Chapter Thirteen Ayleth
Chapter Thirteen
Ayleth
My latest catastrophe with Blodwyn hounds me long after the party ends. How could I have been so careless? Reckless? I know better than to let my anger take control, and yet that’s exactly what I’d done. Now I’ve made things infinitely worse.
I hate you, she’d said.
I’m no stranger to that hatred, having glimpsed it often enough among the nobility when I was weeding out Callen’s court.
But it never bothered me. In fact, I savored the way those venomous vipers were forced to bend their knees even though they despised me.
Blodwyn, though, is different. She knew me before I became queen.
Cared for me, even. Perhaps I was too harsh with her.
But she was just as vicious, a trait she no doubt learned from Margaret.
How could Blodwyn believe that a person like the duchess is better than I am?
If I hadn’t carved out Callen’s heart, the princess would still be locked in her menagerie, forced into the confines of the Order.
And that’s if Callen hadn’t married her off by now.
Would she have really been happier then?
I did her a favor. Not that she’ll ever thank me for it.
My queen?
Shade’s voice jolts me out of the mire of my thoughts. My Huntsman stands near the mirror, where he’s been updating me about his search for the witches responsible for the attacks on the Dwarvian Mines. Nox is here as well, playing with Nettle on the far side of the room.
“Sorry,” I tell Shade. “I’m listening.”
This was in the eastern forest, he continues.
One of his shadows burrows into the mirror and then a scene blooms in the glass: the remains of a fire and other debris to suggest that it was a campsite. A recent one.
“Who was there?” I ask. “Witches?”
I sensed as much, Shade confirms. But only one.
My brow furrows. Another lone witch. “You said the eastern forest? How far away?”
About a day’s journey from here.
“So close,” I murmur, my mind spinning with questions.
What would a witch be doing near the palace? And who was it? My traitorous heart conjures an image of blue eyes, but I shove it down. Jacquetta wouldn’t be out there. And if she is, she should know to stay far away from me.
Indeed, my queen, Shade agrees. I do not like it. They may be planning something—as with the Mines.
Wind moans down the chimney, stirring the embers of the fire. Shade is likely right. The covens caught me off guard once before. They could easily be scheming to do so again.
“If they are, then we’ll find them,” I say. “Keep looking.”
And tomorrow? Shade asks. The hunt. Are you certain I should not stay with you?
It’s a tempting thought. And not just because of the witches. After all, any number of accidents might occur in the woods, preferably to some of the claimants. Perhaps Warbeck’s troublesome son. It would serve the slippery courtier right.
“I’ll be fine,” I promise Shade. “The guards have searched the hunting grounds already. If there was any sign of witches, they would have rooted them out.”
Shade’s shadows drift in a pensive tempo. Very well. But I will send Nox to stand guard.
“All right,” I say. “If you insist. But keep hidden.”
The Nevenwolf rumbles a growl in what I take as agreement.
Will there be anything else, my queen? Shade rasps. I sense that something troubles you.
That’s an understatement. In the last weeks, my whole world has been turned upside down. Joan was proven annoyingly correct. Close to a hundred claimants are either crammed into the palace or staying in the White City, all of them jostling for the chance to get their hands on the crown.
My crown.
But if I’m being honest, it’s not the trials that have me so agitated. Not entirely.
“It’s the princess,” I admit. “She seems to have decided that I’m personally responsible for everything that’s gone wrong in her life. Apparently, my sending her off to live with Margaret makes me a villain.”
Nettle meows where she’s playing with Nox, as if challenging my version of events. I glower at her.
Allow me to handle the girl, Shade offers.
I twist my hands. Whether I want to admit it or not, the thought has already crossed my mind.
If I let Shade deal with Blodwyn, I’ll never have to endure her barbed comments or sullen silences ever again.
But something still holds me back. I don’t want Blodwyn to die.
I want her to stop treating me like I’m her enemy.
To see Margaret for who she is. To choose me instead of that vapid duchess.
“No,” I say to Shade. “Not yet. Better to let things play out.”
For now.
As you wish, my queen, Shade replies. But you need not fear her. Not with your power.
“And if she fears me?” I ask. “We were so close before she left and now she looks at me like she doesn’t even know me. Like I’m…a monster.”
The ridges of my ears burn, embarrassed at how thoroughly a sixteen-year-old girl has succeeded in getting under my skin. Shade pauses, his shadows curling around him.
If you are a monster, he tells me, then so are we all.
His crimson eyes glitter. Malum swells between my bones.
“Then I suppose I’m in good company,” I say.
Shade bows again, then retreats into the darkness, Nox loping after him.
In the quiet that follows, I go to my window and look up into the night.
Seven stars, arranged in a rough oval, seem to shine brighter than the rest: the Spirits’ Mirror.
A memory rises from its grave: the night Jacquetta taught me that constellation, the two of us lying together on the forest floor, gazing up through the lattice of branches.
Jacquetta explained that the Spirits’ Mirror was formed so that the Spirits themselves could glimpse into our world.
I used to imagine Rhea looking down from those stars.
I press my thumb into the place where the scar of my sister’s mark rests.
Rhea would never have made such a mess of things.
She would have won Blodwyn back to her side straightaway.
Would have known just how to handle the trials.
“I wish you were here,” I murmur to the darkness.
Ayleth, I think I hear beneath the whine of the wind.
Nettle hops onto the casement and hisses, her ears flattening. My brow furrows and I open the window. The wind picks up, rattling the branches in the garden below.
Ayleth, I think I hear again.
Abruptly, I recall what Miranda said at the Mine just before the collapse—that she’d seen Spirits. At the time, I was convinced it was really the witches planting the fireroot potion. But what if the Dwarvian woman was right? What if…
“Rhea?” I call, hardly daring to raise my voice above a whisper. “Is that you?”
Shadows shift and shimmer in the dimness. A figure begins to take shape. It looks like…a woman? My pulse kicks up and I lean farther out the window. Until—
“Careful. You might fall.”
Callen’s voice startles me so much that I have to brace myself against the window casement before I topple into the night. The figure, or whatever it was, has vanished. It was likely never there at all, I reason. Just the product of too many sleepless nights.
“What are you doing here?” I demand, self-consciously straightening my dressing gown.
“Someone’s in a temper,” Callen observes. “You’re the one who said you wanted news.”
“Do you have any?”
“Yes, actually. Four more usurpers arrived,” Callen informs me, sneering the word usurpers, which is what he’s taken to calling the claimants.
“This late?”
“They have until the start of the hunt,” Callen replies icily. “Which you would know if you had absolutely any idea of what you’re doing.”
Nettle meows and swats at the imprisoned king from her perch near his mirror. He makes a face at her.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say, as much to myself as to Callen. “Most of them will be gone soon. Only twenty claimants continue to the second trial.”
“Twenty traitors,” Callen grunts. “By the way, there’s still time for you to end all this before it gets worse.”
“You mean release you from the mirror?”
“Naturally,” he replies. “You’re never going to succeed otherwise. I’ve been watching my daughter at practice. She’s a rather decent shot.”
He’s right, that voice goads.
“Practice is different than a real hunt,” I return, picking up the poker and jabbing at the fire. Sparks dance up the chimney. “Blodwyn won’t kill anything.”
“Are you certain?” Callen drawls. “In my experience, people will do whatever it takes to claw their way to a throne. You certainly did.”
My memory flashes back to the blood-soaked night when I’d bound Callen to his mirror.
For so many years, I’d sworn to Mother that I could never commit so gruesome an act.
I didn’t even have the stomach to bind Nettle to me as a proper familiar.
But when the moment came, I’d cracked Callen’s chest open like it was a walnut.
Reached into his body and removed his still-beating heart with my own bare hands.
Would Blodwyn do the same to me?
My gaze tracks to the window, landing on the seven stars of the Spirits’ Mirror.
I hate you, Blodwyn’s words carry beneath the whine of the wind.
And an uncomfortable thought wheedles into my mind. What if her hatred doesn’t entirely stem from Margaret? What if the princess can sense something buried deep inside me?
Something not even Rhea could love.
—
The morning of the hunt dawns cold and misty, the sun hidden behind a thick blanket of clouds.
The baying of hounds and the whicker of horses fills the courtyard, their breath steaming in the air.
It’s scarcely past dawn, but many of the claimants have already gathered.
A few of them look a bit green in the face.
One of them vomits in a corner and I wince, taking a deep breath to settle my own nerves, not that it does any good.
You’re never going to succeed, Callen’s words wheel in my mind.
Someone hurries past me so close that our shoulders knock together.