I go over to the glass jars of herbs and draw out a few rowan berries. I take out a thick thread for sewing stuffing inside hens, and I use that and a bit of cheesecloth to make her a small knot of them.
“Put this in your pocket or in your bra,” I tell her. “Keep it on you while you’re here.”
“And this will keep me safe?” Heather asks.
“Safer,” I say, sewing her up a bag of salt. “Sprinkle this on whatever you eat. Don’t forget.”
“Thank you.” She takes my arm, giving it a quick squeeze. “I mean, this doesn’t feel real. I know that must sound ridiculous. I’m standing in front of you. I can smell herbs and blood from those weird little birds. If you stuck me with that needle, it would hurt. But it still doesn’t feel real. Even though it makes sense of all Vee’s stupid evasions about normal stuff like where she went to high school. But it means the whole world is upside down.”
When I’ve been over there—at the mall, in Heather’s apartment—the difference between them and us has seemed so vast that I can’t imagine how Heather is managing to bridge it. “Nothing you could say would sound ridiculous to me,” I tell her.
Her gaze, as she takes in the stronghold, as she drinks in a breath of late-afternoon air, is full of hopeful interest. I have an uncomfortable memory of a girl with stones in her pockets and am desperately relieved that Heather is willing to accept her world being turned over.
Back in the parlor, Vivi grins at us. “Did Jude give you the grand tour?”
“I made her a charm,” I say, my tone making it clear that she should have been the one to do it.
“Good,” Vivi says happily, because it’s going to take much more than a slightly aggrieved tone to get under her skin when things are going her way. “Oriana tells me you haven’t been around much lately. Your feud with dear old Dad sounds pretty serious.”
“You know what it cost him,” I say.
“Stay for dinner.” Oriana rises, pale as a ghost, to look at me with her ruby eyes. “Madoc would like that. I would, too.”
“I can’t,” I tell her, actually feeling regretful about it. “I’ve dallied here more than I should have, but I will see you all at the wedding.”
“Things are always super dramatic around here,” Vivi tells Heather. “Epic. Everyone acts as though they just stepped out of a murder ballad.”
Heather looks at Vivi as though, perhaps, she just stepped out of a ballad, too.
“Oh,” Vivi says, reaching into her suitcase again, coming up with another squishy-looking package wrapped with a black bow. “Can you take this to Cardan? It’s a ‘congratulations on being king’ present.”
“He’s the High King of Elfhame,” Oriana says. “Whether or not you played together, you cannot call him as you did when you were children.”
I stand there stupidly for a long moment, not reaching for the package. I knew Vivi and Cardan were friendly. After all, Vivi’s the one who told Taryn about his tail, having seen it while swimming together with one of his sisters.
I just forgot.
“Jude?” Vivi asks.
“I think you better give it to him yourself,” I say, and with that, I make my escape from my old house before Madoc returns home and I am overcome with nostalgia.
I pass by the throne room where Cardan sits at one of the low tables, his head bent toward Nicasia’s. I cannot see his face, but I can see hers as she throws back her head with laughter, showing the long column of her throat. She looks incandescent with joy, his attention the light in which her beauty shines especially bright.
She loves him, I realize uncomfortably. She loves him, and she betrayed him with Locke and is terrified he will never love her again.
His fingers trace their way down her arm to the back of her wrist, and I remember vividly the feeling of those hands on me. My skin heats at the memory, a blush that starts at my throat and keeps going from there.
Kiss me until I am sick of it, he said, and now he has most certainly gorged on my kisses. Now he is most certainly sick of them.
I hate seeing him with Nicasia. I hate the thought of his touching her. I hate that this is my plan, that I have no one to be angry with but myself.
I am an idiot.
Pain makes you strong, Madoc once told me, making me lift a sword again and again. Get used to the weight.
I force myself to watch no more. Instead, I meet with Vulciber to coordinate bringing Balekin to the palace for his audience with Cardan.
Then I go down to the Court of Shadows and hear information about courtiers, hear rumors of Madoc’s marshaling his forces as though preparing for the war I still hope to avoid. I send two spies to the lower Courts with the largest number of unsworn changelings to see what they can learn. I talk to the Bomb about Grimsen, who has crafted Nicasia a gem-encrusted broach that allows her to summon gauzy wings from her back and fly.
“What do you think he wants?” I ask.
“Praise, flattery,” says the Bomb. “Perhaps to find a new patron. Probably he wouldn’t mind a kiss.”