Mia flung the door open. She saw her father first—at the kitchen table with his head in his hands. Angelyne was sprawled facedown on the floor, weeping. Only after Mia stepped inside did she realize Angie had thrown herself on top of their mother’s lifeless body.
In her shock, Mia defaulted to logic. She knelt and ran her hands over her mother’s unbroken skin—her throat, her chest, her wrists. It was Mia who found the moonstone clutched in Wynna’s fist, the talisman that had failed to protect her. “No wounds,” she said, over and over. “She’s not bleeding. She can’t be dead, Father.”
Her father’s grief was so thick she could breathe it, a cloak of acrid smoke that burned her throat. “Gwyrach don’t need swords or arrows,” he said. “They can stop a human heart.”
The king sent a royal summons that Griffin accompany his wife’s body to the castle, and a few hours later, eight guards came and lowered her mother into an alabaster box. Even in her shock, Mia thought the number excessive. Eight men for one dead woman.
Mia begged to go with them.
“Stay with Angelyne,” her father said. “Keep her safe.”
She sat in speechless horror as the Hunters stalked the woods, looking for her mother’s killer. The sick woman from the neighboring village was no longer a suspect: Mia would later discover the Hunters had taken her to the Kaer early that morning, long before Wynna was killed. Her Hand already graced the king’s Hall of Hands.
It was Angie who had found their mother’s corpse. She had run into the cottage, proudly holding an astrolabe she’d bought for Mia at the market, when she saw her mother lying on the floor. Poor Ange was only twelve, and she screamed and shook as Mia stroked her strawberry hair.
But all Mia could hear were the cruel words she’d said to her mother. They took on the air of augury, a malicious prophecy dancing across her eyelids every time she tried to sleep.
Maybe it’s only your heart that will kill you. And maybe you deserve it.
Chapter 50
Home
“MY FATHER’S MEN BROUGHT her to the castle,” Quin said. “Eight guards.”
Mia dragged herself back to the present. Her whole body was trembling, the blood howling in her ears. “I remember.”
“They took her to the crypt and left her there.”
It hurt imagining her mother’s body abandoned on a cold stone.
“What were you doing there, Quin? Tell me the truth.”
He stared at her a long moment. Then the words tumbled out quickly, as if he wanted to be rid of them.
“I was meeting someone. We needed a place where we wouldn’t be discovered.”
“Who were you meeting?”
“My music teacher.”
“The boy who taught you piano?”
He nodded. “I told you he was my first friend, and that was true. I was smitten by his sister—she was beautiful—but before long I was smitten by him, too. Our friendship blossomed into something else. But in the Kaer, people were always watching: the servants, the guards, my father himself. We couldn’t even touch each other. All we could do was play each other songs to express the way we felt.”
“Like ‘Under the Snow Plum Tree,’” Mia said. “The song you were playing in the library.”
“It was the first song Tobin ever taught me. That haunting melody . . .” For a moment Quin’s voice slipped away. Then he recovered it. “We wanted to meet somewhere we wouldn’t be watched. And then we realized: the crypt was under the grove of plum trees! Under the snow plums, if it’s meant to be, you’ll come to me. The song had told us exactly where to go. So we made plans to rendezvous in the crypt once darkness fell.”
He frowned. “But the night didn’t go as planned. We’d only been in the crypt a few minutes when we heard the guards. We hid behind the tombs as they carried in the body. My father was with them, as was yours. They were quarreling. My father wanted to keep your mother’s body in the Kaer—to study it, he said. They suspected she had magic, that the famed leader of the Hunters was harboring a Gwyrach in his home.”
Mia’s stomach sank. They had been right.
“My father won the argument, of course,” Quin said. “He always does. Though he did let your father choose the burial stone—which is why your mother’s vault is the only one in the crypt that isn’t a grotesque parody, in my opinion. The moon and the bird.”
The breath caught in her throat. The king hadn’t merely used her as collateral to ensure Griffin fulfilled his quota of Hands. The truth was darker. Ronan had accused him of harboring a Gwyrach.
Mia’s chest ached. Her father’s only hope of saving his daughters’ lives was to give the king whatever he wanted.
“This is why we were forced into marriage,” she said.
“That wasn’t the only reason.” A pall passed over Quin’s face. “My father discovered us lurking behind the tombs. I have never seen him so angry. When he gets angry, my father is . . . severe.”
He exhaled. “He didn’t hurt me—not physically, at least. But he hurt Tobin. And he made me watch.”
A chill dripped down Mia’s spine. “What did he do?”
“You tell me. You’ve seen Tobin yourself.”
“What do you mean? How could I . . .”
The boy in the village.
It struck her like a thunderclap. Quin’s music teacher was the boy in Killian Village who’d handed them bread and a pouch of snow plums. She remembered the hitch in the boy’s gait, the two fingers missing on his right hand.
“He threw Tobin out of the Kaer,” Quin said quietly, “and banished him to the village. But not before he made sure he would never play music again.”
Mia paled. It was too horrible.
“I’m sorry, Quin. I can’t imagine what that must have been like.”
He straightened, scrubbing the emotion from his face.
“Like I said, worst night of my life.”
For the first time, Mia understood why Quin had been cold and withdrawn every time she spoke of her mother. The fear and shame from that night mingled in his blood like a blizzard.
Something sparked in Mia’s memory. “Is that why you told your father I was dangerous the night before our wedding?”
“Actually, he told me. Since they suspected your mother was a Gwyrach, they suspected you, too. Though to be honest, I had long suspected you might have magic. The circumstances of your mother’s death were too odd. It was easy to blame your father, the great magic Hunter, but I had seen her body, and there were no wounds. In my darker moments, when that awful night played relentlessly in my head, I wondered if you’d done it.”
“So you stuck a knife in your boot at the wedding.”
He smiled, rueful. “You weren’t very fond of me—that was readily apparent. I think it gave Father great pleasure, the idea of marrying me off to a girl who might actually kill me.”
“You never did seem particularly surprised I had magic.”
“And now you know why.” He cleared his throat. “But I’m not afraid of you anymore, Mia. I know what kind of woman you are, and I’ve seen how much you grieve the loss of your mother. There was a while in the forest when I wondered if you’d killed her by mistake. But I don’t think you can kill someone by mistake, even if you do have magic. I’ve only seen you use your magic for good.”
Mia couldn’t speak. A hole had opened up inside her. He’d meant the words to be a comfort, but they landed like an arrow in her heart. I wondered if you’d killed her by mistake.
She heard Zaga rasping: If you want to kill a Dujia, touch her wrist when you are angry. The veins in our wrist are delicate but direct. They make beautiful vessels for rage.
Mia had gripped her mother by the wrists, seething with rage.
“Quin.” The words were fire in her throat. “I think I killed my mother.”
He didn’t have time to answer—a shout pierced the air. It was close, just around the corner. Through the trees Mia saw a flash of red in the distance. The hot air balloon.
More panicked shouts filled the air. She couldn’t move. She was pinioned to the earth. But women were pouring out of the merqad, brushing past them and barreling toward the balloon. Whoever had arrived, they certainly weren’t receiving the same dispassionate welcome Mia and Quin had received the day before.
I killed her. I killed my mother.