Chapter Fifty-Three Ayleth
Chapter Fifty-Three
Ayleth
By some miracle, we’re able to secure a few horses and leave the palace gates undetected.
But even with Margaret’s guidance, we spend the whole of the next day crashing through the forest in search of the cottage.
I don’t let myself rest for an instant, dread coursing through me in waves.
Whatever fate befalls Blodwyn is my own fault.
If I’d given the princess the same love and respect I craved, she might still be safe in the palace.
And if anything has happened to her, I’ll never forgive myself.
At long last a crow lands on the uppermost branches of a tree in the distance and lets out a long shriek.
“There,” Joan says, pointing ahead.
The cottage Margaret described waits peacefully in the clearing beyond, like a place out of one of Willa’s stories.
Dappled sunlight shines down on its thatched roof and patches of moss climb up the sides.
Chickens and goats roam the yard. But the quiet only increases my suspicion.
I have never missed my shadows more as the three of us make our way out of the forest, ears pricked for danger.
I reach for the knife at my belt as I ease open the cottage door.
“Hello?” I call. Silence answers. But then, near the table, I spot a familiar shade of dark hair, like ink spilled over the floor. “Blodwyn!”
The princess is lying in a heap on the ground, unconscious.
Her skin is pale and cold, her veins visible beneath the surface, a dark purplish color.
I lean close, but I’m not able to detect her breath.
Her heartbeat is so faint that it’s almost nonexistent.
There’s a half-eaten apple nearby. I pick it up and sniff the flesh, inhaling a floral, overly sweet scent. Almost like…
“Poison,” I whisper, fear skittering down my spine.
“What kind?” Joan asks.
I can’t tell from the scent alone and so I cleave the apple in half with my knife. A deep violet shade—the same as what I saw threaded beneath Blodwyn’s skin—is buried in the core. My brow furrows, my mind rapidly combing through the ingredients Mother forced me to learn.
“Midnight flower,” I determine at last. “It causes a deathlike sleep. One that…becomes permanent.”
The three of us share a solemn look.
“But…if this was the creature, why bother to poison her?” Jacquetta asks. “I thought she wanted the princess’s heart.”
I shake my head, as confused as they are.
“That doesn’t matter,” Joan says, springing into action. She jumps up and starts rummaging through the cupboards. “Do you know the antidote? There might be something here that can—”
A blast rocks the cottage.
My scream is lost in the explosion of glass and the quaking of the walls.
I throw myself over Blodwyn, shielding her from the flying debris.
When everything settles, I lift my head to find the room in shambles.
Broken dishes are scattered over the floor.
Furniture is blown to bits. Jacquetta and Joan are both huddled nearby, their arms over their heads.
Joan looks up first. She has a cut on her temple, blood leaking down the side of her face.
“What was—” she starts.
“Usurper!”
The croaking voice resonates from outside. Recognition lands like a blow. It’s the same voice I heard on the night of the Remembrance Ball. Then again at the Sanctum.
“It’s her,” I say. “The lost princess.”
Jacquetta looks at me, fear shining in her blue eyes.
“What the hell are we going to do?” she asks. “You don’t have your power and mine is nothing against hers.”
True enough. But I look down at Blodwyn, lying unconscious on the floor. She wouldn’t be in this mess if it weren’t for me. I have to try something.
“She’ll die if we just sit here,” I say. “We all will. Maybe we can manage to scare her off. We’ve done it before.”
Jacquetta weighs this. “All right. Shit. This is going to end badly.”
An understatement.
“I can try to help,” Joan offers. “Maybe—”
“No, you stay with Blodwyn,” I tell her. “Keep looking for something to counteract the poison.”
“All right, yes,” she agrees, though I can tell she’s terrified. “I’ll do my best. Be careful.”
Careful is long behind us. But there’s no other way.
I look to Jacquetta again, who nods, resigned.
And then, before I lose my nerve, I pick up my knife from where it fell and head outside.
At first, it seems as though the creature has vanished.
There are only the goats bleating their complaints and the panicked chickens molting feathers as they fuss around our ankles.
“Where is she?” Jacquetta asks.
“I don’t know. Maybe—”
Movement ripples from the darkness of the trees.
Even from a distance, I know it’s the creature.
Her body is contorted at wrong angles. Rotting flesh hangs from her form.
The clumps of her wispy white hair stir in the breeze.
And she’s not alone. Another figure glides behind her, shadows trailing in his wake: Shade. Fresh betrayal aches in my chest.
“Ah,” the creature says, her unearthly yellow gaze fixed on me. “The so-called queen.”
Her lips curl into a horrifying rictus smile.
Jacquetta wastes no time.
A spell pours out of her. Roots spring up from the earth, wrapping around the creature’s body and binding tight. But the lost princess merely gives a rattling laugh. She rolls her crooked shoulders and the roots slough away from her body, withered and grayed on the ground.
“A gallant effort,” the creature says. “But a foolish one.”
She flings her arm out and a wave of shadows pummels toward us.
“Run!” Jacquetta shouts, pivoting left.
She’s too slow. The shadows—my shadows—crash into the other witch. Jacquetta is tossed backward as if she weighs no more than a sack of flour. There’s a sickening crack as she collides with the side of the cottage, then slumps to the ground, unmoving.
“No!” I shout, racing toward her.
A wall of shadow springs up, blocking my path. I turn, brandishing my knife like an idiot.
“Stay back!” I warn.
My pulse speeds up as I brace myself for the creature’s next move. For Shade himself to rip out my heart. But nothing happens. The creature just stands there. Her yellow eyes gleam with something that might be amusement.
“Such courage,” she says. “I always have admired it.”
Always? The meager thread of my power taps a warning against my sternum.
The creature must read the confusion on my face.
“Do you not recognize me, Ayleth?”
The sound of my own name freezes me in place.
The creature lifts her hands, drawing the shadows around her.
And then, to my complete astonishment, her visage begins to shift.
The loose skin of her frame tightens and knits itself together.
The warped angles of her body snap back into place.
Her white hair thickens and darkens to a gleaming shade of auburn.
And the yellow of her eyes deepens to hazel.
My breath halts. Because I have seen those eyes—watched them flash in anger or harden with disappointment.
Prayed for them to look at me with even a hint of love or pride. It’s—
“Mother.”
—
For a moment, the world narrows to the two of us. My mind spins, unable to process what’s right in front of me. The last time I stood in Mother’s presence was the night I took her power. After that, there were only glimpses of her in the mirror until she disappeared. Until…
“You’re dead,” I say, finally finding my voice. “You died. Jacquetta saw you. She said they burned your body.”
“Did she?” Mother asks, glancing in the other witch’s direction. “Well, Nerissa’s girl was never very skilled at seeing the truth of things. Or have you forgotten what occurred in the forest?”
It takes me a beat to place what she means: The night after the Hunt’s raid on Stonehaven, when Mother disguised herself as me in order to scare Jacquetta away.
A glamour spell, I register dully. The same magic Mother used to enchant the real Sisters at Stonehaven so that we could assume their identities.
Could she have cast something similar to stage her own death?
To become the creature I believed was a resurrected princess bent on revenge? It should be impossible, and yet…
“I took your power,” I insist. “You can’t have been able to do…this.”
I gesture helplessly around me, recalling the floor in the Great Hall wrenching open. The statues coming to life. Trees uprooting themselves. Was all of that really her?
“You”—Mother points at me—“lit a fire within me. You were right all along, Daughter. About the Heirs. The craft. There is so much more to power than their pathetic spells and potions and rituals. It took me time to hone such abilities, but now I can share them with you, Ayleth. My heart.”
The words shudder through me, touching that wounded place in my soul. I flinch against it, hating the fact that Mother can make me feel anything at all.
“Don’t call me that,” I say through gritted teeth. “Don’t expect me to believe a word that comes out of your mouth after you’ve been deceiving me for, what…years?”
“Does it matter?” she asks. “You and I both know that if I’d returned to the palace, you would have tossed me on a pyre. Would have wrung my raven’s neck, should I have sent one. I needed to let you witness my abilities for yourself. The dead princess provided an excellent guise.”
A guise. She says it so simply. Like she was choosing a gown.
“So all this was a game to you?” I throw back. “You could have killed me. You did kill so many others.”
Another memory rises: Mother tearing the Follower’s heart out and eating it raw. What on earth has she become?
“And?” Mother asks with a shrug. “You don’t care about any of them. Not even Nerissa’s brat, much as you’ve convinced yourself otherwise. I’ve seen inside your heart, Daughter. And there’s only one thing you’ve ever really desired.”