“So we might have the king’s best wishes, but not his nobles’.”
“We might,” Amy agreed grimly. “In which case, we are in very dangerous waters indeed.” My gentle sister-in-law’s face was, for once, set in forbidding lines—not the usual warm, loving expression of my affectionate sister-in-all-but-blood, but that of a woman of certain power and intellect...who should, if luck and justice prevailed, be selected as the newest member of the Boudiccate the very next time an opening arose.
She should have been granted my mother’s seat, as I myself would have been if matters had gone as planned by the older generation—but there was no time to meditate on that old injustice now as Amy continued:
“Without being allowed entrance to their halls, we can’t do any more than guess at what might be happening inside them. But our last ambassador returned to her family at the turning of the summer solstice, and they haven’t authorized a new one since.”
She stopped at a white-paneled door and turned its bronze handle—shaped as a leaping stag in tribute to the male Cosgraves’ own magical contributions to the family history—as she spoke. “Oh, they don’t say that they’ve closed their court to us entirely—they couldn’t, without breaking the treaty—but they’ve come up with one excuse after another ever since. One ambassador is too young, another is too old; it’s simply impossible to make any decisions until a certain elven courtier returns from his travels...”
She stepped aside, ushering me before her into a warm, white-and-gold room with a canopied bed, a large window facing out onto the snowy darkness, and a giant allegorical painting of Boudicca’s victory hanging on the wall over the fireplace.
“But,” she finished, closing the door firmly behind her, “they all end with the same result. We have no ambassador in their court; we know something is amiss but don’t know what; and poor Lady Cosgrave is preparing to host the winter solstice now with no idea whether our allies will even bother to attend the very ceremony that’s meant to seal our alliance for another year.”
“Ah.” My gaze slipped to the glass window and the darkness beyond, where the elf-lord and his troll both waited...somewhere. “So.” I took a breath. “It’s rather important, then, that we not do anything to offend them at this point.”
“Cassandra!” Amy let out a startled burst of laughter. “How can you even jest about such a thing? It’s no laughing matter!”
“No,” I agreed glumly. “I imagine not.”
The expressions on the kneeling Roman soldiers’ faces, in the nearby painting, echoed my feelings rather well.
“Now.” Amy plopped down onto the bed and patted the mattress invitingly. “No more excuses from you, please, darling. What on earth were you and Wrexham up to out there, to send you home in such a state?” Her eyebrows furrowed, her expression becoming fierce. “He wasn’t insulting to you, was he?”
“No! Of course not.” I stalked over to the window, unable to hold her gaze. The curtains hadn’t been lowered yet; I gripped the window-frame with tight fingers, embracing the damp chill that emanated from the dark glass.
The protection spells scrolled in iron along the edges of this frame wouldn’t be enough to protect me if the elf-lord came; the last war we’d fought had been more than proof enough of that. No, these spells would only keep out a minor fairy, at the most...and even if I still possessed my old powers, I couldn’t fight back without sacrificing my nation’s safety in exchange.
It was a startlingly bitter gift to discover that I still had more to lose, after all, than I had spent the past two months believing.
But if I told my sister-in-law the truth of the danger I was facing, I might as well rip that treaty up with both hands and damn the safety of the rest of our nation forever...because Amy never, ever gave up on the people she loved.
No. I’d spent the past four months being cosseted by my family, but this was one problem I would have to face alone.
My reflection was a ghost in the window before me. I said, keeping my tone as idle as possible, “You don’t know of any weather wizards in this party, do you?”
“Here?” Amy, bless her, took the change of subject in stride. I saw her eyebrows rise in her reflection, but after only a moment’s pause, she said, “I imagine at least half the husbands here must work magic. I know all of the members of the Boudiccate married magicians, certainly. But I’ve never asked about any of their specialties. That was always...” She stopped abruptly, but I could easily finish her sentence for her:
That was always your business, not mine.
I took one long, steady breath and then another, my breath frosting the glass in front of me. “Would you find out, please?” I asked. “If you could?”
“Of course.” Amy’s tone gentled. “But darling...”
My shoulders stiffened. I knew that tone only too well.
“You know what the physicians said,” my sister-in-law murmured, with sympathetic pain lining every word. “Any use of magic is prohibited. I know that weather wizardry isn’t quite the same as the sort you used to work on—”
“Used to cast,” I gritted through my teeth. “I used to cast magic. That’s what it’s called.”
The pity on Amy’s reflected face was unbearable. I closed my eyes to shut it out, my fingers tightening around the window-frame.
“I beg your pardon,” I said quietly. “I shouldn’t have interrupted you so rudely.”
Amy sighed. “Never mind.” Silk swished behind me, followed by the brush of footsteps on the polished wooden floor. I opened my eyes and found her standing behind me with her folded hands resting on her rounded stomach, gazing gravely at my reflection in the window. “You know we’ll always help with anything you ask,” she said softly. “And I will ask about any weather wizards who might be here. But please, darling, remember: there is more to you than your magic. There always was.”
Her words pierced a too-thin shell inside my chest. I let out a half-laugh as pain flooded out through the opening. “Magic wasn’t just what I cast, it was what I was. You, of all people, should know that! By the time you met me—”
“I know,” she said firmly. “I know you. And I know how tightly you had to shut out everything else to keep from losing your own purpose and being swept away by your mother’s great plans for you instead. But I know something else, too: Wrexham, for one, never wanted you for your magic.”
“Oh, Amy.” Giving up, I tipped my head forward against the damp, cold glass, letting my eyes fall shut as memories overwhelmed me. “Of course he did,” I said in a near-whisper. “If you knew just how strong our castings used to be when we worked together...” It had been a perfect partnership. It had been beyond exhilarating. It had been...