out of the mirror, though Felix didn’t react. I hummed again, cutting off the enchantment.

“It allows you to look in on people from afar, but I don’t know the invocation.” Felix leapt from the bed, landing only a couple of feet from me.

“I used the enchantment,” I told him. “It made what we were saying come out of the mirror. Probably because I didn’t know to focus on someone else first. But I didn’t see anything. Let me try again.”

This time, I focused on Marc before triggering the enchantment. I heard faint rustles I couldn’t identify, but nothing else.

“Let me see.” Felix stretched up, balancing against my leg, and tried to get a look at the face of the mirror. I turned it toward him, though it showed nothing but a normal reflection. Through the enchantment, I heard a crash, then a familiar voice calling someone an idiot. Felix reared back and fell. “Where did that come from?”

“The mirror,” I said, my attention on the faint sounds once more. “Marc is in the same location as my father, it seems. Probably a tavern in Leort.”

“The mirror is supposed to show us people.”

“I invoked the enchantment, and my power manifests as sounds. Maybe if you invoke it, we’ll see something.” I stopped the enchantment once more and placed the mirror on the floor next to Felix.

He looked from the mirror to me. “How do I invoke it without knowing the trigger?”

“Look at the magic on the mirror and try to identify where it starts. Nudge that point with your own power.”

It took a few minutes, but finally Felix gasped. “That is not the sort of tavern I would expect to see Marc in.”

I could see nothing but a reflection of the ceiling in the mirror. I crouched and placed a hand gently on Felix’s back, and the image in the glass changed. When I lifted my hand, the reflection returned. Alright, then. I touched Felix once more and studied the image forming in the mirror.

He was right—the tavern was rougher than I’d expect Marc to favor. But it was exactly the sort of place my father visited. The perfect place to find cheap beer, gambling, and gossip about opportunities for those who didn’t worry about legalities.

As we watched, my father took the seat opposite Marc and began to talk. No sounds came out of the mirror. I quickly sent my power into the glass, where it mixed with Felix’s. Now we could both see and hear.

“. . . see more gold,” Edwin was saying.

“I told you, you’ll get more when the job is done. If that’s all you called me here for, then we are done.” The secretary stood up, using his height advantage to loom over Edwin. “Only send me a message if you have something worthwhile to tell me, or you won’t see any more gold.”

“Then you don’t want to hear my news?” Edwin asked in the sly tone I detested.

Marc pivoted back to the table. “Then you do have something to share?”

Edwin shrugged. “Depends.”

“Gods damn you,” Marc muttered. He reached into a pocket and pulled out a half gold piece. He held it up, shifting it higher when Edwin reached for it. “Only if your news is worthwhile.”

“I think you’ll be interested, all right. I have it on excellent authority that Constable Berklay—”

“Constable? Do you mean the butler?”

“If I had meant the butler, I’d have said the butler, wouldn’t I?” Edwin rolled his eyes. “I’m talking about his brother. The constable.”

“Fine, what about this constable?”

“Well, he went to Rose Castle today.”

Marc smiled. “The rumors have gotten that bad so soon?”

“Why else would a constable go to Truthhold?”

Marc placed the coin on the table. “Keep it up. We want everything to reach a fever pitch when the princess gets here at the end of the week.”

Felix and I watched Marc walk out of the tavern. By unspoken accord, we both ended the enchantment on the mirror, cutting off the sounds of busy Leort streets and seeing the reflection of the ceiling once more.

After a moment, Felix cleared his throat. “I thought you said your father wouldn’t spread rumors about you.”

“He wouldn’t have said anything if Marc hadn’t put him up to it. But for gold? There is little my father won’t do for the promise of easy money.”

“If the rumors about us are as bad as he said, you need to return to Leort.”

Was he concerned about my reputation or his own? It didn’t really matter. I picked up the mirror and stood. “They aren’t that bad. Father lied.”

“You could truth-read through the enchantment?”

My stomach growled, and I realized we never had eaten supper. I shook my head, walking out of the room toward the stairs. “I didn’t have to truth-read him. He’d have said whatever was necessary to make sure Marc keeps paying him. We already know that Frederic came because Berklay sent him with a letter for you.”

“No, Berklay used his brother to deliver the letter because he was going to come, no matter what.”

“But Frederic wanting to check up on me doesn’t mean the rumors are that bad. In fact, I can almost guarantee they aren’t. He wouldn’t have waited that long. He probably came the instant he heard whispers I was in Truthhold. If he has only heard that much, then the rumors are nowhere near bad enough to catch the princess’s attention.”

“But Marc is actively trying to ruin your reputation.”

I almost scoffed. Rumors about my presence in Rose Castle wouldn’t ruin my reputation. They’d worry Frederic and my other friends among the constables. They’d confuse Sofia. But for most of the citizens of the town, such rumors would make them wonder why I was the woman the duke set his sights on. Because I wasn’t the focus of the rumors. Felix was.

“Not my reputation,” I reminded Felix as we settled into our spots at the dining room table. “Yours. The fact that the gossip will make me out to be either a whore or a victim is incidental.”

“The fact that you aren’t the target doesn’t make it better!” Felix called in food with angry swipes of his paw, not paying attention to the fact that there were only two of us here to eat it. “I still want to stop Marc from spreading the rumors.”

As did I. I might not care about my reputation in town, but I didn’t like being used as a weapon against Felix. So, even though I didn’t want to leave, I would. If Marc’s plan hinged on my presence at Rose Castle, then returning to Leort was the best thing I could do to help Felix.

I sighed. “If you can convince the node to let me go home, I’ll do my best to foil his plans.”

If ads affect your reading experience, click here to remove ads on this page.