Why did my aunt hate me so? Lyra signed. To take everything from me?
Crony drew her close. Lyra melted into her. Crony’s scabrous fingers smoothed her scalp, catching upon the fuzz. “Some people harbor so much thorns inside, it strangles out all the beauty. The kingdom under yer aunt’s keep—smothered by nettles and vines—be a reflection of her heart. A rosebush with nary a rose. It weren’t ye that caused it. It were her own dark devices and hatred that drived her. That ugliness be makin’ its way out as we speak. It’ll be what vanquishes her in the end. Have faith in that.”
Lyra snuggled deeper into the embrace. Her shadows sank to the floor around her. The crickets and moths crept out to join them.
“You’ll never win . . . the regent always has an alternate plan,” Erwan grumbled.
Luce cuffed the side of his head, eliciting a yelp. “That’s why I’m here, lump. To be the crimp in all her plans.” He tossed a glance to Crony. “Now? Are we done? Is he mine?”
“Aye, he be yers. But I’d rethink killin’ him. Take him with us to seek out the sylph elm. We need yer wings and can’t afford any holdups. Though the castle be mostly abandoned, we may happen upon a guard or two. He can be an asset.”
Luce lifted Erwan’s face. “Yes, an asset. All you need is motivation.” He caressed the side of the knight’s face as a lover would, then lulled his voice to that silken cord of persuasion. “I’m intimately aware of Lady Griselda’s charms. How she excels in controlling the men of her life. Look at all she coerced you into doing. She’ll never take the blame without dragging you down, too.”
Erwan caught a breath—captured in Luce’s spell. “I tried to tell her she was growing too brash,” he answered. “She never listened.”
“Of course you did,” Luce agreed through a sneer. “No doubt you’ll lose your head over this. Wouldn’t it be delectable, if first you could have the upper hand just once? Go out like a man. Shake her tree and rattle some branches. What say?”
“Yes, a man.” Erwan’s response was threaded with a dreamlike quality. “She needs to see me as a man.”
Stain had seen Luce use his sylphin charms before, digging into a victim’s mind to discover their hidden desires. Erwan had obviously harbored hostility against Griselda for drawing him into this dangerous plan, and the regent’s mistreatment of him nurtured the grudge.
Luce’s ability to persuade and entice made him all the more dangerous in his aerial form, when he could be heard without being seen, when he could trick his prey into thinking he was their own inner voice. Were he to get his wings back today, to become ethereal again, he would be a formidable ally for Lyra’s rise against the fake princess.
But why were his wings here? Had the regent played a part in his punishment? Did it have something to do with Luce saving her from the shrouds? Why would he have saved her in the first place? The woman appeared to poison every life she touched. But still reeling from her own discoveries, Lyra couldn’t find the strength to ask such questions.
“Ready to go?” Luce asked his victim.
Erwan nodded, entranced.
Luce glanced Lyra’s way. “You are not alone. We’re with you, to the end.” He tipped his head to Crony, then dragged Erwan across the room and flung open the door. The three shopkeepers toppled in, having had their ears pressed to the wood.
They scrambled to their feet and gawked at Lyra.
“Ya ain’t no boy, you’re a long-lotht printheth!” Edith was the first to speak. She turned to Winkle. “She one of uth! She wath wronged by Lady Grithelda.”
“We’ll avenge you, Highness!” Winkle squeaked and bounced around the knight in a fit of rage, his bunny ears wriggling.
Dregs gawked at the shadows, crickets and moths surrounding Lyra, his bulbous eyes round as tea saucers. “A child of the day realm holding sway over the night’s helm. Indeed, our slates be writ by the fates.”
All three of them exchanged stunned glances, then dropped to their knees. Upon forcing the knight to kneel, Luce did the same.
Lyra stepped forward. Thank you, she mimed, wanting more than ever to shout—in grief, in fury, in gratitude.
Crony waved to the open door. “Dregs and Winkle, ye two go with Luce. I be behind ye shortly. Edith, stay outside the door. I’ve a proposal for ye.”
Everyone left, leaving only Lyra and Crony. Once the door clicked closed, Lyra spun, bidding her shadows to whisk through the room and drag the tattered gowns from the items hidden along the walls. She touched all they unveiled: more portraits—some of her queenly mother with a bump in her belly that would one day be her, then others of both her parents, young enough to be newly wed, looking at one another adoringly, as flawless and beautiful as polished copper statues; a small tower of panacea roses—stems tied with silver ribbon and petals withering and curled; and a stack of black parchment letters, each with the title Princess Lyra and a date written in golden ink on the front.
Lyra examined her golden-tipped fingers. Only hours before, the prince had spattered his sparkling blood upon matching papers in the ravine. She walked to the pile and lifted one. The royal seal of Nerezeth—a silver-wax crescent moon beside a nine-pronged star—was broken on all the letters. They’d been opened, read and answered by someone other than her. Someone pretending to be her.
Feeling Crony come up from behind, she turned. I saw the mother shroud today. The words tumbled from her hands. When I ran away from you and Luce, I went to her lair seeking answers of my past. She predicted this . . . that there was more to me than I knew. She said to know myself, I’d need to have hair of steel and tears of stone, that I’d need to prove hard enough to wrap myself in spikes, yet soft enough to walk through stars without crushing their legs. What does that mean? It all sounds impossible.
Crony’s transparent eyelids widened, indicating more interest than surprise. “I’ve ev’ry faith ye can do the impossible. Ye proved it by yer will to o’ercome death when I found ye.”
You knew all along. This is why you and Luce taught me about the outside world, about being diplomatic and making peace with others. You knew I was heir to Eldoria. Why did you take my memories, Crony? Where are they? Why do you keep them from me still?
Crony averted her gaze, regret weighing upon her serpentine features. “That be the only way I could bring yer soul back from the dead, by pilferin’ yer memories of being alive. I can’t be sayin’ more than that. Might it be enough, that Luce and me saved ye and cared for ye?”
Lyra squeezed her fingers into knots, then nodded. After everything that had happened in this room, she understood there was something beyond the witch’s power that held her within its thrall. A nightmare of her own that she couldn’t outrun.
“Good.” Crony caught her hands. “I be seein’ that ye’ll get yer past back. But first, ye must win all that’s yers in the present. Ye must be strong enough to claim it without yer memories. Remembrance be yer reward in the end.”
Lyra clenched her teeth, inspecting her reflection again: scruffy-headed, gray-tinged scarred skin, dusty tunic and breeches.
How am I to be a queen, when I know nothing of ruling? How am I to prove I’m a princess to any kingdom . . . the princess, no less? I look nothing like the prophecy dictates. And I’ve no nightingale’s song bursting from my lips. I’m unremarkable in every way.
“Ah, but ye can learn to rule, when yer heart already be wise and merciful. And ye can spit and polish to look the part of royalty. That be yer advantage o’er yer impersonator. No matter what be on the outside, one can’t change their innards. Ye are Prince Vesper’s singular match, for yer strengths balance his own, just as the prophecy say. When it come down to it, that be more important than any external shell, aye?”
Lyra caught a sharp breath. Scorch had said similar words, all the years they ran together. Her dear, precious Scorch . . .
As if reading her pained expression, Crony drew closer. “Are ye thinkin’ of all ye be leavin’ behind in the forest?”
Lyra sighed, forcing herself to relay what she could hardly bear to remember. I’m not leaving Scorch behind. He died . . . but he didn’t. His essence united with the prince when they both fell in the moon-bog. There was some dark magic at work. She felt ridiculous trying to explain. It doesn’t make sense. But it’s true . . . I lost him already.
Crony shook her head. “May-let ye only thought ye lost him. May-let the magic was within the prince himself, and ye gained them both.” She withdrew a black letter, not from the pile, but from her cloak. It was addressed to Lyra, like all the others, and was dated three years earlier.
Lyra took it, raising a puzzled brow.