“Well?” Lustacia blotted crumbs from her lips with a napkin. She had changed into a more comfortable ensemble—a navy velvet gown with simple beading about the neck and wrists. “Did you see her up close? Her gaze was so like Lyra’s. Even from up here it glinted in the darkness as she rode through the gate.” She wrung the napkin in her hands.
“A glint no different than every other gloom-dweller’s.” Griselda strode to the chair and peeled off her gloves and hennin, still unnerved by the memory of the procession, an unease compounded by the tingling of her antlers upon the arrival of the stags. “Show me one Nerezethite, other than the prince, that doesn’t have those spectral, wolfish eyes.”
“Did you hear her speak? If she has a voice, we’ll be all right. Won’t we?”
“She wasn’t at the convocation; she’s been locked in a tower, just as you have.”
Lustacia flung her napkin down and twisted her pale hair into a side braid. “Ava and Wrath visited me earlier. The guests are saying she uses sign language with the prince and his sister. There’s a mystery surrounding her origins, for she has no memories. She has white eyelashes that curl up to here.” Lustacia indicated her forehead. “Add that to the fact that she goes by the name Stain.”
Griselda groaned, too perplexed to even attempt hiding her reaction.
Lustacia’s eyes narrowed. “You used to call her that. It must be—”
“Impossible.” Griselda snapped. “The poison had no antidote. I chose it for that reason. She died because no one could have stopped it. And death is irreversible. No, this is that witch’s doing. She heard me call your cousin a stain when she was first imprisoned in our dungeon. The old hag must’ve escaped Erwan somehow, and is here pulling the strings.” There had been mention of a red fox loitering around the gates earlier, though it hadn’t been seen since the prince returned. It had to be Elusion, another indication of Crony’s presence. At least it appeared he was locked in his vulpine form, which meant Erwan got one thing right: he’d burned down the sylph elm before Elusion got his wings. “The witch has thrown her own imposter into the mix to spite me. Some native Nerezethite who has charmed the prince, perhaps with a love-spell. But the hag made a mistake leaving this in the shrine.”
Griselda picked up the bag Sir Bartley had brought in just after Lustacia returned from spying beneath the prince’s stairwell—having overheard his and his sister’s plans to ride out in search of someone else . . . someone by the name of Stain.
Fortunately, Bartley had found the bag in the shrine, just as Griselda had expected. Her premonition had been correct, as it had contained all she needed to prove that foul play against the real princess—her daughter . . . niece—was afoot.
Lustacia knelt on the floor beside Griselda’s knees. “So, you gave them the box. What did they say?”
Griselda regaled the pertinent details orally, all the while mentally reliving the exchange. Attending that wretched assembly, being under everyone’s scrutiny, had left a bitter taste in her mouth.
Prince Vesper had sat at one side of the long table with Queen Nova, Madame Dyadia, Selena, and four Nerezethite council members. He’d positioned himself directly across from Griselda instead of choosing her prime minister, her first knight, or any of the five councilmen from her court. It was an intentional move, meant to intimidate. Like most Nerezethites, he was tall but lithe—corded muscles wrapped around elegant bones. Yet he had a presence about him, a feral confidence that made him more imposing than a beefier man of weight and stock.
The quandary was presented before the assembly. The prince laid out an empty opal handle that was once a brush, and a hairpin that had lost its jewels, claiming the girl he brought back from the Rigamort had freed the spell upon them both. Then he deferred to his mother to mediate the proceedings.
When the question fell to Griselda as to her thoughts on the dilemma they faced, she offered her well-rehearsed words:
“We are victims,” Griselda said, “to the malice and mischief of Crony, the harrower witch. Everything is her doing. From His Highness’s rejection of my dear niece, Lyra, who’s kept herself pure for him and exchanged heartfelt letters for five years, to this imposter who’s appeared at the last hour with artifacts that were meant to be wedding gifts—admitted to have been stolen. You must see, without the purported silver bristles and amethyst stones, we can’t even be sure these are the same articles. I conjecture the witch is casting aspersions upon this marriage—predestined to cure both our kingdoms of their half lives of perpetual day and night—for some sort of petty revenge.”
“Do you have proof of your claim?” asked Queen Nova.
Forcing herself not to cringe at the white crickets clinging to the queen’s neckline like a string of pearls meant to complement her silvery hair, Griselda unveiled the box she’d wrapped in cloth. The words “princess - revolution” were scripted across the scaly surface.
Several of the council members gasped upon seeing the drasilisk lining.
“Some days ago, Queen Nova sent a missive to our castle via jackdaw,” Griselda continued, “warning me of a box that belonged to the witch and held within it plans for a rebellion against my niece. It was found within your shrine today after my niece cured his curse. None else could fabricate such a piece, as drasilisk hides ceased to exist centuries ago. This is proof we’ve fallen prey to the witch’s manipulations, for she’s an immortal and was here when the monsters ran rampant in our shared sky. It also explains this imposter’s use of the ancient sign language . . . for Crony knows it herself.”
“I can attest to that,” Madame Dyadia spoke up, an accusatory glint in her catlike gaze. “And I spied that very box through my bird’s eye in the hands of Cronatia.” She gestured for Griselda to pass it closer.
Griselda slid it across the table with gloved hands.
Dyadia lifted it, turning it over. “There’s a spell in place. A temporal lock. It can’t be opened until the proper time, whenever that might be. It appears there’s some credence to Regent Griselda’s claim.”
The queen lifted a graceful hand to silence the council’s murmurings. “I understand my son had the witch sent to your dungeons. Are you saying she has an accomplice here, in my castle?”
Griselda folded the empty cloth and laid it on her lap. “Yes . . . no. Perhaps. It’s possible she escaped. She has done so before. She’s wily and dangerous. She killed my brother and his first knight.”
“And your youngest daughter, Lustacia,” the prince offered, though it sounded suspiciously like a barb.
“Yes. I’m sure you can understand the omission.” Griselda feigned a tremor in her voice. “It’s painful to speak of her death. Even after so many years.”
She sensed the prince watching her, his predatory glare so intense she felt her skin growing hot, as if it might catch flame. When she dared look his way, she could’ve sworn she saw a piercing orange flicker in those black depths—like a candle’s wavering beam reflected off onyx stones. He raised an eyebrow and offered a smile. Not one of sympathy. An assured, almost smug, turn of the lips.
“Here are my thoughts on the matter,” he’d said in that moment, his gaze never leaving Griselda’s. “Considering it’s both our kingdoms’ welfare at stake, and it’s my life being bound to another, there’s only one means to know beyond a doubt which girl is my true equal. Everyone’s been seeking a raven-eyed prince and a silver-haired princess. But we can agree that appearances can be altered. What cannot, however, is a person’s very essence. The prophecy clearly states that on their own, the prince and princess are to conquer one another’s worlds. I did this already, finding my way through the ravine’s thorn labyrinth, surviving the moon-bog. Since no one can prove if the flower trail that led from Neverdark to the Rigamort was enkindled by a song or a kiss, I propose giving both girls one last test to see who truly conquered this realm today.”
Griselda paused relaying her unsettling recollection of events, her throat growing tight.
“So, it worked.” Lustacia pressed her to continue, bringing Griselda’s thoughts back to the tower chamber. “He has doubt enough in this witch’s girl to need proof from her as much as me?”
“Yes.”
“Then why do you seem so rattled?”
Griselda clenched the empty bag in her hands and her mouth closed against the answer: because it didn’t feel as if it worked.
The prince hadn’t been surprised by her surprise tactic. It was if he’d expected her to pull out the box and slide it across the table to the sorceress. As if that very action played into his desires. Perhaps he’d truly gone mad after being locked within that death sleep.
Griselda thumped her fingers on the bag. “I’m not rattled. I’m simply . . . deliberating.”
“Deliberating what?”
“How best to tell you the outcome of the meeting.”
Lustacia waited, chewing on the end of her messy braid.