Somewhere deep within, Griselda understood she had robbed her daughters of their youth by isolating them, especially the eldest two. As much as she searched for regret, she felt only an empty yawning, devoid of any sentiment other than her desire to be free of this claustrophobic cell forever.
Dropping the basket into an iron pot, Griselda motioned to Erwan. He rounded up the goblins and led them out the door, heading toward the secret tunnel. There, the hidden room awaited with dirt walls and mossy floors, where Lustacia’s royal destiny would be finalized.
As Slush stepped across the threshold behind his four compatriots, his bulbous eyes turned to her.
“Today was your final delivery,” Griselda answered, waving him on. “As such, your payment is due. Sir Erwan is taking you all to our most private quarters. I’ll be there shortly to make restitution.”
That seemed to satisfy him, for his shoulders lifted, as if he already felt taller. The door pounded shut behind him.
Lustacia stood, even before Griselda motioned her over. Wrathalyne and Avaricette followed her lead, stashing away the sewing. Their eyes held less trepidation than their sister’s, both obviously eager for a brush with the black arts. They were to be disappointed today.
“Are we going to the special room, Mumsy? Where you hide the old family portraits and the prince’s letters and roses?” Wrathalyne asked the question, and Lustacia’s features collapsed in dread.
Upon seeing her youngest daughter’s expression, Griselda frowned. Ignoring Wrathalyne’s query, she turned her attention to Lustacia as she placed the grimoire into the iron pot alongside the basket. The remaining ingredients waited in the dirt room upon some shelves. “Do not worry, my princess daughter. I’ve piled the keepsakes in the darkest corner alongside Queen Arael’s reconstructed mirror and covered everything with her moth-eaten gowns. We’ll have to fill your royal chamber with them, once you’ve married the prince. Lyra was fiercely nostalgic. However, with the alterations in your appearance, you favor the ghostly child in the portraits enough that none would question your heritage.”
“Fine.” Lustacia’s answer came in a singsong voice, out of synch with her weary expression. “Let’s have done with the magic spell.”
“Truly? No pleading for the goblins’ lives? No bleeding heart?” Griselda asked, pleased and surprised by her daughter’s boldness.
“My prince is coming. He has my heart.” Lustacia’s gaze was heavy with remorse, as it often was, a failing brought on by her sensitive conscience. She withdrew Prince Vesper’s latest letter from a small box along with its partnered panacea rose—stripped of thorns and deep lavender petals just starting to curl with age. Every so often, the prince sent a rose with his monthly note in honor of the one she’d given up as a child, though in truth, it had been her cousin’s sacrifice.
Lustacia cradled the two items as if they were babes. She always read each missive and answered as a princess should, alluding to her delicate constitution . . . her fear of the giant nettles and angry bees that held her castle hostage. Hinting at how much she looked forward to him rescuing her. Griselda had taught her daughters that if they wished to nourish a man’s interest, they must first fatten his ego. After responding, Lustacia always put the letters and the roses from her sight. She claimed the perfume and the ink’s bright shimmer made her ill. Griselda knew the truth, that they reminded her of Lyra. Annoying as it was, she had allowed her daughter this one weakness. Until now. A queen must have the fortitude to choose brutality over mercy and apathy over conscience when her crown was at stake.
“You’ve worked hard for this.” Griselda took the rose and letter from Lustacia, dropping them in the basket to carry out with the other items. Throughout these last six months of their confinement, without fail, her youngest daughter had bathed in salve and used thick paste on her hair and lashes. Both concoctions were made of smuggled starlight, brumal antler powder, and egg whites, and had the effect of silvering anything they touched. Lustacia had even put droplets of the mixture, thinned with milk, into her eyes, despite the agonizing burn, resulting in a lilac hue. Even with her tendency toward bruising, she had proven herself thick-skinned enough to do what had to be done.
Though Griselda despised that her youngest was forced to trade her rosy, freckled complexion, auburn hair, and blue eyes for a gloom-dweller’s countenance, it had been a necessary transformation. The one thing they hadn’t accomplished was lengthening her lashes. After trying without success, they decided instead to alter all the portraits of Lyra in her youth. Griselda sent Bartley for pigments, canvas, and brushes, having him claim Griselda’s daughters and the princess needed a hobby to pass the long hours, so they were to take up painting landscapes. It wasn’t difficult to mix and match colors enough to blend away Lyra’s unruly, long lashes, making Lustacia resemble the child in the portrait as much as her cousin. By the time the portraits would be hung upon the walls of the castle once more, people would assume they’d exaggerated the princess’s appearance in their memories, and all would be forgotten.
“At last you will reap the spoils of your labor,” Griselda assured her daughter.
“Yes,” Lustacia answered, wrapping a nightsky veil across her silver hair and moonglow skin. “I’ve given up everything that made me myself. All for him to love me. All to be his queen. But I still have my own words, even if it’s her voice.” Shortly after being locked within the posh dungeon, Lustacia had ceased practicing the hand signals Prime Minister Albous had taught the real Lyra. Instead, she used the passage of time to shape Lyra’s stolen voice into speech by blending it with her own without losing the trilling birdsong quality. “I’m ready to stop hiding the ability to speak. My prince will be the first to know. Perhaps then he can be proud of something I’ve done on my own as myself.”
“We wish to watch you change the monsters to men.” Avaricette horned in on the conversation, sensing they were to leave without her and her middle sister.
“Mums, please!” Wrathalyne joined in. “Metamorphing sounds so fascinating.”
“That’s metamorphosing, Wrath,” Avaricette corrected with a roll of her eyes.
“You will both stay,” Griselda insisted, gathering up the heavy pot and joining her princess daughter at the door. She knocked thrice, signaling to Sir Bartley that they were ready. “The goblins must drink the potion directly from Lustacia’s hands for the bond to be complete. We don’t need you there arguing and disrupting the process. Make yourselves useful. Feed the birds. We will return shortly, with your sister’s most loyal subjects in tow.”
13
The Butcher, the Baker, and Other Lawbreakers
In the center of the Ashen Ravine, the black market opened every day, four hours after the cessation course ended. It remained open during the diurnal course for six hours thereafter, allowing five more of leisure before time to rest again. Most denizens chose to use the latter for looting, liquoring up, or fornicating.
Set amidst the monochromatic haze of shifting gray ash, black twisted trunks, and impenetrable gray-leafed canopies, the market offered a welcome splash of color and vitality.
Each day at opening, glass lanterns the size of apples—permanently affixed to the thorny branches—were filled with lightning bugs from the night realm, supplied by Dregs, the hoarfrost goblin. Nigel, a retired thief, was in charge of climbing each tree to fill the lanterns, being as nimble as a mountain goat (with the beard and face of one, to match). Once lit, the glowing yellow globes dotted the trees like giant dewdrops, brightening the narrow expanse below where a dozen makeshift booths of timber, branches, and rock lined either side of the winding onyx walkway.
The older, rickety stalls shook with the shouts of owners trying to outdo one another with promises of quality and quantity. Everything from typical food and spices to wares both mystic and intangible were peddled. Illiterate shop owners had colorful banners with embroidered images to represent their wares; others, who could write and read, painted words on signs. Some shop fronts were decorated to extremes: multicolored ribbons or feathers fringing the edges to flutter invitingly when someone walked by, or sea glass and pebbles pressed into mortar forming intricate mosaics. Then there were those that were no more than wood planks slapped together—rotten spots patched up with tar. These had yet to be updated. Five years earlier, all the booths looked that way: gray, shabby, and moldering.
It was Stain who had started the beautification campaign, quite by accident, when she debuted at the shop with her guardians one month after her rescue, once they deigned it safe for her to be seen in disguise.