“I brought them to keep our home vermin-free. You know how I abhor infestation.” Griselda’s dark gaze circled around to meet Lyra’s. “They haven’t eaten since yesterday. It makes them better hunters, keeping them on the edge of hunger.”
Lyra polished off the last of her milk in a painful gulp as Griselda opened each cage. The birds fluttered in chaos until they found places to settle: on the bed canopies, on the copper chimney plugged into the one slip of wall not covered with a tapestry, on the mirror strung from the ceiling.
Taken aback by her aunt’s ingenuity, Lyra blotted the milk from her lips with her sleeve. Her mind called to the moths and spiders that now scurried behind the stone walls, forbidding their entrance. She couldn’t risk them coming out just to be eaten. They were too dear to her.
After aiming a smile upward at the chirping birds, Griselda turned to the trunk at the foot of the largest bed.
“Aren’t you to sit and take refreshment with us, Mother?” Wrathalyne’s chin quivered as she blotted her face with a napkin.
“No, my darling.” Griselda traced the carvings of Eldoria’s sun on the trunk’s lid. “That place setting does not belong to me. It is for your sister.”
Lyra’s pulse scrambled. She wriggled in her chair, holding her shadows at bay though they pressed to come forward. Surely her aunt had lost her mind to grief, and all of this pomp and pageantry would disintegrate in a fit of weeping and wailing.
“Y-you mean . . . we’re saving a place for Lustacia’s ghost?” Avaricette questioned, grasping Wrathalyne’s hand atop the table. The girls’ knuckles whitened as they watched the birds preen their feathers and coo quietly.
“Do not look so anxious, my darlings. I had to keep it secret from you. You’re both too excitable.” She waggled her forefinger. “Couldn’t risk your tongues running ahead of your rationale. And your grief had to be genuine. But rest assured, your sister is no more a ghost than I am defeated.” Fisting her hand, Griselda knocked on the trunk’s lid three times. Three knocks answered back from within.
Lyra and her cousins gasped simultaneously.
Griselda laughed upon opening the lid. The hinges creaked at their stopping point. Something wormed from beneath the folded bed linens, seeking a way out. The sheets avalanched from the trunk and slid to the floor. Lyra almost lurched up her milk as a headful of long silvery hair—identical to her own—emerged from the trunk’s depths. The face, wearing a rueful frown, belonged to the very alive Lustacia. Though holding a wilted bouquet of panacea roses, she hadn’t a scratch upon her.
Griselda helped her daughter climb out—a feat made easier due to her ensemble: the torn page boy’s trousers and tunic that they’d been unable to find at the bloody scene of her vanishing.
Lyra’s mind spun. Why would Griselda put everyone through Lustacia’s death, why fake being heartbroken to the point of soul-sickness herself? And why was Lustacia’s hair so like Lyra’s own?
Upon the final question, a dark perception prickled inside Lyra’s chest, as if she’d inhaled shards of glass. The answer took shape—an explanation so vile and cunning her lungs withered on an unsung cry.
Wrathalyne and Avaricette leapt from their seats and ran to hug their younger sister, unconcerned for the logic of it, merely ecstatic to have her back again.
Trembling, Lyra stood from her chair. You . . . are me. She mimed the accusation to Lustacia, underscoring it through their joined gazes. If only her moths weren’t hidden away, they could help her relay the words aloud. But Lustacia’s attention dropped to the roses in her hand, proving she needn’t hear Lyra to feel remorse for all the lies she’d told.
Griselda stepped into Lyra’s line of sight, blocking her view of her daughters. “A shame you couldn’t accompany us on all those sunny walks throughout the kingdom. Constitutionals have such an invigorating effect on one’s thought process. Why, just weeks ago I stumbled upon a group of common urchins playing at the Crystal Lake, imitating their princess’s ghoulish coloring, her metallic hair. And I had a glorious epiphany. I said to myself, ‘Why Griselda, just think. Given time enough, any one of these street urchins could look the part of the princess in the prophecy. She’d simply need to share her slender bone structure.’”
Lyra looked down at the flocked navy-and-mulberry gown fitted so nicely to her shape. She backed toward the table again, numb. They had been planning this for weeks, perhaps months. Griselda, she expected . . . but Lustacia? She thought they were becoming friends. Family.
Agony gored her heart and singed her eyes.
She’d been a fool. She had no family. Not anymore. Not ever again.
Wrathalyne and Avaricette scooted atop the smaller bed. Their faces brightened in malevolent delight, mesmerized by their mother’s confession.
“This was a simple dusting of silver sand.” Griselda continued. Lustacia drooped as her mother stroked her lustrous pale hair, the misery in her downturned features deepening. “Imagine what I can do with a bit of alchemist trickery. And a person’s features often change as they mature. Especially if they’re out of sight for some years, never seen except for walks in the garden, hidden beneath a suit of nightsky. It wouldn’t be so difficult, to manage a replacement. Other than some moonlit alterations to her coloring, all a girl would need to win Eldoria’s and the prince’s hearts is a songbird’s voice.” Griselda reached into the trunk, pulling out a seashell secured upon a silver stand. “Look at that. It would seem the midnight shadows and stardust weren’t the only articles to go missing from the mages’ keep yesterday.”
Lyra dropped into her chair, taken back to one of the last moments she had with her father before he left for Nerezeth. They spent a day in the library together. For the hundredth time he had shared the silly story of how he met her mother, and the instant Lyra released a musical strain of laughter, he trapped the sound in an enchanted seashell.
“It’s just a bit of magic,” he explained when she held out her hand, asking to hold the pearly treasure. “Our mages take seashells and lure out the ocean’s song with incantations, leaving them longing to be filled again. Today, you’ve given this one a treasure more rare and invaluable than the sea’s very breath. I will share it with Queen Nova. She’ll fall in love with you upon hearing it, and refuse us nothing.”
Griselda clucked her tongue, recouping Lyra’s attention. “When your father took an echo of your laugh, did he tell you that if a shell is filled to the brim and sealed with a cork of bespelled willow wood coated in sea salt, one can either listen to the trapped sound by loosening the stopper in increments until it’s all used up . . . or one can grind the shell, cork, and salt to powder, combine it with a simple transference potion, and swallow the sound whole, making it their own?”
Lyra’s chin sagged. From within this insulated dungeon, no one would ever hear her musical wails. She sent a desperate glance to the royal family paintings no longer decking the castle walls, fixating on those of her father and herself. Griselda couldn’t make everyone forget their true princess existed, but she could make them forget Lyra’s face.
A chilling shiver started inside her head and traversed to her feet, leaving her drained and weak. She swayed in her chair.
Griselda unlocked the pine box at the end of the smaller bed and laid the shell within. “Are you feeling out of sorts, dear? A bit drowsy? I’ve the perfect place for you to sleep.”
Only then did Lyra notice how much the box looked like a coffin.
“I must admit, you impressed me for a moment.” Griselda tapped the open edge with her ring finger, whereupon sat Queen Arael’s ruby band. She must have pilfered it from Lyra’s room as they were packing. “However, your mind is no match for mine. Age does have its boons. A lifetime of hard-won wisdom is worth more than all the gloom-dwelling magic in your frail body.”
The room swam and Lyra caught the table’s edge for balance, causing the teacups to rattle. Something was wrong inside her head. Everything felt . . . blurry. Out of sorts and out of reach.
She called upon her bugs, unable to remember any reason not to. As the birds swooped down upon the intrusion of moths and spiders, the crunch of exoskeletons and snapping wings brought tragic clarity to Lyra’s thoughts. She called upon her shadows, feeding them with the rage of betrayal.