by E. Latimer
Blackwell?
A voice just in front of her caught her attention, and Emma turned as the two women finally passed, apparently blind to her presence.
“I’ve packed the entire room with it,” one woman was saying. “We’ll see soon enough if she was telling the truth.”
Emma went still, shock spiking through her, pinning her feet to the spot. That voice was horribly familiar.
When she turned to look at the women more closely, her heart dropped into her stomach.
The speaker’s hair was down in loose waves, and her light-gray cloak was frayed at the edges and worn at the elbows and wrists, but it was unmistakably Queen Alexandria. Worse still, her companion was even more familiar, though her cloak was a dull-brown color that Emma couldn’t imagine her mother being caught dead in. It was, however, undeniably Isolde. Like her sister, her face was younger and less lined, and her hair was long and curly.
The sight was enough to suck the air out of her lungs, and her heart beat hard in her ears. Her instinct to bolt tried to take over, but she drew in a deep breath and told herself firmly that this wasn’t real, or at least…it wasn’t real in the current moment.
Her mother didn’t look her way.
“This is dangerous, Lex,” Isolde was hissing, and she darted a look over her shoulder. “You know the witches have ears everywhere. What if she has a way of communicating with them?”
“By the time they can get themselves in gear to do anything it will be too late.” Alexandria’s voice was fierce, her dark brows drawn down. “We strike now. The rebels are there. Our troops are just waiting for my word.” She brandished a fist at Isolde, and Emma saw it was full of purple thistle flowers. “We have this.” Her face grew suddenly ugly, and full of triumph. “Lenore gave us their weakness. She betrayed the witches. That’s not something they saw coming. Six years I’ve waited, hidden away, and now, the tide turns in our favor.”
Emma felt a jolt of shock. Alexandria had to mean the rebel witches—which meant that Lenore had been part of the group that had overthrown the Black family. She’d betrayed them.
Was this what Lenore had been hiding? She certainly hadn’t mentioned that earlier.
Isolde’s dark eyes grew wide as she stared at the thistle in her sister’s hand. “We don’t know if she was lying—”
“We will.”
Alexandria turned sharply on her heel. Pausing in front of one of the wooden shacks, she pulled a ring of keys from her cloak. There was a jingle and a click as she fitted the key into the lock and yanked the door open.
Without thinking, Emma hurried forward, following closely behind her aunt and her mother. The shack they stepped into was tiny, only about half the size of Emma’s room in the palace, and it smelled of the familiar, weedy stench of thistle and smoke. As Alexandria had hinted at, it was packed with green and purple thistle. There were fresh buds in vases, and dried thistle vines hanging upside down from the rafters. Thistle was strewn across the dirty floor, and there were even clumps of the weed stuffed into the cracks in the walls.
The smoky interior was lit only by a single candle, and in the dim light it took Emma a moment to figure out exactly what she was looking at.
In the middle of all of this was a narrow, dirty mattress, straw spilling out of the gaps in the sides, and on the mattress lay a woman, her curly hair spread out around her. There was a drop of blood on her pale throat, and dark circles beneath her eyes.
Emma pressed a hand to her mouth, something squeezing her heart painfully in her chest.
Lenore Black was clearly unconscious. She was breathing shallowly, and her face was pale and beaded with sweat. Alexandria made a noise of triumph. Striding into the room, she bent down and shook her sister roughly by the shoulder. Lenore didn’t stir.
“She did this before when we tested the tea. What if she’s faking again?” Isolde hovered over them, one hand fluttering to touch Lenore’s cheek before she drew back, her face twisted with disgust. “Ugh, she’s covered in sweat.”
Emma tried to swallow past the sour taste in her mouth. She’d never wanted to slap her mother this badly before, which was saying something.
Without a word, Alexandria picked up Lenore’s hand and held it over her face, letting it drop. Lenore’s arm was like rubber, and it fell hard across her lips and nose. Isolde grimaced.
“She’s not faking.” Alexandria looked satisfied. “She’s half dead. The thistle dart worked.”
The thistle dart. Emma squirmed a little in the doorway, feeling her skin crawl. Her history books had mentioned those. They had turned the tide of the Great War, following the discovery that a dart to the neck could inject thistle directly into the bloodstream and completely incapacitate a witch.
Emma balked when Alexandria whirled around, moving swiftly toward her—for the door, she realized a second later. She backed away hastily as Alexandria moved past her, followed quickly by Isolde.
“Let’s go tell the men what we found. The reign of the witches ends today!”
They swept away down the street, faces grim. Isolde was slightly slower than her sister, a step behind, and she looked back once, brow furrowed. Her expression made Emma’s stomach twist; for a moment, just a bare half-second, it looked as if her mother was hesitating. And then her sister snapped something at her, and she turned to hurry after her and didn’t look back again.
Emma stood in the center of the street, staring at the wooden shack, where Lenore lay unconscious and surrounded by thistle. A wave of horror crept over her, now that the scene had time to sink in. Isolde and Alexandria hadn’t just kept Lenore trapped in that hut. They’d been testing things on her, trying to figure out what form of thistle would make her the weakest.
This was how the dart had been discovered.
They’d tortured Lenore. No wonder she’d shut down when Emma asked what happened.
Emma’s stomach twisted, and for a moment she thought she was about to bend over and be sick, right there in the middle of the garbage-strewn street.
Her mother had left her own sister. She’d walked away with the full knowledge and belief that Lenore was going to die.
Of course, Emma knew it didn’t end like this. Lenore had not died in this hovel, poisoned by her sisters. She was safe in Witch City, but still…it felt awful to leave her here, even if it wasn’t technically real. Stranger still, she’d just learned that Lenore had been the one to tell her sisters about the thistle. She’d betrayed the witches and given her family the information about their weakness. Lenore’s weakness. Emma’s weakness.
She was the reason for the thistle nooses.
Emma jerked up straight at another noise from the street, a voice calling for Lenore. She felt a burst of optimism and turned, hoping to see her mother hurrying back. But the woman running down the crooked dirt path was tall, with narrow, dark features and a cloud of black curls. She was wearing a plain black cloak, but Emma recognized her all the same.
The ambassador.
The woman stumbled to a halt in front of the house and then ran inside with a cry of dismay. She kicked clumps of thistle aside and hauled Lenore off the mattress with more strength than Emma had thought her capable of. When the ambassador emerged onto the street, she had Lenore’s still form draped over her arms, and was looking into her face with such tenderness and concern that Emma found she had to turn away.
It felt private.
As Emma turned away from the scene in the street, there came a mighty swoosh from overhead, and the dirt road beneath her blurred as the low voice boomed:
“After the uprising, the Great Hunt began. Every witch in the countryside was hunted down and hung with a thistle noose. Houses were burned and the countryside was ransacked, all in the name of the hunt.”
There was a flash in front of her, and suddenly Emma could see the city laid out before her, the towers and turrets outl
ined in great plumes of black smoke. There was a distant grinding of stone on stone, and faint screams, and when Emma whipped around she saw the clock tower in flames, one side crumbling as it listed sideways.
She flinched, and then the city was a blur, fading away like smoke. A field now, full of tall stalks of purple thistle. She had time for a startled realization—that it was the queen’s men who had burned the city, not the witches—and then the booming voice continued with its tale.
“In the year that followed, thistle was in such high demand that supplies ran low. Alexandria Black, the new queen, paid an enormous fee to farmers who would agree to turn their fields into grounds for new crops.”
Emma’s surroundings blurred and morphed around her once again. She was in the palace now; she recognized the great stone walls and the massive iron chandelier hanging above her, though she didn’t immediately recognize the room. There were a number of green armchairs with ugly, jewel-encrusted pillows set around the space, and a great oak table in the center. She turned, finding herself facing a set of large wooden doors, and realized she was in the Throne Room, or to be more precise, behind the Throne Room. This was the Battle Suite, the space just behind the throne. It was empty, though there was still a scattering of maps and pins on the table, and someone had left a piece of parchment spread out with notes scribbled across it, and a quill and pen in the center of the map. A fire was currently burning in the huge stone fireplace, filling the room with the scent of cedar.
When Emma moved to peer out the narrow window, she felt her chest tighten.
The clock tower was crooked, the same way it always was, but the side was far blacker than Emma remembered, and it was visibly crumbling here and there. There were also blast marks in some of the roads, and several of the buildings had been entirely obliterated, leaving huge gaps in the streets.
She’d heard of the Great War of course. Everyone had. But it was one thing to see it in textbooks and another to have it actually laid out before you.
She straightened, startled, as the door slammed, and she turned to see Queen Alexandria sweeping into the room, Isolde close on her heels. Seeing her mother like this was somehow worse than the earlier vision. She looked much closer to the version Emma had always known. Her hair was gathered in a curly updo on the top of her head, and she wore a choker of pearls around her throat. Her dress was a glittering silver satin that complemented her sister’s gold.
Emma swallowed hard as she watched the two women sink down into armchairs by the fireplace.
“Ambassador Jaqueline is such a bore,” Isolde complained. “If Irvingland is so concerned, they should take all the witch children themselves. I notice they’re not offering.”
“They’re not children,” the queen replied sharply. “They just look it. They’re witches. Tiny monsters.” She narrowed her eyes at the door. “And if they can’t see that, well then, we’ll just have to do things more subtly.”
Isolde raised a pale brow. “What are you thinking, sister?”
Queen Alexandria swept forward, clasping one of Isolde’s hands. Her sister’s face brightened. “You know as well as I do, Iz, our noble husbands are out fighting a second war. The hunts are vital to our cause.”
Isolde nodded enthusiastically, and Emma’s lip curled in disgust.
“But they are not enough.” The queen pulled back. “Every child must be tested, not just the adults. We can’t let anyone slip through the cracks. If they’re witch enough to do magic, they’re witch enough to hang. We must begin to draft The Testing Laws, and arrange, as I said, for methods more on the subtle side. Paint a nice picture for the public, just so nobody panics. For the good of society.”
“For the good of society,” Isolde repeatedly quietly. Her gaze combed across her sister’s face, and Emma had a surprising realization. Her mother really did idolize her older sister. It was evident something had shifted between them since the Great War. Alexandria had become more than just the older sister and leader. She had become a queen in the eyes of her own sister—a kind of avenging goddess who had rained down retribution on the witches who’d murdered her family.
The hero worship on Isolde’s face was painfully obvious.
Isolde hesitated. “And what…what of our own children someday? We know our family—I mean, Lenore…” She let her words trail off, and she wilted slightly under the stern look her sister gave her.
“Isolde, after everything, don’t you trust I know what is best for us?”
Slowly Isolde nodded.
“You know what our mother was. She was the one who started all of this when she let those devils into the palace.” Alexandria clasped her hand to her chest, brow furrowed. “So you know why we must cut out the rot in this family. Why we are remaking ourselves as Blacks.”
Emma felt her breath catch, and she had to clutch the windowsill to keep from staggering backward, as the room suddenly seemed to be swimming around her.
But Isolde was nodding again, and now Alexandria leaned forward in her chair. She spoke in low, challenging tones. “And are you prepared to do what we must, Isolde, even if our own children fail The Testing someday?”
Isolde cleared her throat, looked her sister straight in the eye, and nodded once again. “I’m prepared, Alexandria.”
Emma knew this wasn’t real—at least not in the moment—and yet, she could feel the cool stone windowsill as she clutched it so hard her fingertips went white. It was difficult to breathe, and this time she was sure of it: the room was spinning violently, the corners of the stone roof melting inward.
She thought she might throw up.
Her mother had known. Not only that, but she’d been part of the planning, had been there when the queen suggested The Testing, when they’d decided to set up the underground hanging platforms, when they’d agreed to fool the public.
Isolde Black, her mother, had agreed to hang Emma even before she was born.
The Battle Suite blurred and stretched around her, and then abruptly snapped back into place. Emma blinked, and when she opened her eyes, she was shocked to find herself back inside the tiny charm library. She’d been standing in front of the fireplace staring into the flames, and her fingers ached from clutching the edge of the armchair beside her. Her stomach was still churning.
“Emma? What did you see?”
Maddie, Eliza, and Edgar were crowded around her, faces concerned. The librarian was no longer standing by the shelf.
“Where is she?”
“What?” Eliza glanced over her shoulder, shaking her head. “Oh, she…she slipped out as soon as you went under.”
“She’s probably gone to get Lenore. We’re not supposed to be here.” Emma snatched up the box of crystals, grimacing at Edgar’s noise of protest. “It’s a library. I’m going to borrow them.”
“What was it? What did you see?” Edgar demanded. “You’ve gone sheet white.”
Emma paused in the midst of turning for the door, fingers pressing hard into the silver and glass box. Who knew what else the crystals would tell her? What other horrible secrets they might reveal? She wished she’d never gone looking for answers. “My mother knew. She knew about everything.”
The anger hit her without warning—a sudden, vicious rage that wanted to lash out, to tear something to shreds. Hot tears burned the backs of her eyes, and she whirled on Edgar. “The picture. Where is it?”
Edgar only blinked at her for a moment. Then, wordlessly, he fumbled in his pocket and brought out the flat leather pocketbook that Georgie had tucked into his bag back at the palace, the one with the picture of Isolde and Alexandria. He held it out between them.
Slowly, Emma reached out and took it. She opened it and let it sit in the palm of her hand. Ignoring the queen’s poster, she focused instead on the portrait of the sisters, on their arrogant, stupid faces.
She couldn’t stop remembering the way Lenore
had looked lying on the mattress, pale and unconscious, surrounded by thistle. Or the look on her mother’s face, the blind devotion, as she had pledged to do whatever it took to defeat the witches, including hanging her own children.
She knew she should snatch the picture up and tear it to pieces, but instead, Emma was irritated to find tears crowding her eyes, blurring the picture in and out of her vision. She blinked furiously, determined to look at her mother’s face one last time before she destroyed the image. Never again would Isolde make her feel guilty or ashamed of what she was, afraid of what her power did. She had nearly stopped her mother’s heart all those years ago, but that had been an accident, and she’d been living with that fear ever since. But no more…
For a moment, Emma’s thoughts seemed to stall, and she stared down at the picture, still blinking furiously, brow furrowed. The memories were flying in fast now: Isolde’s shaky hands the day that they’d argued, her pale face, the way she’d clutched at her chest. A slow, horrifying realization was dawning on Emma.
She heard magic in people’s hearts.
Real magic, full magic. She didn’t hear the heartbeats of just anyone—not those without witch blood, or even those with a slight percentage, but actual, full-blown witches.
Lenore had said she didn’t think her sisters had enough witch blood to do magic, but that couldn’t be true. Her own mother—Emma’s grandmother—had been a witch. Apparently, the Black family had been full of witches, which was rather ironic.
As if in response to this realization, the low, faint thumping of a pulse interrupted Emma’s thoughts. She straightened her shoulders, taking a sharp breath. That pulse was so familiar now. It seemed to follow them everywhere they went, and as it beat on, growing steadily louder, the thump-thump, thump-thump filled her with a strange kind of clarity and slowly unfolding dread.
If Tobias McCraw was zero percent, as Lenore had said earlier, then Emma most certainly wasn’t hearing the witch hunter’s heart.