She sat down beside me and tried to guide my fingers to the strings. She was having difficulty because I was shaking. The pressure in my head increased, a hideous buzzing in my ears so loud that I could barely hear anything else. Let go, I thought I heard something whisper.
“What a disappointment you must be for your mother,” Princess Maeve said. “And I thought Lady Mykaela’s get would be more impressive.”
“She isn’t Lady Mykaela’s daughter,” Prince Kance reminded her.
“Mum says the Odalian bone witch has no heartsglass,” one of the other girls interjected.
“But why not?” another asked.
The princess laughed. “Because she gave her heart away. Take a bone witch’s heart and you take most of her powers. That’s what happened to the Odalian witch. Gave her heart and paid for it, crying and bleeding, in the dust.”
“Don’t you dare talk about Lady Mykaela that way!” Sudden anger seized me, and the fury pulled and prodded at the growing pain in my head, like someone had taken a hammer to my skull. I felt my heartsglass change to the color of soured milk.
“Why not? It’s what happened,” the girl taunted. “It was a scandal, it was. Even Princess Nercella knows it, and her kingdom’s all the way up Stranger’s Peak. Your mother gave her heart away, and King Vanor took her powers just as she deserved. She can’t raise the dead the way she used to anymore or curse people even. The more daeva she summons, the faster she’ll die. She’ll spend the rest of her days drawing hearts for children’s amusement and be good for nothing else until the day she falls into her own grave.”
Her words whirled around me like a hurricane. It explained so many things—the king’s easy acceptance of Mykaela and his insistence that we be treated well. Bone witches weren’t welcomed in many kingdoms. But if they grew weaker with every Dark rune they drew because they no longer had a heartsglass to draw strength from, then people could afford to be magnanimous.
And Lady Mykaela had kept it hidden from me all these months. They all had.
“I’m bored with all this dancing and setar playing. Witch’s get or not, she would have powers of her own, wouldn’t she? Do you, little girl? Come, show us your stuff.”
“Your Highness,” Yonca spoke up, alarmed. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
“And why not? Surely the queen of this decrepit little kingdom won’t go so far as to allow bone witches to slum at her doors when they can entertain with their magic. King Telemaine’s only soft on her because she reminds him of his dead brother!”
“You mustn’t talk that way, Maeve!”
I clutched at my head, the blood roaring through.
“Please…” I gasped, fingernails digging at my temples. There was an unbelievable pressure there, an elephant settled onto the weight of my brain, demanding escape.
Prince Kance was on the ground beside me in an instant, holding my shoulders. “Are you all right, Tea? What’s wrong?”
Let go.
With a strength I didn’t know I possessed, I pushed at the immensity of that crushing force with my mind. I let go.
Something snapped inside me, a coiled spring finding release.
The girls paused in their bickering to stare at a large crack that appeared on the wall, the lines zigzagging and growing as they watched. It crumbled—and hordes of skeletal rats came scampering out, the bony, tail-flicking mass filling the room and overrunning the carpet.
Screaming, the girls stumbled over each other to get out of their way. Several more, Princess Maeve included, fled. I felt a pair of arms encircling me, as both Prince Kance and Lord Kalen dragged me up onto the table, out of the rodents’ path.
And then the floor splintered, and a thin, bony hand reached up from beneath. The figure that pulled itself up through the hole was nothing more than a skeleton with rags that clung to bits of its frame, the always-grinning skull leering up at us. The sight of that and of the other smaller, gleaming skulls scuttling out into the corridor, where more screams and shouts greeted the swarm, were the last things I remembered.
She paused. Bones creaked in the wind above us.
“I thought I would be expelled from the Willows for that. To put on another’s hua was reprehensible enough; to attend to important guests pretending to be an asha is even worse. But to release a horde of undead from one of the most popular cha-khana in Ankyo? Other people had been thrown in prison for lesser offenses.”
This time, her movements were deliberate. She circled the massive skeleton, heedless of the mud and wet sand that swirled around her ankles and the hem of her hua. I could not see the runes she made in the air with her fingers, but her gestures suggested they were larger than the beast’s jaws. A chill settled around us.
“Rise,” the girl commanded. The topaz-colored bezoar in her hand broke apart in response, dissolving.
And the skeleton moved. I staggered back, horrified, as something unseen wrapped around the desiccated limbs and took form, muscles and tendons and skin forming around the joints before my very eyes. The creature shuddered and sighed and rose from the sand. At first it resembled a gigantic, skinless animal, and I could see the blood bubbling through its veins. But the spell continued its curse, and skin formed up along those pink sinews to become a rough, leathery hide. The daeva shook itself free and rumbled. Its tongue unfurled, saliva dripping onto the ground, the sand it landed on dissolving like acid. Its red-and-silver-striped eyes look back at me, and it crooned.
The girl lifted her hand, and I saw something swirl into focus before her. The magic congealed and sprouted a shape—it was a heart without a heartsglass, as black as shadows, as bright as stars. It solidified enough that she could reach out and take it from the air, though it continued to shift and twist, never staying in one shape for long. She plucked that shining jewel from the air and pushed it into her own heartsglass.
The light blinded me, and I had to shield my eyes from the sudden glare. The girl remained steady on her feet, the taurvi by her side. Her waist wrap had shifted, and on her hua’s embroidery, I saw a second dragon’s head look out from where it had previously been hidden, followed by another.
“Don’t worry. It won’t bite.”
I scrambled back anyway. The girl placed a hand against its muzzle, and the creature actually purred. It regarded me with interest, with curiosity—but with neither hate nor hostility.
“When your heartsglass is black and steeped in the spells of the Dark,” the girl said, smiling, “you find that there is no need to wait five more years to raise daeva.”
10
It was dawn when I woke, judging from the light trailing in through a window. For several moments, I was confused, because the Falling Leaf had small, oblong frames that look out into their central garden, while this had a view of the oracle’s temple, pale smoke still rising out from somewhere underneath its polished dome roof. Lady Mykaela stood before the glass pane, one hand lifted to brush back a curtain. She was staring at something in the distance.