She knows the rumors. That the LaMorte Territories are scattered and disorganized, a patchwork of contentious tribes loosely held together through shared customs—and shared fears. They say that the fiefdoms suffer under her iron-fisted rule, due in particular to a lack of young mothers, since so many girls of a certain age are forced to pay their tithe to the queen, after which their youth and beauty shrivel.
But from her perch atop the bastion tower of Blackthorn, at the very peak of Mount Briar, Malfleur sees a different picture, a fluid series of gasps and pangs: the coy shape-shifting of the clouds, white in the white sky. The suicidal streak of a falcon on the hunt—all silver and light—disappearing into the smoke as though plunging into a shadowed sea. And beneath it all, the hiss of the furnaces.
It had been an incredible feat both of magic and invention, a way to make the infertile soils of the steepest slopes pliant, a way to make the harrowing crags and cliffs habitable—underground kilns that boil water day and night, transforming this once barren region into one that is wet enough to bear life and grow.
The idea had come to her from the lips of a bard. He spoke of the burning flame of the heart, its own kind of hell. She had to have him executed, for obvious reasons; words of such beauty can only breed discontent, persuading the people to dream of things they can never have.
His death had nothing to do with the fact that he reminded her of someone. Someone she knew long ago.
After having the bard cut in little pieces, she fed him to her white panther, to see whether the taste of poetry was bitter or sweet. But the panther told her the man tasted just as all creatures do: like the fear of death.
In the end there’d been nothing left but bones and hair . . . and the lingering effect of his words on her mind. Its own kind of hell.
Now her kingdom is prospering like never before, all because of the furnaces, like infernal, burning hearts. But this, of course, is not enough for Malfleur. If anything, the accomplishment tastes ashen and caustic as the air itself.
People mistake her. Though her tithe may be youth, it is not vanity that motivates her. What is beauty—impeccable skin and eyes so blazing dark they make men weep—without power? No, what Malfleur has sought for more than a century, and what she seeks still, cannot be counted in the heartbreaking arch of an eyebrow or the catlike dance of bone and muscle across the back. Malfleur has traveled the world, studied the nuances of magic in realms near and far. It is self-evident: magic is a force of the mind, not the body. And she is still far from perfecting hers. She needs more time—and that is why she continues to tithe youth.
But she’s getting closer. Her powers are ever increasing. Her army is robust and expanding. Her experiments on human-animal language acquisition are beginning to flourish, though there was a setback a few weeks ago, when a large flock of starlings escaped midtesting, in a cloud of terrified flaps and screams.
As if in response to this thought, the muzzled albino panther standing beside Malfleur on the stone lookout—the queen’s most successful experiment so far—stretches, her fine shoulder blades like miniature mountains that sink back into snow-colored fur.
“Your day ends as mine begins,” Malfleur says to the creature. She has often thought of training herself to become nocturnal like a leopard or lynx, but she’s always loved to sleep in the night. It was one thing she and her sister had in common. Belcoeur was addicted to dreaming, while Malfleur craves the opposite—the thick, black hours in which her mind, and her magic, are an undisturbed blank.
The panther licks the back of her paw through the straps of her leather muzzle, then turns to the queen. “Like leaves,” she says in a velvet purr. She lifts her front paws onto the parapet. “Like leaves in wind in rain in fall in . . . restless. I want . . . river. I want . . . rush. I want . . .”
“You are hungry, my girl,” Malfleur replies. “I can fix that.”
“No. No fix. I am not hungry for flesh. I am hungry for . . .” The panther sniffs the air. “I am hungry for . . .”
“There is still a tower full of pine martens and minks for you.”
The panther chuffs, and the queen hears a feral frustration in the sound. “I am hungry for hungry for.”
Malfleur looks at the animal’s slitted eyes. “You are hungry for hunger,” she corrects, finally understanding. The creature has grown complacent after days kept by the queen’s side.
“I must hunt.” The panther lets out a low, ravenous moan, ripped through with thunder. The sound gives Malfleur a chill, reminding her why she keeps her pet muzzled while at the palace.
“So hunt,” Malfleur answers. “I release you.”
“But there is disease,” the animal says, licking the back of her other paw, then wiping it across her chin, where the leather binds to its chains. She is cleaning a thin wound, torn jaggedly along her jawbone. “I chase. I do not scavenge. You think I am no different than a jackal or a wolf? The world must run from me, not lie in wait. I do not eat disease.”
“Disease?”
“The sleeping sickness,” the panther says, beginning to pace in a circle. “It spreads. It starts with the girl with the sun hair—”
“The princess.”
“But it comes. It comes closer. It ends when we are all . . . fallen. I do not eat rotten fruit fallen from tree. Then I too become . . . rotten flesh. Food for flies. Food for flies.” The panther spits the words in a series of guttural hisses.
The queen too is disturbed by word of the sleeping sickness. Some of her citizens believe her to be its cause. But she would never claim this disease. Her curse was meant only to kill an otherwise harmless princess. She had nothing against the child. It was what the child represented that bothered her: yet another human heir to a kingdom that would have been, in her time, faerie ruled. It was meant to punish the pompous King Henri and his petty wife and the ridiculous council parading about the palace that was once her own family’s. It was meant to restore fear to the hearts of complacent Delucians. Of the fae too, who no longer seemed to believe in their own powers or, more importantly, in hers.
But she had made a mistake by bringing the spinning wheel into the curse. It was a careless, bitter jab on her part, referring simply to a bad memory from her childhood. Curses have a way of unearthing little needles from the curser’s past; and she should have been more careful.
And then Violette interfered, like some puffed-up orange ostrich. It is never advisable to amend a curse. Magic does unnerving things when perverted by other magic, even—or perhaps especially—when great magic is impeded and altered by a lesser magic. The princess, Malfleur is certain, was saved by Violette, in that she fell sleep and didn’t die. But neither the curse nor its amendment should have resulted in a contagion of sleep.
She can picture what the panther has seen: fields of once-slumbering sheep, now ravaged by wolves. Wagon horses and their passengers toppled and snoring themselves to a frozen death at the side of a road.