She opened a page to watch the fragmented pieces of a scene play across in muted shades of whites, grays, and blacks: Stain’s memory of standing upon her kingly father’s shoes and learning to waltz. As Crony had yet to enliven the images, they could be viewed only by her eyes.
It was time to lock up the precious moments, until the princess’s future aligned itself. Returning the book to the box, Crony whispered an incantation over the lid. The magical sealant would glue the box closed until the moment the princess regained her crown and earned the fealty of both kingdoms.
Setting the box in the trunk, Crony dug deeper, drawing out the note she’d started shortly after she and Luce first saved Eldoria’s heir. She had procrastinated finishing it far too often. The words forced her to admit her mortality, something she didn’t like to think upon. However, with the prince coming, final arrangements must be made.
She unfolded the note to reread what she had scripted thus far:
Luce,
If ye be reading this, I be gone. May-let yer angry how I left. Ye must understand, had ye known, it would have lent unwelcome complications. But I still aim to help ye, as ye have always aided me. I have the means for ye to claim yer true form again. But first, I ask one last grand gesture. That ye deliver the princess’s box to Madame Dyadia, the royal sorceress of Nerezeth. It be locked shut, unable to surrender its contents until our girl wears the crown that once sat upon her queenly mother’s head. After that, Dyadia can return the memories to their rightful owner. I shared the knowledge when our kingdoms stood as allies, long afore the division of the skies. Dyadia will tell ye all me secrets then, if ye still wish to know. The box marked for Griselda, it be yers. Therein lie the regent’s many sins. May-let it can be a tool to free ye and our ward from Griselda’s poisonous hold, may-let her contrition will be yer claim to those wings ye been missing so long.
Crony dipped a quill in ink to complete the note, but paused, attention drifting back to the chest where a red box, the shape and size of a domed birdcage, was buried beneath cloth and other sundries. If she concentrated, she could hear the pieces of Griselda’s conscience flapping inside.
Luce didn’t know Crony kept it hid here, or that she’d stolen it years ago while the shrouds lost themselves to a feeding frenzy. It had been meant as a gift for her sylphin companion, a means for him to get revenge. But when the princess fell into their keep, it became leverage.
No one could have more power over Griselda than the one who held her conscience . . . the one who harbored the acrid flavor of the sins she committed while charmed enough not to choke on them herself. Should the full essence be unleashed upon the regent in one fell swoop, it would bring her to her knees.
However, Crony didn’t have the magic to reunite Griselda’s conscience with her body and mind. Only Mistress Umbra did. It would be up to Luce to find a way to lure his past love back to the ravine . . . to throw her at the mercy of the mother shroud.
Frowning, Crony pressed the quill to the note to commence writing, but stopped cold when the caw of a crow echoed in the distance—a distinctive wail that ended on a howl, closer to banshee than bird.
Crony’s breath caught . . .
It had been so long, but she would know that bleak sound anywhere. She dropped the note and inkwell in her haste to stand, a paste of ash and ink staining her cloak’s hem as she spun to look upward.
The crow soared along the underside of the canopy: large as a vulture, one pink eye centered above its white beak, feathers as pure and pale as fresh cream. It slowed, then perched on a branch high out of reach, watching Crony intently.
“Thana.” The crow’s name fell from the witch’s lips, a word she hadn’t spoken in centuries. It felt like music on her forked tongue, and she would’ve smiled at the nostalgia. But logic belayed any such reaction. If Dyadia had conjured her albino bird to scout with its portending eye here in this forest, it could mean only one thing: The prince had opted to journey through the ravine on his way to the castle. He was in this place already, or close at hand.
Elation wrestled with dread inside of her. Uniting Stain with her prince would no longer be an issue. But what would happen upon their meeting, seeing as Stain looked more boy than girl and had no voice?
Crony hurriedly scrawled her name along the bottom of the note. She dropped the note next to the box containing the glass memory book already within the chest.
Upon closing the lid, she rushed across the threshold toward market, staff in hand. She couldn’t interfere, but nothing would stop her from watching.
The crow lifted from its perch and followed at a distance, the thud of its powerful wings raising the hair along Crony’s nape. Thana following her didn’t bode well—though there was no point brooding over it.
The moment had arrived for Stain to claim her fate, and all of Crony’s mistakes were coming home to roost.
11
A Serenade for Brutal Bones
Within the Rigamort, Nerezeth’s most beautiful mystic ice cavern, there was a passage guarded by the most majestic of the night realm’s creatures: the brumal stags—enchanted to be loyal to each successive king and protect the land’s hidden border.
For centuries, the tunnel they guarded had been used by hoarfrost goblins who sold things on the black market, royally appointed sun-smugglers, and the occasional Night Ravager who had a secret mission, as it led directly up into the Ashen Ravine. That haunted wasteland provided the ideal camouflage for those stealing the sun or who wished to stay hidden from prying Eldorian eyes. However, none could enter Nerezeth from this same passageway, unless they belonged to the night. Brumal stags could sense their own kind, and anyone of the day realm, creature or man alike, foolish enough to attempt entry, fell prey to deadly antlers.
It was this very tunnel Prince Vesper planned to take for his trip into Eldoria. He knew, from notes he’d exchanged with his betrothed via jackdaws, that the princess and her family had been locked inside a dungeon in Eldoria since the peace treaty—all due to their fear of a murderous witch. Not only did the imprisonment affect Lady Lyra, but every cottage, wall, and tower within her land was swallowed by barbed vines that had been meant to protect them from the same vengeful conjurer. He’d promised long ago to keep her safe and intended to see it done. It was the least he could do, for without her song and her touch, his curse would harden him to a statue of gold and burst his stony bones into a thousand pinholes of light. But with her, together, they would reunite the sun and the moon and heal both lands.
Within the hour, he and his entourage would begin the journey to the day realm. Since there was only night here, his people took to their beds after that hazy glimpse of dawn in the sky, much like the Eldorians’ cessation courses began at the blink of twilight. However, the prince had commanded everyone in his entourage to retire early, so they would be rested enough to leave once the sky flashed pink.
Too unsettled to take his own advice, Vesper stopped at the castle’s infirmary. Wet coughs and labored breaths preempted the smells of sickness, panacea tea, and incense as he stepped into what was once the great obsidian ballroom. Cots lined the black walls and littered the open floor. Small pathways opened between them, allowing a mazelike passage. This place housed only the castle’s affected occupants. Other temporary infirmaries had been assembled inside cottages throughout the province, for both nobles and commoners. Illness harbored no prejudice; it affected the young and old and rich and poor alike. Mortality and its frailties were the most humbling equalizers.
Humbling even for royalty, for here in this room, Vesper wasn’t the king-in-waiting, or even the dark prince. Here he was the carrier of hope. A hope that was waning. Only one thing would save his sick people: pure daylight. Not only eating plants grown with it, but to stand beneath sunrays and absorb them, even if in small doses through windows or open doorways. With his sunlit blood, he could give them some of what they needed, but not enough.
Hardly even a head raised as he passed through the walkways, as most of the occupants were so ill, they struggled for breath and coughed without waking.
A small hand reached out from under a blanket and gripped Vesper’s thumb, stalling him. Though the moonlit complexion was stark against the prince’s deep coloring, like a layer of ice upon a hemlock, the child’s touch was as hot as fire.
Vesper’s heart pricked as he knelt beside the cot. “Good diurnal, Nyx.” He affectionately mussed the silvery bush of hair upon the seven-year-old’s head, noting the smear of gold peeking out from the boy’s nightshirt upon his chest. “How do you fare today?”
“I’d be better, were Elsa to shut her teeth about the princess.”