“Now.”
The little fae seemed to collapse further into herself, but she answered. “I never saw his face, and he only whispered when he spoke to me. He told me that my sacrifice was for the good of all and that big changes were coming and I’d be helping.” She paused, but the queen cocked one dark eyebrow and the words stumbled out of her again. “He was, or at least I think he was, Sleagh Maith, my lady.” She drew back with the last, as if she thought the queen would reach out and grab her for accusing one of the noble line of fae of being her captor. Of course, my circle still separated the ghost from the queen, so even if the queen had wanted to throttle the ghost, she couldn’t have.
For her part, the queen rocked back slightly on her heels, as if Icelynne’s words had delivered a physical blow her body had absorbed. She turned, hands clenched at her sides, and paced the edge of my circle.
“Do you have any idea who he was? This captor of yours, was he of my court?”
Icelynne sniffed loudly, her body trembling. “I do not know, my lady. I swear I do not know. He never took off his cloak, and he only spoke to me when he brought food or hooked or unhooked the tubes. Most of the time when he was in the room he was fiddling with an alchemy lab.”
“Alchemy? Like turning lead into gold?” I asked.
The little fae shook her head, making the ice crystals shimmer in the afternoon light. “No. I think he was distilling the glamour from our blood.”
Chapter 10
We continued to question Icelynne for what felt like another hour, but there wasn’t much more she could tell us. She’d been held by three fae, one of whom she thought might be Sleagh Maith, but she’d never seen any faces. They’d drained their captives, but slowly. They’d fed the prisoners, presumably so they’d gather as much blood as possible from each. Oh, and just maybe they were using the blood to distill pure glamour. Why? I couldn’t guess, and it seemed no one else could either. Not yet at least.
The queen was the most persistent in the questioning. Continuing to try the same questions from different angles long after everyone else had fallen silent. Icelynne dutifully attempted to answer, but there was just no more information she could provide.
By the time the queen turned away, disgust curling her lips, I’d consented to sitting cross-legged beside the ghost. It didn’t take much energy to keep her visible—certainly much less than a ritual holding a shade for this long would have cost me—but the interrogation had still taken more than an hour, and I was exhausted. I was also getting rather anxious about the time. Tamara’s rehearsal dinner was in a couple of hours, and I wanted to have this all tied up in time to make the event. Ethan’s family had booked a reservation at one of Nekros’s nicer restaurants, and I needed enough energy in reserve that I didn’t fall asleep on my very expensive plate.
It was a relief when I finally released Icelynne’s shoulder, slipped my extra shields back in place, and dropped my circle. The evening sun hung over the horizon, all but obscured by the surrounding trees. Fall was progressing quickly, so despite the growing gloom it was still relatively early in the evening. Early or not, I wanted to go home and sleep. I couldn’t, but oh how I wanted to. On the plus side, I could still see. No ritual meant my eyes had taken minimal damage.
“Where will you take that?” Icelynne asked as Falin retrieved the knapsack holding her bones.
Since I no longer had contact with her, he couldn’t hear her, so I repeated the question. Falin paused, the bag not quite slung over his shoulder. The look on his face was half grimace, half embarrassment, as if he’d forgotten the connection between the fae he’d spent the last hour questioning and the bones. Or as though he hadn’t realized she was still there watching now that she was once again farther across the chasm between the living and the dead.
“My lady?” he asked, turning to the queen.
For a moment I thought she’d brush off the question, unconcerned. Then she frowned, and addressed an empty space to my left, not quite where the ghost-fae stood, but close. “Icelynne, you served me as my handmaiden. What is it you would like done to honor your body? We could bury you here where you would become part of the wild.”
That sounded like something Icelynne should answer with her own words, and likely nothing I’d want to try to repeat. So I reached out and gave her a bit more energy. When the queen’s eyes snapped to Icelynne, I knew the ghost had solidified.