Exiled Queen (The Thief's Talisman Book 3)

by Emma L. Adams

  Cedar looked at me, his face unreadable. “How, exactly?”

  “Let my sister out of jail, and force her to swear a vow to serve me or rot down there in the dark.”

  Chapter 12

  Cedar didn’t say a word while we walked through the darkening forest, treading through Winter territory to approach my palace from the back.

  “You can tell me it’s a bad idea,” I said to him. “I won’t hold it against you.”

  “I don’t. I think it’s risky, and Lady Whitefall is likely to anticipate that your sister isn’t doing her bidding.”

  “You don’t think she’s been busy enough tonight?” I arched a brow. “A vow can’t be seen through. She’d know if I used hypnosis—but I’m pretty sure my sister’s immune anyway. That’s why my mother had to recruit her or kill her. She’s such a model parent.”

  “No doubt,” Cedar said darkly, “but her attention won’t be scattered forever. She has enough people under her thrall that any discrepancies would be noticed immediately.”

  “Like in the Summer Court? She’s even less attentive than they are. There’s only one of her, for a start. She might have talismans, but she can’t watch everyone at once.”

  I circled the palace from the side, using the front gate this time. The bright and cold entrance hall with its glittering icicles and chandeliers stood in stark contrast to the carnage we’d just witnessed. Once the front door was closed behind us, I opened the way into the dungeon.

  Icy cold lashed me like a whip the second the trapdoor lifted. I stumbled back, magic springing to my hands and freezing the air. My clothes turned to armour, even my gloves. I waited, but no attacker appeared. After a second, I jumped downstairs into the dungeon, ignoring Cedar’s hissed warning.

  My sister remained behind the cage bars. The sword lay a few feet away.

  “How the hell did you get down there?”

  A hissing came from the talisman, a noise that definitely shouldn’t be possible for an inanimate object to make.

  “Come back already?” asked June. “Is your conscience bothering you?”

  “Not in the slightest.” I moved closer to the bars, one eye on the sword. “What if I offer you a way out?”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Nope. I wouldn’t have come back here if I didn’t need something from you.”

  She didn’t look so tough slumped against the wall. I kicked the sword away from her into the dark. Creepy thing. I needed a way to permanently be rid of it, but I’d never actually asked Cedar how to go about destroying a talisman. Let alone one that could apparently travel through walls.

  June scrambled upright, eyes darting to the sword. “What are you doing?”

  “Making sure you can’t fight back.”

  She swallowed. Still think I’m too soft for Winter? Genuine fear shone in her eyes. But she made no move to strike first, as my brother had. Her hands remained fisted at her sides.

  “You’re going to swear to tell me the truth and not deceive me in any way,” I said. “Under a vow. Or I’ll kill you, and it won’t be a pleasant and quick death. Do we have an understanding?”

  “I swear to tell you the truth,” she ground out.

  “Good enough. Now, swear to do what I say.”

  “I can’t,” she said.

  “Does her vow prevent another person from putting one on you?”

  “I—no.” She shook her head.

  “Then you’ll swear to me, or you’ll die. I killed our brother. Don’t think I won’t finish you off, too.”

  “I swear to do as you say.”

  The vow snapped into place like a piece of elastic connecting us through the bars. This time, I hardly felt it. It must be stronger for the person affected. Not my problem.

  “Firstly, tell me if you were aware of her plans tonight. All of them.”

  She jerked her head to the right. “I—I can’t.”

  “You can if I already know. And I do. She attacked Summer using Aspen to sneak into an event. What was the purpose?”

  Her eyes bulged. “How do you—?”

  “You’re the one telling me secrets. And you’re not allowed to tell anyone you spoke a word to me, or give any hint that we have been in contact at all. And if they guess we have, you’re not to speak a word of what we said to each other. Is that clear?”

  She swallowed and nodded. “Summer wasn’t my job.”

  “Aspen’s. He was already there, after the robbery. To sneak into the Court?”

  Another nod. So we’d swiped the talisman tonight just in time. But the first robbery…

  “Do you know what she stole from Summer prior to the attack? Which talisman?”

  She pressed her hands together. “I’m not—I wasn’t told.”

  Damn. “Does she have another Sidhe working with her? Someone who can cross realms?

  Her head jerked sideways.

  So she came herself? Shit. Was she still here, waiting to strike? Or had her people come through the dungeon? Most likely—yes. Maybe one of her people had had moved the sword. It seemed more likely than the talisman moving by itself. Nobody had let June out of her cage, but Lady Whitefall’s people were probably no nicer to one another than they were to their enemies.

  “All right,” I said. “You’re going to come with me, out of your cage. You’re only going to walk where I tell you to, when I tell you, and you’re not to attack me or Cedar or anyone else unless I order you to. Is that understood?”

  “It is understood.”

  I unlocked the cage. She stepped forwards, fists curled at her sides, and walked alongside me upstairs to the open trapdoor. Cedar kept looking at me, but I ignored him, not wanting to allow her to overhear anything that might get back to Lady Whitefall.

  “Now you’re going to wait here.” I indicated a spot in the entrance hall. Then I opened a door in the opposite wall, into the weapons room. Inside, the fake sword lay where I’d left it, its glamour faded. The lightning bolt symbol had gone. “Damn,” I muttered.

  “I told you it wasn’t permanent,” said Cedar, the door closing behind him. “That was a rushed job. I can’t transform things, only glamour them. It’s not even the right size.”

  He was right—the fake sword was too short. I studied it. “I can transform things.” I lifted the sword, turning it over in my hands, and blue light flared around its edges. The sword extended, green light mingling with the blue, and a lightning bolt appeared on the hilt. A blue glow sprang up as though it really did contain Winter’s power. “Huh. That’s weird.”

  The sword dipped in my hands, suddenly heavier. Like the real thing. All that was absent was the cold, creepy sense of being watched by an inanimate object.

  “I’ll give her this one,” I said. “We’ll take the real thing back with us.”

  I opened the door into the entrance hall again, where my sister remained where I’d left her.

  “You’re going to take this,” I told June, holding out the fake talisman. “You’re not to tell her I gave it to you, and you’re not to so much as hint that I or my friends had anything to do with it. You’re going to go back to wherever she told you to meet her, and when she announces another attack on Summer, Winter, or both, you’re not going to join the army. You’ll find me instead.”

  A strangled noise escaped her, and her hands clenched around the sword’s hilt. “I won’t be able to tell you her plan. She’ll slaughter me first.”

  “I don’t need you to. I think I’ve worked it out.”

  The problem was, I was counting on Lady Whitefall not being here in person. Her magic would set any alarm in Summer blaring and unlike me, I doubted she’d consent to being turned into a non-magical being. She wanted to get into Summer, but only after bringing it down from the inside. And whatever had caused the explosion… if it caused half as much damage in Summer, she might not have any need for security talismans.

  “Also,” I added, “if you run into Aspen and are able to speak to him alone, tell him
I want to meet him in confidence… and tell him we’re amassing a collection of talismans of our own.”

  “Are you?”

  “You’ll have to work that one out for yourself, sister.” I flashed her a smile. “She’s a fool if she thinks I’ll engage her on half-blood rules. I’m her equal, and I’m intending to snatch that little kingdom of hers right out from underneath her. I know she has pacts with other Sidhe outcasts. I won’t meet her as anything less.”

  The light went out of her eyes as my words sank in. She believed me. Let her think what she liked. If the Courts thought I was a talisman-stealing thief who wanted a kingdom, like her, maybe I wanted them to.

  “She’ll never meet you on your own terms,” June said. “Never.”

  “I think she’ll be interested in what I have to offer.”

  Which wasn’t a lot, to be honest. Aspen needed to be taken off the table, and if he thought we had our own collection of talismans, I doubted he’d be able to resist the bait. Even if not, I’d stolen another of Lady Whitefall’s puppets out from under her nose.

  “One last thing,” I added. “You aren’t to let any word of what I said slip to anyone you meet. Not to Aspen, not to her, not under duress. Also,” I added. “You’re not to use the real sword, or pick it up. At all.”

  “I swear,” she croaked, lifting the fake sword. “It looks like the real thing.”

  “I know, right?” I smiled broadly, approaching the door outside. “Now, you’re going to go and join her, and remember everything I told you.”

  She moved through the door, slowly, eyes downcast. I’d backed her into a corner, and hopefully she’d be too scared of incurring Lady Whitefall’s wrath to risk letting anything slip.

  Now for the real talisman.

  Cedar’s hand caught my sleeve the moment the door closed behind my sister. “You want to convince her we’re amassing talismans?”

  “She doesn’t know me. For all she knows, we could be. Anyway, I want Aspen gone first. Once I’m away from his vow, they won’t be able to pry another one out of me.”

  “I wouldn’t underestimate any of them,” said Cedar. “Aspen, though—I doubt he’s as important to her as he thinks. She won’t let him take the Court for himself. She’s the one we should be worrying about, in the end. She can always replace her servants. It’s not worth chaining yourself to them.”

  “I think it’s the other way around.” His stare was a little too penetrating. Maybe he understood a little of what I felt—or maybe he hated what I’d done. My mind was a whirlwind of anger and betrayal, starting with Aspen’s vow and ending with June’s claiming a talisman that should have been mine. For once in my life, I’d wanted to be the one in control of my own future before the Sidhe snatched it away from me. “We need to remove that sword.”

  “I have it.” He held it up in gloved hands, and a jolt went through my chest. Stop it. Rationally, I knew I didn’t want or even need the weapon, except to keep it out of Lady Whitefall’s reach… but either my thief’s nature or the weapon itself said otherwise.

  “Then let’s go.” I opened the palace doors again. The snowy grounds remained undisturbed with no signs of my sister. Cedar sheathed the talisman at his waist, and I tried to avoid looking at him.

  “Raine,” he said, softly. “Don’t take this the wrong way. I can’t pretend to know what it was like having Lady Whitefall doctor your memories, but I do know how getting tangled in the Sidhe’s mind games can turn you into something you’re not. Being caught in a vow and unable to escape it—” He broke off. “Even the other way around, it binds you to the other person in a way that’s impossible to escape. Your mother might even exploit your connection.”

  Bitter words rose on my tongue, and I bit the inside of my cheek to avoid speaking them. Of course he wouldn’t want me using a vow on anyone. He’d been shackled to someone in the same way his whole life.

  “You think I should have let her go free, or left her in the jail for my mother to let her out?” I asked. “Or killed her? It’s their game. We play by their rules and exploit them for what they’re worth, or they trample us flat. You said as much when I first came into Faerie. Lesson bloody well learned.”

  “That was never my intention,” he said, walking closer to me. Too close. My fingers twitched as a spark like static zipped up my arm, alive and furious.

  I stopped walking. “Cedar, can you feel the sword?”

  “Feel it?” he asked.

  “I think my magic’s reacting to it.” That was the only explanation I had for the raw emotion—avarice, tinged with bloodthirsty hunger for power. Even at my most pissed off, I’d never wanted power for power’s sake alone. I’d wanted the Sidhe out of my hair. Forever. Not to turn into a half-blood clone of the mother who’d wrecked my life. “I’m pretty sure it’s alive.”

  Cedar gave me a sceptical look. “Talismans aren’t alive. They’re powerful, but shaped by the will of the person who wields it. It’s possible you still sense your sister’s—”

  “It was like that before. When I failed to win it over.” I held up my hand, which bore the scars from where I’d held it the first time. “It’s always felt different to the others. And how did it end up in the dungeon again when you moved it?”

  “Good question, but it’s not unusual for a faerie object to be bespelled in such a way. Perhaps that’s it.”

  “If you say so.” I took several steps away from him and continued to walk in silence for several moments.

  “It’s possible you picked up on something I didn’t,” Cedar said. “Your magic’s from Winter, too, after all.”

  “Yeah, I couldn’t sense the magic that destroyed the house was Summer’s,” I said. “We must be more sensitive to similar magic to ours.”

  Cedar paused for a moment before saying, “What vow exactly did you swear to Aspen?”

  Changing the subject wasn’t like Cedar, but I said, “Obedience. As his prisoner, I was trapped in an iron cell. There was no way out other than swearing to obey him. I figured I’d say the words because I could run when I was out of the cage. I thought my will was stronger than his.”

  I stiffened as Cedar put an arm around my waist. “You are one of the most remarkably strong-willed people I know,” he murmured. “Don’t doubt it. You can beat her. But she’s trying to push you to the brink, and she’s been playing this game longer than both of us.”

  No kidding. As for Aspen, it was ridiculous that a vow, which didn’t physically exist, was so much more powerful than both types of magic I possessed. It took a different kind of will to resist, the sort that urged me to snatch the sword from Cedar’s hands and use it to take his life.

  Maybe the only way to beat Lady Whitefall was to embrace the part of me who had come from her, after all.

  Chapter 13

  “Wow,” said Viola, staring at me across the table at breakfast. I hadn’t omitted a single detail in my recount of last night’s events—okay, aside from the part where I’d nearly attacked Cedar to take back the evil sword. Cedar himself had remained quiet while I’d told her, adding in the occasional comment. We’d arrived back late, and I’d spent a restless night in a guest room, tossed from one horrible dream to the next. Knowing the talisman sword was down the corridor from me, in Cedar’s weapons cupboard, hadn’t helped in the slightest.

  “That about covers it.” I picked at my food. “She blindsided us. Attacked both Courts at once.”

  “So you have both June and Robin spying for you?” Viola didn’t seem cowed about June or my rampant abuse of faerie vows. Of course, she’d been under commands herself, the whole time she’d been in Faerie. She wouldn’t condemn the choices I’d made to keep her and the others safe.

  “And Lord Lyle,” I added. “But he’s not so much spying as being a reluctant backup. Cedar saved his neck. He was nearly dead when we found him. They blew the house to pieces.”

  Her forehead pinched. “Blew it up?”

  “With magic. Even Lord Lyle didn’t kn
ow how.” I paused. “She has her other talisman back, the one she nearly killed me with. But I still don’t know what she stole from Summer, or if it caused the explosion. Cedar told me it was some kind of Summer magic.”

  “I can’t think of any powerful enough to instantly kill multiple Sidhe,” Cedar said. “Especially when they most likely had healing abilities.”

  “Shit, I didn’t think of that.”

  “Damn.” Viola winced. “You know you have a bunch of willing spies right here, don’t you? I’ll go into Winter to look for clues.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “It’s too risky.”

  “The soldiers already think we’re going to war with the Vale.”

  “Shit, really?” I looked at Cedar.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Last night, a Vale ogre tried to breach the security. Some of the soldiers killed it, but they’re worried. It’s not the first time it’s happened, but we’re without a leader.”

  “I’ll talk to them,” Cedar said. “They need reassurance—I’m not surprised, considering.”

  He pushed to his feet and left the table. I looked at Viola and sighed. “I’ve really screwed this up. She wanted us to go to Summer so she could steal from Winter without being opposed.”

  “You couldn’t have known,” Viola said. “She’s powerful and unpredictable, with the ability to turn anyone into an ally. But I’m trying to figure out her reasoning. I honestly think if she meant to kill us, she’d already have done so. If she can strike two Courts at once, she can strike here, too. She sent one ogre. That’s hardly a battlefield.”

  “Don’t speak too soon.”

  “No, I mean—think about it. She doesn’t want to kill everyone, she wants to control us. Even when she had prisoners in the castle, she only killed Lord Hornbeam. She left everyone else alive, under her control.”

  “Ah.” I nodded. “The hypnosis. It doesn’t make sense for her to leave the remaining Hornbeam army alive, though. We turned on her. I made them turn on her.”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” said Viola. “I’m not saying there won’t be another attack, but we’re not her priority. She wants the Courts. If she has Summer or Winter, she can stamp us out without lifting a finger.”