Griselda stopped short of admitting the role Elusion’s grimoire played. However, she’d be sure to share that detail with the prisoner. The witch should know her loyal fox was responsible for her eternal entombment. It was a knife twist too delicious to resist.
“Get started on the preparations. I’ll need you to help me box up and carry out the keepsakes and magical stock before we destroy the entrance to the dirt room. Apprise me when you’re done slathering the cells.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
Upon hearing his mechanized exit into the dungeon, Griselda opened the door and stepped within, assailed by each and every fragrant panacea rose sent to Lustacia over the years. Other than the moth-eaten gowns covering Prince Vesper’s letters, withering bouquets, and her dead niece’s keepsakes, dirt dominated the room’s motif—floor, wall, and ceiling.
The prisoner crouched in the middle of the floor, wrists and ankles locked within joint shackles staked deep into the ground. If not for the torchlight gleaming off the iron chains, she’d be practically invisible. From her muddy eyes to her scaly toes, everything about her exuded the same unremarkable brown of dust. With her awkward posture, she favored some oddly horned turtle that might topple at any moment and get stuck on its back.
Griselda smiled and perched her lantern atop a wooden crate. “Here we are again, witch. Me, standing over you—chained up and at my mercy like a vagrant mongrel.”
The prisoner flitted out her forked tongue. “The name be Crony. And I’ve no need for mercy. I’ll still be standin’ when yer naught but a pile o’ bones for me to gnaw upon.”
Griselda’s fingers fisted. “Immortality aside, you’re forgetting the interim. I can make this portion of your eternity miserable.”
“I forget nothin’. Not me own thoughts, or the thoughts of another. I recognize yer knight’s voice. Erwan be his name. I remember his face, just the way he looked through Nicolet’s eyes, the instant he hammered his skull with an iron mace.”
Griselda shook off the chill that coursed through her blood. “So, you overheard my conversation with my knight. Eavesdropping doesn’t speak to your acumen; it speaks to your desperation. The quicker we do this, the quicker I release you back into the wilds.”
“We both know ye not lettin’ me go this time. And the wee princess not be here to convince ye. Pity. Would like to have seen her now that she be a lady, to thank her and her shadows and bugs, afore ye bury me alive.”
Griselda flinched despite herself, remembering how Lyra had bettered her that day in the dungeon cell. How she’d left her in the darkness, alone and frightened. “She’s sleeping. And she’s long outgrown her sympathies for the likes of you, along with her affinity for playing with shadows and bugs.”
“Did she, now? Don’t be soundin’ like the princess of the prophecy . . . silver-haired, songbird, friend of all things shadowed and dark. Of course, it be barmy, expectin’ she’d be just as the foretelling dictates. After all, prophecies find their true, clear way, even if the details get muddied.”
The thud in Griselda’s chest belied the calm she forced into her features. “Enough blathering. You know the fate that awaits you. But you can do something charitable first. You can win deliverance for your friend Elusion.”
Crony’s serpentine face sagged, as if taken aback.
“Yes,” Griselda taunted. “He’s here and I’m holding him prisoner. But, as you seem to be somewhat aware, I’ve a fondness for him. Should you cooperate, I’ll allow him to claim his wings again. I believe that means something to you?”
The witch’s head bowed, as if defeated. “Aye, it do.”
“So, I’ll give you my word. Tell me all the details of Nicolet’s final breath, and assure me no one possesses that memory but you, and your friend reaps the benefits.”
“He came alone then, did he?” The witch rearranged her spine with disgusting popping sounds, as if growing tired of the squatted position. “Straight up to yer castle gates and into the hands o’ yer guards?”
Griselda shifted her feet, a dirt clod crunching beneath her shoe. “Yes. Who else would’ve accompanied him, and how else would he have arrived? It’s not as if he can flutter down from the sky . . . yet. So, do we have an accord? The details of Nicolet’s memory and its whereabouts will buy Elusion his freedom and true form. You can win him the ability to fly again.”
Crony’s muddy eyes flickered with something akin to amusement. “I took two breaths from Nicolet’s dyin’ corpse, not just one. So there be two memories ye need have fearin’. The first is the other half of the memory I shared with yer constable, and will damn ye and yer faithful knights for yer brother’s and Nicolet’s murder. The second will destroy ye alone, in ways ye never imagined. One I’ve locked safe within meself, but the other I shared with the Shroud Collective, who be a very talkative lot. Up to ye to find out which memory be where.”
Grinding her jaw, Griselda kicked dirt into Crony’s face. “You care so little about your sylphin friend?”
The witch blinked her transparent lids and grit crumbled out from the corners of her eyes. “Ye be a masterful liar and strategist, Regent, but Elusion be even better. He’ll arrive under yer nose. And it will be yer own feathers that get ruffled and singed, not his wings upon a tree.”
Griselda twitched with rage. “If you weren’t immortal . . . I would kill you with my bare hands.”
Crony sighed. “Aye, if but this were a fairy tale, we’d all get our druthers and wants.”
Griselda spun for the door, her face and ears burning. “I hope you’ll be at home here, amidst the mildew and decay of unwanted, forgotten things. For this will be your eternal tomb.” She began to open the latch, then remembered the final knife twist. “I’ll tell Elusion, once he arrives, that he has himself to thank for your burial. The book he gave me has served quite useful.”
“The Plebeian’s Grimoire.” Crony’s chains jingled. “It prefers to be called by name.”
Griselda turned. “What? How would you—”
“I do be at home in this place,” Crony interrupted, eyeing the shelves and the small crates lining the walls. “Always knew I’d return; is why I kept bits o’ me tucked away here and there . . . awaitin’. One’s past always be a mirror to their future.”
Griselda shook some dust off her skirt’s hem, trying to make sense of the witch’s senseless chatter. “Your past here? Our time together five years ago meant so much to you? How I wish I had the choke pear . . . fond memories, hearts and roses, and all that sentimental rubbish.”
“Ye do appear a bit flimsy without the razor extensions to yer hand. That brumal blood upon yer palms be a beggarly substitute.”
“Yet it’s easier to hide,” Griselda answered, refusing to be shaken. She took out her gloves in demonstration.
“Aye. Hands can be hidden. Shame ye can’t say the same for horns.” Crony tilted her head, her own horns catching a flutter of firelight from the torch on the wall.
Horns. A gush of ice water sluiced through Griselda’s veins as the knots upon her scalp tingled. She leaned against the door, the latch jabbing into her lower back. “It can’t be.”
“What else could it be?” Crony chuckled, dark and taunting.
Griselda thrust aside her gloves and parted the braids piled atop her head, revealing the bumps beneath. Blindly, she felt where prongs had formed since she’d examined them last. She gasped and stumbled to the corner opposite the witch, whipping a gown off Arael’s mirror—the one her brother so painstakingly glued back together after Lyra’s clumsy attempt to find herself at the age of twelve.
There was no mistaking, even in the jagged reflection. The growths upon Griselda’s head, though no bigger than butter beans, were identical to the brumal stag antlers she’d so diligently crushed to powder over the past six months. Her jaw dropped—every question, every expletive of disbelief, locked within her chest. “What sunless perdition is this?” she managed to whisper.
“Now ye be askin’ the right questions. And I be the one with answers. After all, it be these hands who conjured this very tunnel and the room we be occupyin’ . . . that invoked the enchanted doorway leadin’ here from the Crystal Lake. And the creature that guards it be crafted of a dying man’s nightmares . . . stolen, as ye might’ve guessed, at these hands. Allow me to introduce meself proper.” The witch waved her withered palms in a flourish as grand as she could manage with shackles. “Cronatia Wisteria—Eldoria’s enchantress, at yer service.”
Griselda couldn’t tear her gaze from the mirror. “You lie. There’s no such name in our kingdom’s history . . .”