Grave Visions (Alex Craft #4)(32)

They stared at me in disbelief and Icelynne cried louder, gulping down ragged breaths between her sobs. Normally what happened to a body after death was of little consequence to the soul that had resided in it because death occurred the moment the soul left the body. Oh, sometimes full physical death took another minute or two for all bodily functions to shut down, but if I raised a shade, those minutes would be missing because the record button on life had already been clicked off, and of course, the soul wouldn’t remember them because it was no longer connected to the body. But Icelynne’s body had ceased living and her soul had still been trapped inside. Her brain had shut down, her senses dead, but her soul still experienced what happened to her flesh on some level. She hadn’t been eaten alive, exactly, but it was the next worst thing.

“Icelynne,” I said, trying to keep my voice soothing, but I usually questioned shades who had no emotions, not traumatized ghosts. Still, I tried. “Can you tell us what happened before that? What is the last thing you remember seeing?”

She sniffled and wiped her nose on her arm. For a moment I didn’t think she’d answer, but then she said, “I was tied to a chair. And I had these tubes coming out of my arm . . . I was bleeding. I mean, the tubes, my blood was being carried away in those tubes.”

I glanced at Falin, but I couldn’t read anything in the dark expression clouding his face. I thought about the skeleton as it had looked in the throne room, but so much had been done to Icelynne after her death, and I didn’t have the experience to know if she’d died of exsanguination. How would you even tell when most of the flesh was gone and only bones were left?

“How did you get there?” Falin asked. “Do you know where you were?”

Icelynne’s face scrunched, though if from deep thought or painful memories, I couldn’t guess. “I was still in the court. The sky was ours. But I don’t know where I was. I remember being in my own rooms. There was a knock on the door. Two people were outside in white cloaks, the hoods pulled down. But I don’t think they were guards. One was very short and almost as wide as tall. The other was too slight to have been wearing armor under the cloak. They . . .” She trailed off, a fresh wave of tears escaping from her. We gave her a moment to collect herself, and after wiping her eyes, she continued. “Everything happened so fast. They grabbed me, and I struggled, and then everything went dark. When I woke up, I was in the chair, the tubes drawing out my blood.”

When she stopped, no one spoke for a long time. Finally I asked, “And the two cloaked figures, you never saw their faces? Did you see anyone else while you were held?”

“I never saw them. I don’t even know if they were male or female or what kind of fae they were.” Her shoulders shook under my hands, but she didn’t stop speaking this time. “There were other fae in the room with me. Also tied down. I could only see two—another handmaiden named Snowlilly, and a rowen fae I didn’t recognize. I don’t think he was a member of our court. There were others too, but they were behind me and I couldn’t see them. I don’t know how many. I only saw the short and the lithe fae one more time. They came and . . . They came and took the rowen’s body and brought a tree nymph to take his place. She wasn’t familiar either.”

Others? It sounded like at least four, most likely more. I glanced at Falin and saw the same thought on his face—this was bigger than just one body staged to scare the queen.

“Did you see anything else? Did you hear anything?” Falin asked. “How long do you think you were held?”

“Days? Weeks? I don’t know. It seemed to go on forever. I was so tired and my whole body hurt. Especially when he’d connect the tubes and drain away my blood.”

“Wait—he?” I asked and the little fae cringed under my hand. She wasn’t telling us everything, and she clearly hadn’t meant to say “he.” This was why I didn’t like questioning ghosts. “Who was he? What did he look like?”

“I don’t know,” she sounded miserable, but evasive. This wasn’t the same desperate cry of ignorance she’d used earlier. She was hiding something.

I wasn’t the only one who heard the difference.

“Tell us what you do know, handmaiden,” the queen said, and there was unmistakable command in her voice. There was also fury, the cold kind that could patiently and with clearheaded calculations drag out horrible torture. I was glad it wasn’t directed at me.

“My queen, I can’t—”

“Now.”

The little fae seemed to collapse further into herself, but she answered. “I never saw his face, and he only whispered when he spoke to me. He told me that my sacrifice was for the good of all and that big changes were coming and I’d be helping.” She paused, but the queen cocked one dark eyebrow and the words stumbled out of her again. “He was, or at least I think he was, Sleagh Maith, my lady.” She drew back with the last, as if she thought the queen would reach out and grab her for accusing one of the noble line of fae of being her captor. Of course, my circle still separated the ghost from the queen, so even if the queen had wanted to throttle the ghost, she couldn’t have.

For her part, the queen rocked back slightly on her heels, as if Icelynne’s words had delivered a physical blow her body had absorbed. She turned, hands clenched at her sides, and paced the edge of my circle.