“Em, you could barely do anything when you arrived here a few days ago. This is an achievement. Oh, and I have some more books for you.” She gestures over her shoulder, and a pile of books on the low table between the couches rises into the air before dropping down again, the individual books smacking loudly into each other as they land. “You can carry them out with magic just now.”
“Sure.” I try not to work out how long it will take me to get back to my own rooms if I have to magically transport a pile of books the entire way there. Hopefully I can convince one of the guards who surreptitiously follow me around at a distance to help me once I’m out of Aurora’s sight.
As I get back to eating my mess of a breakfast, the door opens and Clarina slips into the room. She moves silently to stand beside Noraya and, after a moment’s pause, begins whispering to her.
“What’s going on?” Aurora asks loudly, not bothering to look around at them.
Clarina falls silent, her wide eyes darting across the room toward her mistress. From across the room, I see her throat bob as she swallows.
“Clarina.” Aurora pushes her plate away and turns in her chair to face the two handmaids. “Part of your job is to report secrets to me, not to whisper them in my vicinity. Now tell me what’s going on.”
Clarina bobs her head. “Yes, Your Highness. I apologize. It’s just that … it’s so horrible.”
“What’s so horrible? What happened?”
“One of the guards …” Clarina’s eyes shift to Noraya, whose chin shudders as she stares at the floor. Clarina clears her throat and returns her gaze to Aurora. “One of the guards was found dead in the garden,” she says in a shaky voice. “Grey and wrinkled and dead.”
Two
I pace across the sitting room of my suite—smaller than Aurora’s, but no less luxurious—waiting for someone to come and tell me what’s going on. Aurora sent me back here in the company of several guards immediately after Clarina’s creepy words about someone grey, wrinkled, and dead in the garden, but I’ve received no news since then. I walk onto my balcony and look down yet again, but I still can’t see anything interesting. This death must have happened on the other side of the palace.
I wander inside again, between the armchairs and around the table. I sit at the writing desk and try to read one of the books I’m supposed to be studying, but I can’t focus. Thoughts of Mom and all the Griffin rebels I ran away from keep slipping through the cracks of my concentration. Guilt over vanishing with no explanation. Sadness at having to leave Bandit behind. I’m even starting to miss Dash, of all people. And then there’s the avalanche of questions: Who am I? Who is Mom? How did we come to live in the human realm with our magic blocked? Just to name a few …
I abandon the book and end up lying on the divan, watching the glow-bugs that are fixed to the ceiling, and slowly lifting and lowering cushions with magic. It requires my full attention to get this simple maneuver right, which means there’s no room in my mind for questions and distracting thoughts.
Without warning, the main door to my suite is thrown open. My two levitating cushions land on my chest and tumble to the floor. I push myself up hurriedly, twisting around to face the door, and find Aurora striding into the room. Someone pulls the door shut behind her as I stand and ask, “Is everything okay? Did you find out what happened?”
“I don’t know what happened, but I’ve spoken to the people who found the dead guard.” She walks onto the balcony. I follow her out into the warm mid-morning sunshine. “I saw him, Em. It was …” She sucks in a breath and shakes her head. “Horrifying. The color in his hair was completely gone, and his face …” She turns away and rests her hands on the balcony railing. “His skin was sagging and wrinkled. It was just awful. That doesn’t happen to our kind, Em. That doesn’t happen. Not naturally anyway. And this means that—” She cuts herself off, her fingers tightening on the balustrade.
“Means what? That this guard was attacked with magic?” I mentally kick myself for that unimpressive feat of deduction. Obviously this guard was attacked with magic.
“Yes. Something like that.” Aurora shakes her head and returns her gaze to me. “Anyway, I received a message from Roarke. He said we shouldn’t speak of it to anyone. Only a few people know what the guard looked like, and we don’t want everyone finding out and getting scared.”
I can’t help raising my eyebrows. “You think the rest of this palace doesn’t already know? Someone must have told Clarina, and surely Clarina and Noraya have told others by now.”
“They won’t have told a soul. Clarina and Noraya have been with me forever—well, Noraya’s been here forever, and Clarina’s been with me for at least three years—so they know how to keep their mouths shut. Clarina was with one of my mother’s handmaids when she saw the dead guard, and she came straight here afterwards. A few other guards have seen him, but they’ve also been told to keep quiet.”
I lean against the balustrade and stare across the garden. In the distance, two large birds soar across the sky. At least, I assume they’re birds. Their wings seem a little too big for their bodies, though. “Does anyone know who did it?” I ask, looking away from the flying creatures. “I mean, if it’s impossible to sneak into this palace, then it must be a guest or someone who lives here.”
Aurora exhales and plasters a fake smile onto her face. “We mustn’t speak of it anymore, Em. Forget about it now.”
“Forget? That’s unlikely. Don’t you want to know more?”
“No. Roarke and my father will take care of it when they return. Which should be just before dinner, apparently.”
“Oh.” My unease shifts into something more positive. “That’s great.”
“Yes. Now, what other magic was I showing you yesterday?” She rubs her hands together and walks back inside. “You practiced moving things, and there was also …”
“Fire,” I remind her. “Well, tiny flames. So I don’t accidentally burn the palace down.”
“Yes, that’s right. Have you made any improvement?”
I snap my fingers together and open my hand, palm-up, hoping the spell has become instinctual enough for a flame to appear automatically above my hand. My palm, however, remains empty. “Um … apparently not.”
“Yes, well, you’re not even trying.” She sits primly at the edge of the divan. “You need to focus. You’re not at the point yet where it happens automatically. Now, try again.”
I grumble beneath my breath before lowering my hands to my sides, closing my eyes, and telling myself to relax. I need to be able to release magic, then focus fully on the moment when it’s ready to shift from something raw and formless into anything else. At that point, I have to mentally shape it into a flame before it disappears. And all this, apparently, will happen almost instantly once I’ve done it enough times. I’ve just about reached a relaxed mental state when a tap on the other side of the door interrupts my concentration.
“Enter,” Aurora calls out.
Noraya walks in and hurries to Aurora’s side. She bends and whispers something before straightening.
Aurora rises with a sigh. “Of course. I’ll come now. Sorry, Em, but my mother would like to see me. You should carry on practicing, though. And get started on reading those books. You have a lot to learn if you’re going to fit in here.”
I watch her leave before dropping into an armchair and slumping back against the gold-embroidered cushions. Then I force myself to sit up straight and focus on producing a flame. I have no intention of fitting in here—not in the long run—but I need to at least pretend I’m planning to see this union through. Besides, I’ll probably need to use magic to get myself out of here. I may as well take this opportunity to learn as much as I can.
After trying repeatedly to produce a flame and succeeding about fifty percent of the time, I settle down with the smallest book from the pile Aurora gave me this morning. It’s a collection of basic spells that reads as though it was written for a first grader. Perfect. As
embarrassing as it is, this is exactly the kind of thing I need.
Once I’ve successfully managed to shrink a cushion to about half of its size, then enlarge it, and then return it to normal, I pick up a different book and settle into an armchair. It contains accounts of history even older than the history I learned at Chevalier House. The initial dividing of the courts, and the very first Seelie and Unseelie families. I haven’t got very far when I hear a faint scratching sound. I lower the book and look around, trying to figure out where the scratching is coming from, but whatever it was has stopped. With a frown, I return to reading.
But the scratching begins again. From the direction of the desk, perhaps? I stand slowly, wondering what exactly I’ll do if I tug open one of the drawers and a nasty magical creature pounces out at me. For some reason, my imagination conjures up an image of a disembodied hand, which doesn’t help my pattering heart rate at all.
Three sharp taps at the door cause the book to slip from my fingers. I close my eyes for a moment and breathe out shakily, almost laughing at myself for becoming so jumpy. “Come in,” I call as I bend to pick up the book.
“Your lunch, Lady Emerson,” Clarina says from the doorway.
I straighten, leave the book on the armchair, and push my hair out of my face. “Right. Thanks.” I’ve eaten lunch with Aurora each day since I arrived here, but she obviously has other matters to attend to today. Clarina carries the tray of food to the table near the balcony doors while I edge closer to the desk on the other side of the room. Feeling silly now for having been afraid of a simple scratching sound, but still a little wary of what might have been causing it, I yank open the drawer on the left and quickly stand back. The stolen stylus rolls toward the back of the drawer—and nothing jumps out at me. I push the drawer closed and open the one on the right. It’s filled with the blank scrolls that were on top of the first pile of books Aurora gathered for me.
“Is everything all right, Lady Emerson?” Clarina asks.
My cheeks flush as I look over my shoulder at her. “Yes, sorry. I thought I heard something, but …” I turn back and peer into the drawer. “But there’s nothing here.”
“There are many small creatures living in the gardens here,” Clarina tells me. “Some of them come inside on occasion. Most of them are harmless.”
“Most?” I repeat.
She smiles faintly at the floor, but doesn’t elaborate. “Do you need anything else, my lady?”
I pick up the history book on my way to the table. “I don’t think so. This looks amazing.” She bobs her head and walks back toward the door.
“Clarina?” I ask as I lower myself into a chair.
She stops and looks around, her eyes meeting mine for only a moment before focusing on the floor. “Yes, Lady Emerson?”
“What makes you an Unseelie faerie?”
She hesitates before answering. “What do you mean?”
“Are you even an Unseelie faerie? Is everyone who lives and works in the palace considered Unseelie?”
She frowns at the floor. “Yes, I believe so, my lady.”
“What makes you different from someone who isn’t Unseelie? I’m trying to remember what I was told when I first arrived in this world, but it wasn’t much. I think someone said the magic here is slightly different? Something about dark magic?”
“Any magic they don’t agree with they call dark magic.”
“They?”
“Those who are not Unseelie. Some of our magic is the same as theirs,” she explains. “Like the power that resides naturally within all of us, or the power we absorb from the elements or the plants. But they don’t like it when we take power from other living beings—lesser beings—and they don’t like some of the procedures involved in certain spells. So that’s where the divide comes in. I think,” she adds, folding her hands together demurely in front of her.
My eyes graze over the spread of food on the table. It’s far more than I could ever eat in one meal. I wish I could ask Clarina to sit down and eat with me while I ask her more questions, but I know she’d never agree to that. “What counts as a lesser being?” I ask.
Again, she looks confused. “Well, everything that isn’t a faerie, of course.”
A chill raises the hairs on my arms, despite the warm breeze wafting in through the open balcony doors. “Do, um, do you do that often? Take power from other living beings?”
“No, my lady. I haven’t ever needed to. I’ve been healed before by spells that were specifically Unseelie, but I personally haven’t absorbed raw power from another being.”
“Okay. I see.” I’m not sure what else to say, aside from telling her that taking someone else’s power sounds downright creepy and just plain wrong.
“Do you have any other questions, my lady?”
“Uh … not right now.”
She turns, then adds, “You don’t need to be disturbed by all this, my lady. It’s unfamiliar to you, I know, but it isn’t wrong. It’s just different. And, well, I’ve always been told that we shouldn’t be afraid of something just because it’s different.”
“Um, yes, that’s true. Thank you, Clarina.” I give her a smile that fades the moment the door closes behind her. I know I shouldn’t be afraid of something simply because it’s different, but if it’s different and it’s hurting someone, that’s not okay. Perhaps I’ve misunderstood it, though. Perhaps this ‘taking power’ thing isn’t nearly as ominous as it sounds. It may only be a little bit of power, not enough to kill someone. And perhaps they only take it from beings that are willing.
I help myself to some food, reopen the book, and continue reading. After only a few minutes, a subdued thump comes from the direction of my bedroom. I lower the sandwich that was halfway toward my mouth and slot a fork between the pages of the book to keep my place. I silently lift a knife and rise from the chair to face the half-open bedroom door.
And then I spend far too long frozen in place, wondering whether I should investigate on my own or risk looking stupid by asking a guard to go into my bedroom and hunt down the mysterious thing that hasn’t made another sound since that first thump. I decide in the end to risk looking foolish. Better than getting chomped by one of the non-harmless creatures from outside—or by whatever it was that killed that guard this morning.
I open the main door, stick my head out, and find two women in guard uniforms standing just outside. They spend at least twenty minutes searching every inch of my bedroom while I pretend to read. And when they leave, having found no hint of a threat, I’m almost certain I see one rolling her eyes at the other.
Three
“Has your Griffin Ability appeared again?” Aurora asks that evening as we retire to the couches in her private sitting room. It’s late, dinner is over, and Roarke still isn’t back. Asking when he’ll return is useless, so I’ve given up, but I still find myself burning with frustration every time I picture Mom permanently asleep. My hands want to curl into fists whenever I think of all the minutes, hours, and days passing by.
“I felt it in my sleep last night,” I tell her, removing a cushion from behind my back and hugging it to my chest. Better to squeeze the cushion than to continuously dig my nails into my palms. “It woke me up. By the time I figured out what was happening, the moment had passed. I didn’t manage to get a single word out before the magic was gone.”
“What would you have said?”
I shake my head as I watch the dancing flames in the fireplace. Given that it’s summer here, I wouldn’t have thought it necessary to light a fire at night, but the room feels pleasantly warm and cozy. “I don’t know. I was half asleep and trying to think of something, but the feeling was gone before I’d come up with any command.”
She watches me for some time, while I continue to stare past her at the flames. “Do you really think the elixir is going to help you?”
I focus on her, my mood lifting instantly. Could she possibly be thinking of giving the elixir back to me? “Of course it helps. It tur
ns the ability on so I can use it.”
“Yes, I know, but you said the point of the elixir is to somehow teach you to use and control the ability on your own. It’s supposed to help you recognize what your Griffin magic feels like, right? So that you can call on that magic at will without the help of the elixir?”
“Yes, something like that.”
“But you already know what it feels like.”
I look down at my arms wrapped around the cushion. “Yes, I do.”
“So then why—”
“Why can’t I do it on my own?” I sigh, my excitement dissipating. She isn’t going to give me that elixir. “I don’t know. I’ve tried. I imagine the feeling. I picture pulling magic from deep inside me, but nothing ever happens. Maybe if I had that elixir, I could—”
“No,” she says. “I’m not giving you something that will become a crutch, especially since there isn’t a lot of it, and once it’s gone, we don’t know how to make more. Not to mention what a bad idea it is to give you something that will immediately switch on a dangerous ability you could then use against me.”
“Aurora, I would never—”
“Yeah, yeah.” She rolls her eyes. “You’re going to be part of my family soon, so I’d like to be able to trust you, but we’re not there yet. No, the reason I’m bringing this up is because I’ve been thinking about how your ability might work.” She tilts her head to the side and stares thoughtfully across the room at the curtains concealing the balcony doors. “Perhaps, because it’s such a powerful ability, it needs to sort of … replenish itself. That would explain why you can’t use it all the time.”
“Okay. Maybe. Do some kinds of magic work that way?”
“Well, all magic works that way, actually.” She shifts her position, folds one leg neatly over the other, and faces me. “It’s just that we hardly ever use it all up in one go, so we don’t realize that it’s constantly replenishing. If you do something that’s particularly strenuous on your magic, like lifting something very heavy and holding it in the air for a long time, then you’ll eventually tire yourself out. Magically, I mean. Then you need to rest while your magic restores itself.”
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