A Red-Rose Chain

“And you’re sure this is the woman who created elf-shot?”


I hesitated. “Yes and no,” I said finally. “The Luidaeg is the one who told me about her making the elf-shot, and the Luidaeg is sort of laboring under a geas, where she can’t say her sister’s name or identify her directly. But she told me it was her oldest sister who created elf-shot, and Eira Rosynhwyr is her oldest sister. Maybe more importantly, Eira is really hung up on position and power and all that fun stuff, and whoever brewed the first elf-shot designed it to be fatal to changelings when it didn’t have to be. It was her.”

“We need to be sure,” said Walther. “If I brew this wrong, it could do more harm than good.”

“Define ‘more harm,’” I said.

“Elf-shot doesn’t normally kill unless the potion is altered to add poison,” he said. “I’m not worried about turning it fatal, but I am worried about tripping a failsafe and extending the length of time that the sleepers are out.”

I stared at him. “So if we do this wrong, we could put everyone to sleep for even longer? How much longer?”

“How does a thousand years strike you?” Walther shook his head, the lines of weariness in his face suddenly making perfect sense. “This isn’t just some brute force compound. It’s one of the most complicated spells I’ve ever tried to reverse-engineer. I feel like I’m trying to replicate a cobweb from a blurry picture. I can do it—don’t get me wrong—but it’s the hardest piece of work I’ve ever attempted.”

“You were always Daddy’s little prodigy,” said Marlis. Her tone was equal parts amusement and bitterness, like she had spent years coming to terms with her own words. “I was good, but you were better.”

“I had to be,” said Walther. “I was going to break his heart one day, when I told him why I wasn’t going to marry and provide him with heirs. Being the best alchemist I could be seemed like the least I could do.”

Marlis nodded. “You did good. You got out.”

I looked between them, hand going automatically to the pocket where I usually kept my phone—only for me to realize that I didn’t have a pocket, and I didn’t have a phone. I was wearing a blood-drenched ball gown. They aren’t known for their copious storage capacity. “Oh, oak and ash,” I said. “Look, I can confirm that Eira brewed the original potion, but I’m going to need to borrow somebody’s phone.”

“Phone?” asked Ceres blankly.

“Mortals have started carrying portable communication devices,” explained Marlis. “No one in this Kingdom has anything so . . . déclassé and human.”

“See, you say ‘déclassé,’ I say ‘I can order Chinese food without getting out of bed. I resisted at first, too, but the convenience of having one outweighs the irritation of remembering to keep it charged.” I turned to Quentin. “You. I know you have a phone. Fork it over.”

Quentin’s cheeks reddened as he dug into his pocket. “Okay, just don’t go poking around in my files, all right?” He produced a phone that was newer and sleeker than mine, with a glass front. It wasn’t the phone he’d had a few weeks previously. I raised an eyebrow, and he reddened further. “April upgraded me. She said I was shaming Tamed Lightning by carrying around something so out of date.”

“Your phone was less than six months old,” I said, taking the space-age rectangle from his hand.

Quentin shrugged.