Chapter 2
A soft exclamation woke me, and I sat upright. Blinking sleep away, I looked for the source of the sound. To my left, Lara still lay unconscious, clutching her pillow tightly. To my right, the bed was empty.
Anya stood by the folding screen, arms wrapped around herself as she stared at me. The ceiling crystals had turned the room the gray hue of predawn, but I wasn’t sure if they were reflecting the sky outside or if they’d responded to Anya’s desire to see her surroundings.
“Anya?” I whispered, climbing out of bed.
“It was real,” she said. “You’re actually here.”
Pain and relief mixed inside me. “Yes, it’s me.”
She’d once been solidly built—not as curvaceous as Lara, but with flaring hips, strong legs, and a bosom I’d been envious of for approximately a decade.
Now she looked waifish, the gray robe swallowing her up.
She’d lost weight during her imprisonment, and she seemed even smaller without her long golden-brown hair.
A narrow scar spiraled over her right cheek, and her hazel eyes seemed dim.
“How is this…” She shook her head, clutching the robe tighter. “Were you there, too?” Her voice broke, and my heart broke with it. In the brothel, she meant. King Osric had stolen her, the way the Fae had stolen countless humans. He’d seen her beauty and wanted it for himself, so he’d taken her.
Or maybe he’d seen her beauty and wanted to destroy it. Like throwing a fragile vase to hear the sound it made as it shattered.
“I wasn’t…there,” I said, feeling a sick surge of guilt. I’d been in Mistei for six months, and that entire time, Osric had been raping Anya and torturing her with illusions. I’d mourned her while she was suffering. “They made me a servant in Earth House.”
“A servant,” she echoed hollowly.
I began to walk towards her, then froze when she flinched and squeezed herself tighter.
“Your skin,” she said.
I looked down at my hands. They looked normal to me. “My skin?”
“Last night, in the torchlight. It shone.”
Realization snatched my breath away. The Noble Fae all shimmered with a hint of magical radiance. Not enough to cast light in the dark, just enough that when sunlight or torchlight struck them, they seemed dusted with glitter.
“Something happened to me,” I said, feeling a surge of anxiety.
The change was too large, too profound, for me to comprehend all at once.
Instead, I sampled it in pieces. In the throne room it had been the revelation that my new magic allowed me to control bodies.
At the entrance to Blood House, I’d realized my endurance was heightened.
Now…I apparently sparkled. Even my skin was no longer my own. “I’m Fae now.”
She let out a soft cry, then fled.
I followed, slipping around the partition that separated the main room from the sleeping chamber.
The crystals crusted over the ceiling sparked to life, casting a golden glow that was somewhere between the rosy shine of early morning and the bright radiance of midday.
The house had apparently been letting us sleep in.
Anya stood behind a couch in the sitting area. Her fingers clenched the velvet back so tightly her knuckles were white. “Stay away,” she hissed.
“It’s still me,” I told her, chest hurting like she’d stabbed me. “Nothing else has changed. I’m still the Kenna you’ve always known.”
That wasn’t true, though, was it? The Kenna she’d known had been wild and fun, prone to romping through the woods and exploring the bog outside Tumbledown.
A girl who wore trousers and was usually spattered with mud, whose biggest dream had been to become a merchant.
That girl had had simple needs, simple angers, and simple wants.
Nothing was simple anymore.
Anya swayed. “Nothing feels real,” she said so quietly the words almost didn’t make it to my ears. “You don’t feel real.” There was a pause before she spoke again. “I don’t feel real, either.”
“It’s real,” I said, heart aching. “But you don’t have to understand it all at once. I don’t even understand it myself.” Her face was closed off, so I cast about for anything that might help. “Are you hungry? I can find food.”
She looked at me mistrustfully, then slowly nodded.
“I’m hungry, too,” Lara said. She stood beside the folding screen, clutching her robe to her throat. Her black hair was mussed from sleep, and she looked nearly as tired as she had the night before.
Would Blood House even have food? There were orchards, vegetable patches, and stables full of animals below Earth House, thriving on faerie magic despite the lack of natural sunshine, but the magic also created items out of nothing.
In the Earth House kitchens, I’d only needed to long for a certain treat before it appeared.
“I’ll go see if I can find something,” I said.
An expression I couldn’t identify passed over Lara’s face. “You’re not a servant anymore. I should be bringing a tray up for you.”
“You’re not a servant, either. I’ll go look.” Then, realizing Anya had never gotten a proper introduction, I gestured between them. “Anya, this is Lara. She’s Fae, but you don’t need to be afraid of her. She’s from Earth House.”
“I am not from Earth House,” Lara said sharply. Then she turned and disappeared back into the sleeping area, and I heard the rustle of blankets.
My head was starting to hurt, and with it came a rising tide of anger.
Not at Anya for her mistrust or at Lara for the bitterness that came from losing so much, but at the people who had caused so much pain.
King Osric, Princess Oriana, and all the rest of the Noble Fae who manipulated and hurt and used others.
Anger at myself, too. Because here I was, immortal and newly magical, and I couldn’t do anything to fix this pain for my two closest friends. I could find breakfast, though. So I forced a smile for Anya, promised to return soon, and went exploring.
The house seemed cleaner this morning. The layer of dust was thinner, as if invisible hands had tended to it overnight. Magic pulsed and thrummed everywhere, little currents that raced through the walls and danced inside the torches, and contentment radiated from the stones.
Blood House had a reason to live again.
Did all Noble Fae feel such a strong connection to the magic inside Mistei, or was this a power reserved for the house heads?
I felt like a spider perched in a vast web, reading messages in the vibrations.
I passed a suit of armor that looked as if it had been knocked askew, and when I thought about straightening it, the house instantly obeyed, making me jump.
This must be related to being the new princess, I decided, slightly unnerved by the ability to affect my surroundings with a thought.
I hadn’t felt this web of magic outside of house walls, and the flavor of it—if that was the right word to use for a new sense that wasn’t sight, taste, touch, hearing, or smell, but somehow none of them and all of them simultaneously—was the same as the magic burning inside my chest. As if the house and I were cut from the same piece of cloth, resonating with each other on a mystical level.
There would be multiple kitchens throughout the house, but the one on the ground floor near the entrance hall was the largest and served the royal family and other elite house members.
I headed towards it, passing woven tapestries, silver sconces containing red-burning torches, and more racks of weapons.
Another small fountain sat in an alcove, shaped like a silver goblet tipping to pour blood into a bowl.
It should have been an upsetting sight, but instead the bright tinkle of drops sounded like a giggle to my ears.
The house didn’t speak words in my head the way the Shard or Caedo did, but emotion permeated the air. It had been lonely, it told me on a sigh of feeling that made the torches flicker. Now it wouldn’t be anymore.
As I passed the fountain, I wondered if that was entirely the blood of enemies or if some had come from the massacre all those years ago.
Had the house cleaned the gore up the way it had apparently begun to dust itself, or had it drunk it instead?
There must have been so much carnage—a sixth of the population of Mistei slaughtered in a single night.
I stopped, heart slamming hard. King Osric had gotten into Blood House through a secret back entrance. Did it still exist? Because if Osric knew about it, others would, too.
I needed to talk to the Shard, but I wasn’t sure how to. Asking out loud had worked the night before, but it had been nearby at the time, ensconced in the tree. Did I always need to petition before the tree, or could I communicate with it some other way?
We had to be connected through our shared power. I closed my eyes, focusing on the heat of magic inside me. I imagined it as a deep liquid pool in my breast and tossed the question in like a stone. Blood Shard. Can you hear me?
After a pause, a voice filled my head. You learn quickly.
It was the only way to survive in Mistei. Is there still a back entrance?
A vision filled my head of a rocky hill with a jagged gap between boulders.
Underfae in Illusion colors piled stones in front of the entrance, and then dirt was shoveled over that.
An asrai poured blood over the soil, dampening it.
Finally, I saw Princess Oriana, hands outstretched and face pensive, growing grass and tangled shrubs over the dirt as Osric watched.
Soon the entire hill was smooth again, as if the entrance had never been.
The blood was Princess Cordelia’s , the Shard murmured. It made the barrier whole, and a new opening cannot be carved by anyone but you.
The tension left me. Why did Osric do that?
He wished for Blood House to be forgotten—even by the ground itself.
How terribly sad. I was here now, though, and Mistei would be forced to remember.