A Red-Rose Chain

“And now I’m your brother,” said Walther. “Technically, I always was. I just needed some time to get that sorted out properly. I thought you were going to run. I ran, because I thought you were going to run.”


“I couldn’t leave the rest of our family behind; I told you I was going to run because I didn’t want you to wait for me,” said Marlis. “You were my baby sister. It was my job to look out for you. That meant getting you out of the Kingdom before the new regent took—Waltrune, really? Are you really Waltrune?”

“Not anymore, and always,” said Walther. He offered her his hands, smiling. “It’s good to see you, Marley. I’ve missed you.”

“I . . .” Marlis took his hands, and frowned. “What did you put in the cookies?”

“Standard anticompulsion charm. If you were being compelled by King Rhys—and of course you were being compelled by King Rhys—it would cancel out the potion. Who does he have making his tinctures, Marley? I thought the whole family was asleep, except for you.”

“Yes, except for me,” she said bitterly. “I do all his blending and brewing and binding. Just me, in Mother’s workroom, enspelling a Kingdom for the sake of a man who should never have sat this throne.” She gasped then, yanking one hand free and clapping it over her mouth. “Oh, sweet Oberon, those words just left my mouth. Truny, what have you done? What have you done to me? He’ll know! I’m his seneschal, his eyes are everywhere, and he’ll know! My disloyalty will be punished!”

“His eyes are not here,” said Ceres calmly. “His eyes have never been here. I am on these lands at his sufferance, or so he pretends, but he knows full well that he’ll never move me if I do not wish to be moved. My roots are deep in this land. I support his kingship solely to retain access to the castle where my charges sleep. They deserve more than to have me desert them before they wake and remember me.”

“But his eyes are everywhere else.” Marlis lowered her hand. “He’ll know. He’ll know.”

“Only if you slip up,” I said, finally interposing myself into the conversation. I pushed my chair back and stood, offering Marlis my hand. “Hi. I feel like we didn’t really meet before. I’m Toby, I’m a friend of your brother’s, and I’m here to keep the man who’s been drugging you from leading your Kingdom to war against mine.”

“Marlis,” she said, taking my hand and shaking. Then she laughed bitterly. “And he only drugged me once. Maeve knows who mixed the potion for him, but it was strong, and it worked well, and my resistance disappeared like sugar on the snow. I’ve been drugging myself to make him happy ever since.”

I couldn’t quite conceal my wince. It was an elegant solution to the captive alchemist: drug her into loyalty and then tell her that the thing you wanted most was for her to drug herself better. “All right. Do you remember what you did while you were drugged?”

She grimaced and turned her face away without answering me. Which was an answer in itself.

“Walther tells me you weren’t in line for the throne of Silences, but that you were more sort of . . . throne adjacent. That means you learned the manners and the dances and the rules right alongside your cousins, because you were always going to wind up being seneschal, or court alchemist, or whatever, right? Well, that means you know how to play a role. That’s all court politics are. A great big game of let’s pretend where winning means you don’t get your head chopped off this round.”

Marlis slowly turned back around to look at me. “Go on,” she said.

“Just play the role of a good, chemically modified seneschal,” I said. “No one in this room is going to get mad at you for pretending Rhys is still the boss of you. It’s the only sensible thing to do.”

“But the only reason for me to go back to him, to not flee the Court at once for fear of discovery, is to foment revolution,” said Marlis. “Are you asking me to join a conspiracy against my King?”