My palm stung. I blinked and the dagger came into focus, silvery against my red dress, light shivering over its surface like water. For the first time I truly understood what I had been given, and what it could do. Or rather, what it would do. Because with this understanding, I made a decision.
The dagger would kill a fair one.
Just not the fair one Gadfly had in mind.
Twenty-two
BRING ME vermilion. And indigo, please. May, I know you aren’t talking to me right now, but you can still carry things, can’t you? Emma, would you mind finding something I can use to prop up my arm while I work? Rook, that’s not a paint palette, that’s a serving tray. Oh—never mind, bring it here. I suppose it’ll do.”
My parlor had transformed into a whirlwind of activity. I’d toppled over the second I tried to stand, so I was enthroned on the settee, propped up by half a dozen pillows, as everyone waited on me hand and foot, which would have been nice if they hadn’t all been tasks I’d rather have been doing myself. To their credit, no one tried arguing me out of my unhinged-sounding scheme. Emma and Rook had taken one look at the glint in my eyes, glanced at each other in sudden communion, and started fetching brushes.
I’d never done work like this before. I didn’t have time to draft it, for one. Morning light already stole across the room, setting my linseed oil jar aglow and casting a pink rectangle on the wallpaper. I’d decided not to look over my shoulder, because once I started I wouldn’t be able to stop, but Emma kept peeking out the window, and it wasn’t long before she gasped and dropped a pillow.
“What did you see?” I asked.
“Nothing.” She hurried over to stick the pillow under my elbow. “My nerves just got the better of me.” A blatant lie—Emma could mix deadly chemicals with someone playing the cymbals next to her head.
May stood on her toes and looked. “There’s something running around in the field,” she announced in a would-be-casual voice. She turned around with an exaggerated shrug to show she wasn’t afraid, even though I could see her shaking from across the room. “I bet it’s the Alder King and he’s here to kill you and eat you because you’re stupid.”
Emma reared up, clutching another pillow. “May, you will not speak to your sister like that!”
“Well, it’s true!”
“The Alder King has not yet arrived,” Rook reassured me. “It’s only a hound, and it won’t be able to enter your home, nor will any of the other beasts and fair folk who follow.”
I schooled my breathing, forcing myself to relax. The brush had left bloodless dents in my clenched fingers. “Why?” I asked in a low voice I hoped my family couldn’t hear. “The enchantment doesn’t prevent anyone from coming inside.”
His eyes flashed. “Because I will not let them.” He gave the window another cursory glance and then whirled toward the hallway.
“Rook,” I said, drawing him up short. “Thank you. Be careful.”
I wasn’t just thanking him for what he was about to do. I was thanking him for trusting me—for believing in me. It hadn’t been easy for him to set the dagger aside.
He gave a stiff nod before he left. The kitchen door bounced shut out of sight behind him. Forcing aside my gnawing fears, I focused on my canvas, losing myself in the glistening paint gliding over its textured surface, the quiet scrape of the brush’s dry bristles when I reached the end of a stroke. The background blended from dark burnt umber in the corners to luminous gold at the center, where it would outline the subject in a corona of light. Everything depended on this portrait. It needed to be the best work I’d ever done, completed in a single morning, in my least-polished method—wet on wet—since I didn’t have time to let any of it dry. My eyes burned with the effort of staying open, and my brush felt like it weighed twenty pounds. But stroke by stroke, the painting came to life.
Soon I had sunk too deeply into my work to notice anything going on around me. The world consisted only of my Craft. Like an old sailor’s map of the earth, nothing existed beyond my canvas’s flat borders. Until a great snapping crash came from outside, rattling the glasses on the table beside my easel, and jerking me headlong back into the light, sound, and clamor of real life.
I turned my head in a blinking stupor to find Emma and the twins plastered against the windows. Emma was at the southern window across the room; I hadn’t noticed March and May clambering onto the settee, bracketing me between them.
“He tore it in half!” May exclaimed gleefully.
March bounced up and down on her knees.
I spared a look over my shoulder. A tangle of giant, squirming thorn vines surrounded our house, each one taller and thicker than the oak tree, plunging our yard into deep shade. As I watched, one of the vines seized a white shape—a hound—and flung it back into the wheat field, so far into the distance I couldn’t tell where it landed. The wreckage of some much larger fairy beast strewn across our grassless chicken run explained the earthquake. I hunted for Rook among the chaos. The last time he’d created thorns of a similar size, he had been grievously injured by the Barrow Lord. How badly had he wounded himself to accomplish this reckless feat? I couldn’t find him anywhere. And I not only suspected, but knew for certain that he was motivated by a persuasive death wish. A shudder rippled over my shoulders and arms, abating to a fine tremble that seized my entire body. My skin felt tight and white noise rang in my head, crowding out all other thoughts.
March bleated exuberantly as another hound went soaring across the field. The twins’ reaction, at least, assured me that if we escaped today intact, I’d have no trouble getting them to like Rook.
Shouldn’t we keep them from watching this? I asked Emma with a rather crazed glance.
Emma shot back an equally crazed look that said, Oh, believe me, I’ve tried.
A creaking, groaning noise came from outside. I returned my attention to the window. The thorn vines were freezing in place from the base upward, their heavily spiked tendrils zigzagging into sharp angles as they stiffened, forming a dense, impenetrable-looking thicket. Vertigo swooped through my stomach. I abandoned my efforts at searching the yard and focused inward instead, concentrating on the ensorcellment bond between us. Surely if something had happened to Rook, I would have felt his reaction. The vines weren’t dead, just motionless. Whatever was going on out there, he’d done it on purpose—hadn’t he?
The kitchen door banged open and boots thudded through the hallway, Rook’s long stride unmistakable. I briefly pressed my eyes closed, riding out the relieved dizziness that washed over me. But I didn’t have a chance to indulge in the sensation.
“He’s coming,” Rook said as soon as he entered the room. “We have little time.”
His chest heaved like a bellows, and his hair was so rumpled he looked as though he’d been standing in the middle of a storm. One of his sleeves was rolled up, with a dishrag from our kitchen messily bound around his forearm. I tried not to consider the implications of this—he’d never needed to bind his wounds before. Maybe he just didn’t want to make a mess with his blood indoors.