Chapter Thirty-Nine Ayleth #2
“I am the queen,” I seethe. “And if you’re too much of a fool to accept what I’m offering you, that’s fine.
But as you feel your power wither away, know that it was your own fault.
That you had the opportunity to become something greater and you turned your nose up at it. All because it came from me.”
Her blue eyes burn impossibly brighter. “Is that what you think you are? Greater than us? Better? That thing is going to come back here and rip you apart and it’s because of you. The princess was right—what you did brought it here.”
My blood roils.
“I don’t care if the creature tears this palace down with her bare hands,” I hiss, leaning in. “I will not be sacrificing my own gift. Not for you or for anyone else.”
Jacquetta just stands there for a few moments, the fire crackling in the silence.
“Then enjoy your crown, Ayleth,” she says at last. “Soon enough, it will be all you have left.”
With that, she makes for the door to the servants’ passages. I let her go, my anger burning hotter than the flames in the hearth. Shadows swarm around me and I open the book again, running my fingertips over the faded words of the prophecy.
A beating heart must she drown, if she is to wear the crimson crown.
I buried my own heart long ago. And I should have known better than to let Jacquetta, or anyone else, dig it from its grave.
—
I dump another pile of journals onto the table in Ignatius’s lair the next evening. Blodwyn looks up, pulling her own neat pile aside as mine spills everywhere.
“Have those books done something to personally offend you?” she asks.
I don’t bother to answer as I plop into my chair and drag a volume toward me. It’s yet another of Ignatius’s journals. But my nerves are so raw that even the sight of the High Priest’s handwriting makes me cringe. I slam it closed again and shove it away.
“Really,” Blodwyn says. “Is something wrong? And where’s Jacquetta?”
Of course she would ask about her. The other witch is probably still sulking in the kitchens, which is fine with me. Shade was right—she can’t be trusted. I haven’t yet called my Huntsman back, but I’m running out of reasons not to do so.
Nearby shadows lengthen, as if urging me on.
“I don’t know,” I say tightly.
Blodwyn thumbs the edge of her page. “What’s between you two, anyway?”
“Nothing.”
“Yes,” she comments dryly, “it certainly seems that way with how you keep whispering with your heads bent together.”
“We don’t—” I stop short, frustrated. “It’s complicated.”
“Complicated.” Blodwyn makes a noise in her throat. “I’m starting to think that’s a word people use when they don’t like the truth.”
“That’s—”
“Complicated?” she asks, arching an eyebrow. “Deny it all you want, but I can tell that you’re more than friends. So how did you wind up on opposite sides of this war?”
I suppose there’s no point in continuing to hide it. She’s only going to keep poking.
“We…” I begin, vainly grappling for a way to summarize the disaster of our history. “We have differing ideas about magic.”
Blodwyn snorts. “All of this over differing ideas?”
From her lips, it does sound ridiculous.
Childish, even. But it isn’t. The witches deserved their fate.
If they weren’t so obstinate, they could join me.
Jacquetta could join me. But she’s turned into one of them.
Malum rumbles behind my sternum, as if in agreement.
But its presence isn’t as comforting as it usually is.
Jacquetta’s words from last night still hound me:
Enjoy your crown. Soon enough, it will be all you have left.
“Are you going to interrogate me or help me search for answers?” I ask Blodwyn.
She just smirks at me in a way that looks annoyingly like Callen. But she opens the next book and starts to read.
“What is that one, anyway?” I ask.
“Mother’s journals again,” she replies with a sigh. “I know I probably shouldn’t be spending so much time on them, but…”
She trails off and I recognize the grief in her silence. Some of my irritation softens. “I understand. Reading them probably helps you feel closer to her.”
“Yes,” she agrees. “But…I don’t know. Somehow it makes me feel worse as well. Perhaps that’s strange to admit.”
It isn’t. After Rhea died, I used to sneak into her chamber and smell her blankets and clothes.
But the brief flash of happiness I felt at inhaling Rhea’s scent was always followed by a deep ache in my chest. In the end, I don’t know if I was more heartbroken or relieved when the last trace of my sister faded away.
“Not at all,” I tell Blodwyn. “It was the same for me after I lost Rhea.”
She shifts in her chair. “Does it…get easier?”
A thorny question.
“It gets…” I hesitate, pressing my thumb into the remnants of my sister’s mark. “Smaller, perhaps. But the grief, the void, never really seals completely.”
She frowns, considering. “You said you were able to bring your sister back. What if—”
“No,” I interrupt, guessing the direction of her thoughts. “That’s not how it works. I meant what I told you in the garden. You can’t go back, and you can’t bring people back.”
“But what if Mother could tell us what she meant? She might be our only hope.”
“She doesn’t belong here, Blodwyn,” I insist. “What you saw with the creature should be proof enough of that.”
Blodwyn is quiet a long time. Then, “Do you think Mother summoned her somehow? The lost princess?”
“I don’t know how she could have. Sybil wasn’t a witch.”
“No,” Blodwyn agrees. “But maybe she knew of one. Maybe she was trying to resurrect the princess the whole time. Because she thought that I can’t…that I shouldn’t be here.”
Her shoulders hunch slightly inward and I’m reminded of my own worries at her age. How convinced I was that I didn’t belong among my sisters. Certainly not as Mother’s Second. But Sybil was nothing like my own mother.
“The late queen wanted you to follow in her footsteps,” I say, ignoring the nagging instinct to keep Blodwyn at arm’s length. “Even in her final moments, she made me promise to care for you. She loved you, Blodwyn.”
The princess nods, but I’m not sure if she believes me.
“Mother’s journals have helped with something, though,” she says after a pause. I wait for her to continue. “She wrote about her marriage to Papa. How she found a way to become queen. Not for love, but because she needed to help her family. To survive. It reminded me of you.”
“Me?” I echo, sure that I’ve misunderstood.
“I still don’t agree with what you did,” Blodwyn adds swiftly. “But…I might understand it a little bit more.”
“I see.” I pause, hardly daring to ask the next question. “And…what might that mean? For once all this is over?”
Her dark eyes meet mine, a thousand possibilities swirling inside them.
“I’m not sure yet,” she says at last. “But if there is a way forward, it must be an honest one. No more deception.”
Deception. Like the fact that the princess still does not know what I did to her father. Or that I control Malum itself.
“Of course,” I tell her. “We’ll be honest with each other. I’d like that.”
She holds my gaze a moment longer, then returns to the journal.
Again, I press my thumb into the three faint lines stamped into my palm. And for once I’m glad that Rhea isn’t here.