Spindle Fire (Spindle Fire #1)(63)

After all, no one could ever compete with Malfleur’s magic—or challenge it—except for Belcoeur.

Almandine has traveled with a retinue of her favorite servants, and as she tips back her third glass of mulberry gin, one of them is rubbing her bare feet with oil—a tall, golden-skinned man with shoulder muscles that bulge through his livery. She moans softly, her eyelids half lowered.

“My dear,” Malfleur says, hiding her disgust. The memories have given her an unexpected pain in her stomach. “Have another glass.”

Almandine grins drowsily and accepts.

“Tell me.” The queen sits back down in her claw-foot chair and stares at her cousin. “Have you ever considered a different tithe?” She keeps her voice casual.

Almandine’s heavy eyelids flutter open slowly. “I . . . whatever do you mean?”

“Never mind,” Malfleur answers quickly. She expected her cousin’s confusion. Faerie tithing is quite simple—it’s an unspoken bargain between two people. A willingness, a desire. Whatever the faerie desires most is what he or she tithes. In Almandine’s case, it’s a sense of touch. In Malfleur’s, it’s youth, beauty, time. Tithes rarely change because the fae don’t change. Their core desires remain the same forever, defining who they are.

Or so Malfleur thought, until she began her experiments.

Almandine shakes her head. “You’re an odd one, my dear. I’ve never doubted that. You and your puzzles.” She instructs the servant to massage her neck next. “Speaking of puzzles, I do wonder how you really intend to take over the Delucian throne when the kingdom is ravaged by this, this . . . sleeping sickness. Do you know anything about it?”

Malfleur can’t tell whether Almandine is testing her.

“After all,” her cousin goes on. “How will your own troops survive? Isn’t it interesting how a curse has come both to devastate the palace and protect it?”

Now the queen is certain—she’s definitely goading her.

But Malfleur isn’t easily ruffled. “That’s simple, sweetheart. I figured out how to create a resistance to the sickness! The same way anyone would—by first understanding the cause.”

Almandine once again looks baffled . . . and a little curious. “Do share.”

Malfleur retrieves a set of wrapped sketches drawn up by her minister of war and begins unrolling them on the table beside her cousin. She watches in satisfaction as Almandine gapes at the black, beaklike masks she has devised for her soldiers.

Almandine shivers. “I confess I don’t understand. . . .” She hesitates. “But I see why everyone believes what they believe about you.”

“Which is?”

Almandine looks at her and murmurs: “That you are evil.”

“Is that so?” Malfleur keeps her tone neutral. “I suppose we’ll see about that, won’t we?” She can tell by the way Almandine stiffens that she has succeeded in unnerving her. “Wait here.” She pushes out of her chair and makes her way to the dressing chamber in the east hall.

She tilts the mirror toward her, its surface dinged and scratched from the panther’s attempts to attack its own reflection. Malfleur smooths her riding dress and then touches her face, which, thanks to her tithe, is almost as youthful as it had been when she was only thirteen, when she first met Charles Blackthorn—despite the mottled scar across one eye, the one she’s known for, the one she’d had since early childhood. And yet an entirely different person looks back at her. Gone is the innocence that once brightened her eyes. Now they are dark and hard like polished onyx.

She takes in a slow breath. She can’t believe Almandine thinks she actually invited her here to gain her support. No. Almandine, like nearly all of her kind, has proved herself worthless over the past century.

The once glorious race of the fae has burned down to just a few glowing embers.

But if today goes as planned, it will be the beginning of a whole new era. It will mean she’s on the brink of a greater power than any faerie in the history of the known world has ever possessed. For the fae have only ever tithed from humans. In that way they’ve always depended on the race that has been slowly, for many centuries, displacing them. But Malfleur has been practicing, learning to tithe more than just youth and beauty. And now, she hopes, she has mastered the greatest feat ever: tithing magic.

She has failed before. Aimed too high. Sometimes when she closes her eyes at night, Malfleur still sees the Red Throne . . . and the blood of the North Faerie staining her hands.

That had been an accident. The goal was never to kill the other faeries, not exactly. Only to take what was most important to them.

After she succeeds with Almandine, there’ll be no stopping her. Soon no one will be able to match her power.

Not even Belcoeur.





28


Isabelle


Isbe used to enjoy teasing her sister for her notions about love and marriage and, of course, the princes of Aubin. She always thought romance was a cloudy concept, like the steam over a pot of boiling stew—it smells of hearty ingredients, it warms the senses . . . but ultimately it dissolves. It won’t satisfy you and certainly won’t keep you alive. The soup of life is something else: it’s the things you do to build up who you are—exploration of the world and of your own mind. The important thing, then, is the soup. But like steam, romantic love in and of itself has no survivalist function. It’s just the excuse rich people use so they can marry and procreate and continue their lineages; so they can go on perpetuating the belief that their families deserve to live in giant, fully staffed palaces while every other family is forced to cling to any crust of bread they can get their hands on.