At one time, the solar’s many windows had allowed sun to shine in, aiding with tasks that required good lighting: reading, map-drawing, embroidery, or calligraphy. But the day Nerezeth fell into the earth and dragged the night sky with it, Madame Dyadia stepped up as the royal sorceress in the absence of her dead son and took the solar as her workspace.
Moonlight glimmered through the windows now, disrupted sporadically by thick swirls of snowflakes. Madame Dyadia riffled through a cabinet, only her backside visible behind the open door. She closed the door and carried over the box containing Lyra’s memories, the enchanted seashell that held her voice, and a vial filled with a dark, oily liquid. The sorceress set the items on the table, her black-and-white-striped flesh blending into her gown.
Her catlike gaze settled on Luce, and Lyra tried not to stare at the empty socket puckering her forehead. “Well done, sylph. Revealing the ‘princess - revolution’ box to Eldoria’s regent played out brilliantly. I apologize for doubting you when you first came to me.”
Luce tipped his head in acknowledgement, absently tugging at the talisman around his neck. “It was in fact our Queen Lyra who gave me the idea, when she shamed Sir Erwan into confessing everyone’s crimes in Eldoria. If only we’d had influential witnesses to overhear him, we could’ve forgone the princess test altogether.”
Vesper shrugged. “I rather like the way it played out. Watching my wily thief become the queen she was meant to be while bringing her cousin to her knees. It was a thing of beauty.” He grinned at Lyra and she smiled back, feeling a rush of pride. Vesper reached for the vial and held it up to a slant of moonlight. The contents illuminated, glittering like black diamonds. “So, this is what the regent used? For Lustacia’s fraudulent shadows?”
Dyadia nodded. “Though this one is less potent. Fool woman had no business dabbling in such things. All it takes is a drop of the moonlit essence for the apparitional effect. By using an excess, she damned those miserable goblins to a half-light state forever—bound to her daughter. Though they still have some of their innate characteristics, they must do whatever she demands. They’ve no choice . . . no freedom to think on their own.” She gestured toward the vial. “Whoever serves this will have the same power over their recipient. However, this diluted dose will last no more than two years, then the victim can return to their original form, while still remembering all they experienced as a half-light.”
It didn’t hurt the stags, did it? To make more? Lyra signed the question.
Dyadia, having lived as long as Crony, easily deciphered her gestures. “Not at all. Since such a small amount was required, I drained it from the edge of their antlers, still intact upon their head. No different than pricking a fingertip for a droplet of blood. And I awarded the donor stag with extra nutrients.” She held up her own finger, revealing a miniscule hole. “It is a tradeoff. One must always give back what they take, or both parties suffer.”
Lyra furrowed her brow. What is the tradeoff for me to receive my voice again?
Vesper set the vial down, intent upon hearing Dyadia’s answer himself.
“There’s no tradeoff for something that is rightfully yours. You shall have it back, but exactly as it was. You weren’t able to talk with your voice before, and you shan’t be able to now. It will be nothing more or less than it was in the beginning—a blessing for its beauty and the power to inspire peace and happiness in others. But also a curse, for it will never inure itself to words. Do you still desire it?”
Yes, Lyra answered. A part of her had hoped that since Lustacia had managed to mold her voice into speech, there might be some residual effect to help Lyra talk. But it didn’t matter. Being able to emote through sound . . . to laugh aloud or yelp in surprise . . . to sing with a jubilation and joy that would make others happy upon hearing it—that was enough.
“Then you shall have it. First, I must make a trip to Eldoria for Crony’s grimoire. It contains the transference recipe I’ll need.”
As if on cue, Luce lifted the talisman from around his neck. He pulled a few strands of hair free from the braided pendant. “So you can find her quickly.”
Lyra now understood why the determinate elixir had carried Dregs to the Rigamort. Apparently, Dregs had used an icicle growth his cousin once lost in a game of cards for his elixir’s personal ingredient. Since Slush had already become a half-light apparition when Dregs went looking for him, the magic carried him to the last place it remembered the icicle growth being.
As Luce handed over Crony’s hair, a look passed between him and Dyadia—something indecipherable, but decidedly somber.
You’ll be visiting Crony? Lyra asked. Please convince her to come to the nuptials. Tell her she has an honored place in both kingdoms, protected by myself and the king. I want her to see us wed, to be with us when the skies unite. Tell her I still need her . . . she’s the only mother I can remember.
Madame Dyadia studied her palm where the strands of hair trembled on her every breath. “Do not worry, Highness. I will speak to her. And she will bear witness to everything; I vow it.” She wrapped the hairs within a cloth, then pushed the memory box toward Lyra. “On the note of mothers, it is time you are reacquainted with Queen Arael and your place in Eldoria.”
Lyra’s heartbeat skipped as she reached up to touch her crown, the weight of it foreign upon a mane of lustrous hair to which she had yet to acclimate. As foreign as the mother she would never know.
She brought her fingers down and signed: I don’t expect any memories of Queen Arael in that box. She died giving birth to me.
Luce, having had a pained expression on his face already, looked beyond miserable now. It was as if he wished to slip into his ethereal form and vanish altogether. Instead, he kept his lips clamped over pointed teeth and stared at the pendant between his fingers.
Vesper leaned around the sylph to catch Lyra’s gaze, his crown’s silver-tipped spikes warming to pinkish-orange in the candlelight, like black thorns dotted with morning dew. “There will be memories of your father telling you of your mother. I never met him, but I know how much he loved you. Enough to stop a war and sign a blood oath to win his daughter the nightsky she needed to be happy. Like my father, yours accepted you from the beginning as his own, even though you were different from him. A man like that would never let you forget where you came from. Who you came from.”
Thank you, Lyra mimed. She’d learned many things about her kingdom’s history from Prime Minister Albous at the luncheon feast, the most unsettling of which was that her father had a hand in King Orion’s death through the panacea roses, however unintentional. She loved Vesper even more for forgiving her father and offering such kind sentiments.
Dyadia opened the box’s lid and lifted out a stack of glass that jingled like chimes. Glowing magical threads bound the spine, forming a book of sorts. Lyra had watched Crony use the spinnerets in her horns to tie two or three memories together at a time. However, she’d never seen so many memories. And each one belonged to her . . . an entire past waiting dormant within these pages.
The sorceress turned her unnerving gaze to Lyra. “You said you wished me to animate it before the imprint, so our king can view the pages?”
Lyra nodded. She wanted to share her background with Vesper, just as he’d shared his in his notes. To intimately experience one another’s pasts would perhaps awaken the magic that could bring the moon and sun together. As it stood, she felt nothing inside of her powerful enough to enact such a monumental, earth-shattering feat.
Luce started to rise but Lyra caught his wrist, asking him to stay without speaking.
He nodded and sat again.
The sorceress sipped from a cup. Steam curled over the brim’s edge, smelling foul and putrid. When asked what it was, she replied, “Decomposing leaves gathered from a boneyard, a raven’s skull ground to powder, and a mourner’s tears.” Having drank it all, she fogged the pages with her breath of death, one after another, animating a multitude of colorful shapes across the enchanted tableaus—stained-glass images coming alive.
Lyra flipped through, choosing which scenes to share . . .
Together, the three of them watched blissful moments. She cried upon her first memory, of her father’s own tears upon her face as a newborn, giving her the taste of comfort. Then fury burned dark and deep upon remembering he’d died at the hand of his sister. While watching the scene when Lyra first met Crony in the dungeon, Luce’s hands tensed around the talisman that he’d returned to his neck.