I collapsed to my knees, panting, but honestly, aside from the pain burning along my gnawed-upon arm, I felt better than I had in days. A fact that made me queasy.
I hugged my injured arm to my chest and pushed off the ground. Only then did I look around and take stock of what was happening beyond my circle. The queen was right on the edge of the barrier, Falin physically restraining her from slamming her fists into the circle. It said something about her mental state that she didn’t command him to release her. Maeve had backed away from both queen and circle. Lyell had a small scythelike weapon in his hands, but his arms were lowered as his gaze swept around my circle, searching for an enemy he hadn’t been able to see.
“What have you done, planeweaver?” the queen asked, struggling in Falin’s arms. “What injury have you inflicted on yourself? Are you attempting to skirt finding the answers I demand? Are you part of this conspiracy against me?”
I looked into her fevered gaze and felt hate, cold and pure, for this queen who regarded the value of others’ lives on a sliding scale of what she could gain from them. And yet, I also felt the smallest amount of pity for her. Something was wrong with her. I wasn’t sure if she’d snapped under the stress of her position or if something more malicious was at play, but this hateful queen was out of her mind.
“Rawhead’s ghost was present. It is gone now.” The words came out flat, with no inflection. “I’m ready to raise the shade,” I said, and then turned my back on her. I had a job to do and I didn’t want to look at the woman who’d ordered the execution of the body in front of me, and so, indirectly forced me to cannibalize a soul.
Or maybe I just wanted to stop thinking because it had been so easy to do this time. And it felt good. Which scared me. After all, even if it was in self-defense, how many souls could I consume without destroying my own?
Chapter 27
With Rawhead’s ghost gone, progressing with the ritual was little more than a familiar exercise. After the last several rituals with shades so depleted that I’d had to pour far too much energy into them to raise a mere shadow of my typical shades, the ease of which Rawhead’s shade rose from his body was a relief.
I glanced at the shade I’d raised and grimaced. Well, maybe relief was the wrong word. Falin had covered the body before I’d drawn my circle, and the ghost had more or less resembled Rawhead in life, but the shade resembled him in death, complete with neck ending in a bloody stump and his severed head in his lap. I looked away.
“What is your name?” I asked the shade.
“We know that already,” the queen all but spat from outside my circle.
I shot a frown over my shoulder at her, but she was correct. We knew that information, but I always started my interviews with the question. It was a habit.
Physics—or maybe biology—would insist that a head separated from its body couldn’t speak, but Rawhead was dead, a projection of memories, and the magic didn’t really care in what condition that projection appeared. So, the shade’s response of his name was clear and strong.
Behind me, the queen muttered something about moving on and asking the alchemist’s name, but I hesitated before asking my next question. I needed the alchemist’s identity, without a doubt, but in the queen’s frantic state, she’d likely demand an immediate end to my ritual as soon as we had a name. I didn’t want to be called to any more scenes with glamoured fires or homicidal clowns, so I needed a little more information about Glitter before I lost access to Rawhead’s shade.
“Have you been distributing the drug Glitter?”
“Yes.”
Well, at least I knew we had the right fae. I still felt sick that he’d been killed so that I could question him, but the reassurance that he was responsible for at least half a dozen deaths was something. Oh, and according to legend, he ate children. Major strike against him there.
“How many vials of Glitter did you distribute?”
“Seven.”
I blinked. Seven vials? I was expecting the number to be in the dozens if not the hundreds. I had assumed that our victims had overdosed or had a bad reaction to the drug, but if I assumed Gavin Murphy had used the drug—and Death had indicated that he had—I knew where five of the vials had ended up. That left only two vials unaccounted for. They could still be unused, or the results might not have been outlandish enough to warrant attention, the users dying in seemingly mundane ways. The operation Icelynne had described sounded, if not large, than at least as though more than seven vials had been produced.
“What was the point?” I said under my breath. It wasn’t really a question, or at least not one directed at anyone, but the shade answered anyway.
“Fear.”
“What?”
“Glitter was distributed to create fear among the humans and disorder in the court,” Rawhead said.