“Mums!” Wrathalyne screeched, tucking a fallen lock of auburn hair beneath her hennin. “When we finally turn them back to goblins, will they still be so clingy and vexalatious?”
Avaricette snorted and withdrew a half-gnawed sweetmeat from her pocket. “Vexatious, you imbecilic ninny.”
“Oh? If I’m a ninny, you’re a toad.”
Avaricette popped the confectionery between her lips and winced upon biting down. “For an aspersion to be effective, it must make sense. Goats are illiterate, as are you. How am I like a toad in any way?”
“Your lack of teeth.”
Avaricette slapped a palm over her cavity-filled mouth and shoved her sister with her free hand, who in turn shoved her back. The goblin wraiths whirled around them gleefully, egging it on.
“Enough!” Griselda shouted, then gentling her voice, called to her youngest, who already stood at the window, waving in a dream state at any who could see her through the blue-tinged glass. “Princess, please contain your most loyal subjects.”
With a sigh, Lustacia motioned the wraiths over. They sank into the floor, becoming imprints of her movements once again, like any good shadow. Griselda settled at her daughter’s side and opened the rain-streaked window enough to let in the joyous shouts and applause from below.
“Hear how they adore you, daughter. You have won your kingdom’s heart. This is a day of victory.”
Lustacia frowned.
Griselda clucked her tongue. “Just because you look the part of a gloom-dweller, doesn’t mean you have to share their dour moods.”
Lustacia shook her head, closed her eyes, and inhaled a deep breath.
Honeysuckle drenched the humid air—so potent and sickly sweet it burned away all other sensory cues from the palace garden adjacent to the tower.
“I miss the flowers of my childhood,” Lustacia said—the lyricism of her voice cushioning the ears like a lullaby. “The licorice sway of pink carnations, the vanilla brush of violet heliotropes, the powdery flutter of white gardenias. None can be seen, smelled, nor heard through those wretched thistly vines. I can only make out the sylph elm now.” She glanced over her shoulder across the room where her sisters snooped through dusty trunks for forgotten jewels or treasure, then turned again to the cursed kingdom outside the window. “The leaves are changing color. That was Lyra’s favorite thing to watch for. At last it’s come, and she’s missed it.”
Griselda scowled at the attempt to guilt her for robbing them of childhoods, for cutting short her niece’s life. But her scowl softened as she noted for herself the fringed leaves of vivid yellow overtaking the red that billowed out from the glistening, encroaching vines. She’d been waiting for those leaves to change, too. Hoping they might lure Elusion back to the castle and her bed. An air sylph’s charm was always good to have on hand.
Lustacia wound a silvery strand of hair around her finger, growing dreamy again. “There’s a path that leads to the sylph elm where the vines don’t grow. It must be the tree’s own enchantment, acting as a barrier. Your brother . . . our uncle. The king. He used to tell us a story about when the leaves changed, that a cursed sylph—”
“Could win back its wings and return to the skies?” Griselda huffed. “A farcical bedtime tale.”
“Truly?” Lustacia put her back to the window, steadying her lilac gaze upon her mother’s face. “More farcical than this?” She gestured to herself, and to the illusory shadows at her feet. “I agree with Wrath. Return the goblins to their original forms. They’ve played their part.”
Griselda clenched her jaw. “Every time I believe you’ve wizened enough to be queen, you disappoint me with that misplaced sense of mercy. Good that you’ll have me as your counselor.”
Lustacia hid her profile behind the beaded sweep of her veil. “I think my counselor should be someone with a conscience.”
The words were meant to cut, and indeed something coiled within Griselda’s chest. It was, however, more like a snake preparing to strike than a wounded creature curling upon itself for protection. “You’re not thinking at all. You still have to convince the prince you’re Lyra. After that, you’ll have to convince his entire kingdom. This will be impossible if no shadows respond to you. And these are the only ones who ever will, unless you’ve managed to befriend one or two in the dungeon over the years?”
Lustacia worked the hennin from her hair and tossed it down. The goblin shadows reflected every defeated motion. She rubbed her head, fingers digging into her hairline. Rolling her shoulder, she moved out of view of the cheering audience. “I abhor everything we’ve done. It pains my head to think of it.”
“Yet, you went along with it all.”
Lustacia’s eyes filled with tears. “Out of obligation. You stole hope from the man I love. And now it’s up to me to give him empty promises. All those letters he’s written. He’s sincere, perceptive, and kind, but so broken; he expects me to have some missing piece of him, to make him whole. You took that away. She’s gone forever, as is his chance to live. He’s coming here so I can watch him die of a terrible curse.” Her tears fell in clear streams.
Griselda plucked her own hennin off, fingers massaging the knots in her hair above her temples. They’d been stinging almost nonstop today. “Best you learn to curb your weeping. Unless you first stain your face with blackberry juice, so your prince will mistake them for the lines of your tears. And enough with the gloom and doom. Because Lyra is gone, you’re the only one who can save him. That gives you all the power.”
“How can I save the prince, when I’m not his other half? Here you are promising the sun and moon to our subjects, when I can’t even command a shadow. Even if no one else can see through me, the prophecy’s magic might. Have you ever considered that, Mother? Even once?”
As if on cue, the sky dimmed as the sun surrendered to that dusting of twilight, heralding the start of the cessation course. Everything looked foreign and distorted in the temporary darkness, the honeysuckle plague taking on the semblance of a swarm of drasilisk nestlings in mid-hatch. For one breath . . . one heartbeat . . . Griselda harbored doubt.
Then the sun brightened again behind its swarm of clouds, and returned the world to perfect clarity, resolving the scene to all that Griselda had wrought through conspiring and trickery—confirmation of her control over both magic and fate.
She removed her gloves, revealing the glossy bluish-white tint upon her palms and fingers, the residue of the brumal-stag murders she couldn’t seem to wash away. “I was told years ago that the heavens’ splendor would be returned at my hands. Thus, I etched my own path. As you said, there is no Lyra now—at my hand. And of every lady in our two kingdoms, you’re the only one with the physical traits specified by the prophecy—at my hand. All you need to cure the prince’s cursed heart is her songbird voice, and you have that as well—at my hand. Just as these things have fallen into place, so shall the sun and moon. Whatever I must do to see it done, I will. Have faith in me, in this opportunity I’ve given you. You are the real princess, for I have made it so.”
A sudden knock at the door startled a yelp out of Lustacia.
Griselda gloved her hands and put her headdress in place. “You may enter.” She flashed a glare at her daughter. “Stop being so skittish. There’s no one who can stand in our way now.”
The door opened enough for Sir Erwan to step within. He swung it shut behind him. “I intercepted a missive sent via jackdaw. Prince Vesper’s troop captured the harrower witch. They’re bringing her here to be questioned by the council. They should arrive within two days.”
Lustacia gripped her mother’s arm, her expression a mix of horror and haughtiness. “It would appear, Mother, that your ‘no one’ will soon be deposited at our castle gates.”
A chill skittered through Griselda’s chest as all her blood drained into her feet.
Inside the Ashen Ravine, cinder and flame rained down—a storm more ravaging and violent than the rains outside.
The attack happened so quickly the prince had little time to react. A bugling roar cracked and the Pegasus broke through the trees, galloping toward the camp. Sparks trailed his hoofbeats. His mane, tail, eyes, and nostrils glowed with an incandescence both blinding and searing. One giant, lone wing spread out—a harsh slap of feathers, tendons, and hollow bones that shoved Vesper onto his back.