Chapter Twenty-Nine
Any sound left in the room dies. It’s a stunned suspended silence, struck with the fear of Morgana’s next move.
The sorcerer stands in the spotlight of the circle, shoulders down and chin raised, surrounded by emerald-tinted magic and the midnight-blue sparkles of her dress.
Her nails dig into Will’s throat as she forces him into place, onto his knees with his back to the aisle.
His hair has fallen over his eyes, and from where I am on the right side of the stage, I can’t see if he’s okay.
The queen keeps her arms locked around my waist, stopping me from fleeing. Stopping me from reaching him.
On the other side of the stage, past the shimmers of green, Bastion wrestles away from the king to where Card lies on his back, sprawled and speechless.
Bash carefully checks his fiancé’s condition, oblivious to anything else.
But Card is out of danger—for now. Below, a hundred faces stare up in shock.
Most of the guests are safe by the edges of the room, but Pigeon and Lark remain in the aisle with matching haunted expressions.
Weapons won’t help Will here. There’s only one person in this room with power.
Morgana leans forward.
“Be a good boy now and play along,” she says, a hiss to her tone. “You know what happens next.”
Will coughs against her grip. “Get fucked,” he says.
Morgana throws him. She hurls him backward, and he smacks into the wall of the magic circle, knocking his head and slumping down.
Not for the first time recently, Will’s blood splatters the floor, staining the ivory carpet like a bruise.
I push against the queen. I scratch the backs of her hands. I kick my heels back and scream.
“Stop it, please! Please. Please, let him go!”
“Stay where you are, Felicity,” the queen rasps.
“WILL!”
He groans and wipes his hair back.
Morgana crouches down. “You know I have ways to force you,” she says, “or you can willingly sacrifice yourself for the prince. Either way, I will get those words out of your mouth. You were friends long enough to make the love count. And if not, I’ll drag the fiancé back here or the father.
Even the little petal over there will do. You choose.”
Will’s laugh shakes his whole body. He shuffles up to sit, back supported by the magical barrier.
He angles his chin and grins. I jerk forward at the sight of blood running from his temple, and the queen’s nails shred my forearms in a pinch of sharp pain.
I don’t care. I told him the truth. I’ll come for him no matter what.
I will crawl and fight and tear myself apart.
I will let the queen cut my skin open. I will not let them take him from me.
“Screw you,” Will says.
Morgana’s face contorts. She lashes out once more, striking Will’s cheek with the back of her hand. He hits the floor, the crash of it interrupted by a set of hurried footsteps.
“Touch my son one more time and you will regret it!” Ruth bellows, running through the double doors hand in hand with my mum.
Windswept and breathing hard, Mum guides Ruth down the aisle, past the obstacles of fallen chairs, past Pigeon and Lark.
At the bottom of the steps, they face Morgana and Fern.
For the first time since before my birth, the four of them reunite.
The four old friends, unrecognizable to each other now, meet again across a chasm of hurt.
“What are you doing here?” the queen asks, yanking me flat against her.
“Stopping this madness,” Mum says. “What are you doing? They’re just children!”
“Let them go,” Ruth says, as relentless as I saw in Will’s memory. “Now.”
“You don’t understand!” Fern screeches by my ear, high-pitched and frantic.
“Morgana has always said that powerful magic is the best defense. Against our enemies. The rebels. She says anyone who tries to hurt us will be destroyed. We’ll make a desert of their homes until they kneel at our feet in surrender!
But when we’re gone, when my children have no one to protect them—”
“Mum, they’re going to kill Will!” I interrupt, to be rewarded with another deep scratch from the queen, blood dribbling between my fingers.
“How could you?” Bastion’s voice is a feeble whisper of his usual command, but it still turns all attention to him.
Fern clutches me like a port in a storm.
“Taking a life for the use of magic? What kind of person would that make me? What kind of king would I be? I’m the best sword master in the entire eight kingdoms. I don’t need—” Bastion halts.
He shoots piercing eyes at his mother and the betrayal behind them shatters my heart.
“You thought I’d trade Card? For magic? Mother, he’s the lo—”
“DON’T!” I shout. “Don’t risk it. Don’t say anything like that with the spell active.”
“Oh, honestly.” Morgana rolls her eyes. “Can we get on with it?”
My ears chime like the bell above my shop door. “Honestly.” The truth. The answer floods through my veins.
“Will,” I say simply, steadily. From where he leans against the emerald barrier, his eyes flick to mine. “Encho kaveh.”
The purple-petaled bittersweet nightshade I’d shown him this morning materializes.
Nightshade, to compel the truth. It reeks of a dark foulness that overthrows the queen’s foxglove perfume, until, a blink later, Will summons it to himself.
He claws his fingers in a sphere shape and shreds the plant into minuscule green and purple grains.
The wind in his hands bursts upward, into the air, right into Morgana’s face.
She inhales the nightshade in her next breath.
“W-What—?” she splutters. She waves against the gust, but it’s too late. A deep chesty cough wrenches from her. “What did you do?”
“Your turn to tell the truth,” Will says. “And I’d be quick about it. A dose of nightshade in that amount won’t kill you, but you’ll be feeling pretty sick soon enough.”
Her lavender eyes shoot to me. “Y-You—!”
“Tell them!” I say, trying to heave myself away from the queen once more. “Tell them you possessed Will. Tell them you’ve been poisoning the king!”
“I’ve been poisoning them both!” Morgana shouts.
She seizes in shock. Her eyes flare wide.
Fern’s arms around me loosen a fraction.
“What…?” the queen says.
“No—” Morgana resists, then clutches her neck. Oh, I know that feeling. I know her throat has closed up and squeezed like a vise. A taste of her own curse, thanks to the enchanted nightshade.
“Both?” I press. “How?”
The sorcerer struggles to keep her secrets sealed. Her pinched lips aren’t enough to hold back the compulsion to speak.
“Aconite and hemlock. In the foxgloves I sent.”
Of course…I’ve always thought there was something else in the perfume, a pinch of something spicier I could never figure out.
The aroma oils, the dried flowers, the layers upon layers of foxgloves hiding a combination of deadly poisons, not strong enough to kill instantly, but powerful enough to make a difference if exposed for a lengthy amount of time.
“Aconite is a hallucinogen,” Ruth says, and runs her eyes over the queen at my back, “and can cause paranoia, fits of hysteria, nausea, and heart problems…. Fern, your health problems haven’t been natural. The foxgloves you thought were a remedy were worsening your symptoms.”
“Shut up!” Morgana spits.
“Hemlock causes anxiety too,” Mum adds. “Tremors, memory loss, paralysis…Gods, it’s a miracle neither you nor Garland have died!”
Fern goes limp, and I use the moment to dive forward.
I slide on my knees right up to the edge of the circle and plant my palms on the surface of the translucent barrier, the texture smooth like a thick pane of glass, firm and cold.
Morgana stamps a heel petulantly before Will can drag himself my way.
“What?” Morgana asks, distress hammering at her confidence. “Why are you all looking at me like that?”
“Morgana,” Ruth says, “tell us why.”
The sorcerer seethes through gritted teeth.
“As if you’d understand,” she scoffs, and folds her arms against the force of the flower’s magic.
“You and Marc, cute little school sweethearts. It was disgusting. And then you, Lilibeth, show up all mopey at my door, moaning about how lonely you are. You had no idea. I didn’t know my parents.
I grew up alone, and the only people I knew—you, my friends—abandoned me after the smallest slights.
You hated me for not solving all your problems with a wave of magic. ”
I’ve had a lifetime of restraining myself, years to practice sheltering words. Morgana hasn’t. Her words and insecurities are unhindered and tumbling in free fall.
“The love spell wasn’t meant for you—it was intended for me—but I’m glad you tested it out first,” Morgana continues, glaring at my mum.
“What a disaster. I didn’t know it would end that way or pass on to your daughter.
At the time, I thought I was better than the rules of magic, but it showed me that the Library was right; there are no spells to make someone fall in love. Not forever, at least.”
Ruth takes Mum’s elbow and keeps her upright.
Morgana laughs, spiteful. Hollow. “Gods, did I celebrate when my curse put a wedge in your friendship. Finally, I thought. Finally, you will know what it’s like to be alone.
The only person I had left was Fern. She was the only person who understood me, who saw me.
I knew I couldn’t lose that so, yes, fine, I cursed her baby son.
I made it so he couldn’t use magic. I made her paranoid.
I filled her head so I’d be the only person she’d need.
She’d come to me for help, me for advice, for magic, anything.
She’d be reliant on me. You don’t understand.
She’s all I have. I needed her to need me. ”
The queen’s knees strike the floor. I glance back. Fern stares at Morgana, her mouth open under misty eyes and messy hair.
“My…my son…” she mumbles. “You…”