Chapter Seventeen Kit #2
I let her lead me to the garden round the back of the manor. Dusk has fallen, but light lingers enough that I can see her face. Her eyes gleam with concern when she turns to me again.
“Why did you run away, Kit?” she asks when we are alone. “You shouldn’t have taken off. You could have been hurt.”
“I couldn’t let Catharine come to harm.”
Mother sniffs. “She would not have come to any if her father had behaved himself.”
I shake my head. This conversation will go nowhere, and I don’t want to hear my mother say these things again. Instead, I ask, “How long have you been pregnant?”
“Four months, nearly five,” she answers. “Don’t look so hurt. After I lost Byrne’s first baby, I wanted to be sure before I made it known.”
I remember the first, only a few months after their wedding.
My little brother had been so small, though the maids had whispered that he was too big for his supposed time.
I always pretended not to know. He came out silent and blue, and it wasn’t his fault if he came about on the wrong side of wedding vows.
Byrne has wanted a son for as long as he has known my mother, and a new thought occurs to me.
“You knew you were pregnant when you had us cursed,” I say out loud. “You knew he wouldn’t dare harm you, even if he found out what truly happened.”
She dips her head. “And, should it become a problem, I could always disappear after the birth.”
“You would leave your child with him?” I ask, surprised.
“The child is already promised elsewhere.”
Another memory rises to the surface: Speir saying to my mother, “The price is still acceptable?” And her answer: “Yes. Come in five months.”
“You didn’t—” I can hardly speak it. “Tell me you didn’t promise Speir …?”
Mother lifts her chin. “Magic always has a price.”
“How could you?!” I exclaim. “It’s just a baby! How could you promise it away to them?”
“Why would I keep his spawn?” she hisses. Her pride melts into fury. “Why would I give him an heir after all he’s done? It would serve him right.”
“But you aren’t only punishing Byrne! You would punish an innocent!”
“How innocent can his child really be?” She shakes her head. “Fate gave me this child so that I could secure your safety. What happens to the babe is beyond my control. And do you understand? I don’t want it.”
I stare at my mother, dismayed—not only by what she is, what she’s done, but because I understand.
A part of me understands carrying an unwanted burden, being so desperate to be rid of it that you would allow anyone else to be hurt if you could just be free.
Pain pricks my heart. I always thought my mother was different.
Better. I want the mother I thought I had, but I’m not sure she ever existed.
“You aren’t escaping what he’s done,” I say out loud. “You’re only passing the punishment on to someone who doesn’t deserve it.”
“Let me be concerned with this,” Mother says. “Tell me—what are you doing here? Prince Abram acted as if he had not seen you, but you came in riding one of their horses.”
I pause, unsure if Idris would appreciate me spilling his family’s secrets. But there is too much in common between Idris’s circumstances and the fate that awaits my mother’s baby. So I tell her, hoping she’ll see the dangers of it and change her mind. “Ours isn’t the only family cursed.”
I keep secret the details of the cause of the Hidden Queen’s curse, trying to preserve what privacy I can, but emphasize the results—that Idris is now dying for something that isn’t his fault.
“Except he wouldn’t have to die,” I blurt, my frustration overcoming my caution, “if he would just let me help.”
“What do you mean by that?” Mother asks.
“I’ve found a way to break his curse, but he won’t take it because he wants me to use it to undo the curse you caused.”
“The royal family knows about that?” Mother asks, eyebrows lifting. For the first time in our conversation, she looks surprised.
“They figured it out,” I answer. “Most of it.”
“Hmm. And still he’s rejected your offer of breaking his curse?”
I clench my hands, angry with him all over again. “He’s so fixed on being noble about it that I can’t get him to see reason. He claims … fondness for me. Wants me to use it to break my own curse.”
My mother watches me, her eyes sharp. “This cure—it works on any curse?”
“Speir said so. He said I could use it on Idris or Catharine or—”
I snap my mouth shut. My stomach sinks. I’ve said too much. I’ve exposed my weakness, put a drop of blood before a hound. And my mother is not the mother I wished for—she is all the darkest parts of me.
“Or you could fix your old body,” Mother finishes for me.
I don’t answer.
“Darling, why do you even hesitate? The prince doesn’t want your help.” She waves her hand dismissively. “He is a fool, but let him be one.”
“But he’s doing it because he … because of reasons that aren’t right.”
“Because he thinks he’s in love? Because he’s too proud to accept help?” Mother shrugs. “Let him. What does it matter to you?”
“I never said love!” A flood of embarrassment heats my face.
“It is inconvenient that he won’t be able to marry you,” Mother muses. “But if you look like this, it will not be much trouble to find someone else to take you in. And perhaps it would be better to seek someone farther abroad—someone who knows less of your history.”
“I’m not going to keep Catharine’s body,” I say, though my voice sounds too firm, too confident. Like a child who knows she is lying.
Mother fixes me with a gentle smile. “Why not? You told me you did not like my methods because Catharine would be trapped in your body, at risk from her father. So cure the wasting and keep her away from Byrne. Would it be such a punishment for her to continue to look like you used to? You were not so very plain.”
I wince. My mother has never called me plain outright before, but I’ve always known it to be true.
And it never bothered me—I don’t think—beyond the occasional, fleeting moment of regret.
My mother is right, though. Were it not for the wasting, mine would not be such a horrible body to have.
What’s worse is, I think Catharine might even agree to it.
But even if the wasting stopped, there would still be the damage to her hands.
And even if the damage were minimal … would it be right to keep her body from her just because it might make my life easier?
Just because I’d like to be admired and strong and graceful?
My body is mine, for all its faults, and Idris wasn’t entirely wrong—it has carried pain, but it has also been a vessel of delight. And isn’t Catharine’s the same for her?
I tighten my hands on the straps of my reticule. Darkness has fully come over the garden now, and the wind rises. My head feels clearer than it has all day.
“No, my body isn’t so very plain,” I agree. “And even with the wasting, maybe it isn’t so bad. It is mine, either way.”
Mother frowns. I begin to walk back toward the manor house.
“Do not use the cure to undo my spell.” Mother places a hand lightly on my arm. “Whatever you may think now, I gave you a gift. You shouldn’t squander it.”
“It wasn’t a gift,” I say, stopping in the courtyard. Torchlight illuminates us now, the wind whipping at the flames and making the light dance. “It was an escape. And … maybe I needed it. But I don’t anymore.”
“You would go back to what you were?” Her expression is part disappointment, part disgust. “You will be crushed by the wasting, make no mistake.”
“You underestimate me, Mother.” I lift my chin. “I can carry this. And when I can’t carry it—I have friends who will help me. And I’m not too stubborn to ask.”
“King Byrne won’t let you slip away the next time he catches you,” Mother warns. “You have hardly begun to feel what it is to be imprisoned by that man.”
“He won’t catch me again.” I am mapping my way to the Westness house in my head.
I’ll need to find Abram before I go, give him the wand and selkie skin.
Then I’ll collect my sister. We can sail from a different port than Stromwell.
Abram will save Idris, and I will save Catharine.
I will just have to find another way to break the other curse.
“Are you sure?” Mother tilts her head, her expression innocent. “Byrne has a way of claiming what he wants.”
Cold runs through me that has nothing to do with the wind. “What did you do?”
She shrugs. “Servants talk, my dear. I found out where the two of you have been staying. I merely sent word. I meant to warn you—but it seems I’ve just told Catharine that her father is in town looking for her.”
All the blood drains from my face.
“Don’t tell me you haven’t told her the truth of it all?” My mother almost preens. “After all, she’s the one you chose.”
“When did you send that message?”
“Oh, near two hours ago now.”
I turn and run for the town before she has finished the sentence.
My pulse roars in my ears by the time I make it to the market.
I do not spare a thought for my mother or unborn sibling, though I feel the war in the back of my mind.
Maybe she didn’t intend for Catharine to go to her father in my body.
Maybe she thought that I would have told Catharine the truth by now, and that Catharine would stay away.
But I haven’t. And Catharine thinks her father is safe.
I shove open the doors to the Guildhall and stumble to a stop, breathing fast and strained. A few servants pause to look at me in surprise. Abram leans out of the door of a side room and hurries over once he sees me. “Kit—”
“Is my sister here?” I ask, the barb in my throat stopping me before I can say her name. It stabs as I stutter, “Is my st—my—the king?”
Abram nods, looking confused. “She arrived a quarter hour ago. King Byrne asked to speak with her in private.”
Surely he wouldn’t dare. Not here. Not mere steps from so many people.
“Where?” I demand.
Abram straightens at my urgency. “The audience room.”