The pain was hot and intense, racing along my nerves like lightning. I inhaled, preparing to scream—
The pain stopped. Completely. It was replaced by a soothing numbness, and by absolute immobility. I couldn’t even move enough to squeak. I tried to look for the shape of the spell, to unweave it as I had other bindings, but it slipped away from me like water.
Of course it did. Amandine is Firstborn—my Firstborn. My magic is a pale imitation of hers. Any tricks I know how to perform, I inherited from her. No matter how powerful I become, how much practice I get, her spells will probably always be the only ones I can’t unwind. I was caught.
We all were. Tybalt was behind me, outside my frame of vision, but I could see May and Jazz. They looked terrified, wrapped in their cocoons of calming thorns. Only Amandine was free to move around the room.
She walked to the kitchen table, clearing it of mail, newspapers, and dishes with a sweep of her arm. Something smashed when it hit the floor. She didn’t appear to care. “Even as a girl, you were willful,” she said. “You never wanted to listen. You never wanted to mind me, even when minding me would have been the proper thing to do. I thought it was the humanity in you, so I forgave it—I was making it worse, wasn’t I? That meant it must be what I wanted. But look at you now. Barely clinging to your mortality, and still you refuse to mind me. It’s a flaw in your nature. You’re a part of my punishment. Well, I’m sorry, October, but you need to learn how to mind your mother.”
Amandine reached into her dress again, this time coming up with a handful of thorny twigs that looked like bits of briar. She placed them on the table in two tidy piles, stacking them on top of each other like she was preparing for a game of pick-up sticks. Then she snapped her fingers. The twigs writhed and stretched, weaving together until they had grown into two small wicker cages.
“You think me a monster, I’m sure. Heroes always think the people who tell them ‘no’ are monsters. Heroes and children have a great deal in common.” She plucked two bunches of Queen Anne’s lace from her skirt and tossed them into the cages, where they expanded and fluffed out, becoming blankets thick enough to protect the eventual occupants from the thorns under their feet.
Nothing would protect them from the thorns in the walls. Whatever she intended to shut up there would be cramped, and confined, and unable to move.
I strained against the thorns binding me, reaching again for the shimmering threads of her magic, wishing I could scream when they flowed away from my mental hands. I was starting to see the terrible shape of her intentions. It couldn’t be real. I refused to let it be real. I couldn’t do a damn thing about it.
Amandine walked across the room, stopping to caress my cheek with one hand. Part of me—the part that was still her frightened, abandoned little girl—relished the touch. She hadn’t touched me like that since I’d made the Changeling’s Choice, all those years ago. The greater part of me raged. She had no right to touch me like that. No right at all.
“My poor child,” she said. “You really have no idea how outmatched you are, do you?”
She stepped past me, out of sight. There was a snapping sound, and the smell of blood and roses grew stronger, suddenly underscored by the mixed scents of pennyroyal and musk. When she came back into view, she had a struggling tabby tomcat by the scruff of his neck. The spell of the thorns had broken when she transformed Tybalt against his will: he spat and writhed, digging his claws into the alabaster skin of her arms over and over again. It didn’t do him any good. She was healing as fast as he could hurt her, and only a few drops of blood were able to escape and fall to the floor.
Amandine walked calmly back to her cages, the purpose of which was suddenly, terribly obvious. She dropped Tybalt into the larger of the two and slammed the lid before he could leap out. A knot of thorns wrapped itself around the latch, sealing it.
“No Shadow Roads for you, cat,” she said, a smug smile on her face. “My magic is greater than yours, at least while you stand within my ring of roses. Best calm yourself, or it will not go well for you.”
Tybalt’s response was an infuriated yowl before his paw lashed between the bars, claws cutting lines down her cheek.
Amandine sighed, the scratches already healing. “Or you could choose to be trouble, and learn what waits for recalcitrant cats. It’s entirely up to you.”
I struggled against the vines that held me—or rather, I struggled to find the strength to struggle. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t move a muscle. I couldn’t even blink. All I could do was watch in mute horror as Amandine turned her back on Tybalt and walked across the room to where Jazz was pinned by her own encircling cage of vines.
“Skinshifter,” said Amandine, looking back at me. “Your Fetch is a reflection of yourself. I would have thought any child of mine would have slightly better taste than to love someone who keeps their ties to Faerie on the outside—but then, you dallied with that Selkie boy before you moved on to better beasts, didn’t you, darling? I blame myself. With a human for a sire, there was nowhere you could go but down.”
She grasped Jazz’s chin firmly in her hand. The spell weakened enough for Jazz to widen her eyes in terror before Amandine was holding the beak of a vast black raven. She moved quickly, sweeping her other arm around to pin Jazz’s wings against her sides.
“Struggle, and I’ll shred the pretty bauble you call a cloak of feathers. I’ll leave you on two legs forever. How do you think you’ll care for that, hmm?”
It was difficult to read Jazz’s expression when she was in raven form, but she didn’t fight against Amandine, and I suppose that was answer enough. She held perfectly still, seemingly frozen with fear, as Amandine walked across the room and dropped her into the second cage. She sealed it the same way she had sealed the one containing Tybalt.
“Nothing sensible keeps its magic outside of its body,” said Amandine. “It’s one weakness too many. Find another lover, Fetch of my child; this one is beneath you.”
She picked up the cages, one in each hand, and looked over her shoulder to smile at me thinly. There was no kindness in her expression, no love; she was looking at a servant, nothing more.
“I’ll take care of these for you while you find your sister,” she said. “Don’t fail me, October. You won’t care for the consequences.”
She walked to the back door. It swung open at her approach. Then she stepped outside, taking Tybalt and Jazz with her. The door slammed shut.
They were gone.
FOUR