Spindle Fire (Spindle Fire #1)(69)

“I—where?” Isbe fumbles, trying to figure out how to explain. Lady Almandine has clearly not noticed what some find obvious—the blankness of Isbe’s eyes. The way they seem to wander, unseeing. She starts to walk to her right, and the faerie huffs. “That’s Apollo. The one under the west window.”

Ah, that helps at least. Isbe moves in the opposite direction—toward the hottest, brightest part of the room, where she can sense the sun has moved past its highest point in the sky. She bangs her shins on what seems to be a large marble vase out of which a small tree sprouts, then feels around, knocking into several more plants and trees until she finds a rather large sculpture that resembles a Greek god, one arm extended—on which hangs a thick knit-silk robe. She grabs it and hurries in the direction of Almandine’s voice—the lady has been muttering to herself, her voice like leather on leather.

Now, as Isbe approaches her cautiously, she makes out some of the words the faerie is saying. Daisy is as Daisy does. Always was. Always was. She tsks to herself. I should have known. She always was.

“I’m sorry?” Isbe asks as she approaches the vast marble pool in which the faerie has been bathing. No steam rises to greet Isbe’s hands, and she realizes the water is cold. And it’s the dead of winter. The woman must be freezing!

“I said I should have known!” Almandine bursts out, clearly distraught.

Isbe holds open the robe, averting her eyes out of politeness, the way Aurora taught her to do.

Lady Almandine stands up with a dripping swoosh and slides her arms into the robe’s sleeves. Isbe can feel how disturbingly thin the faerie is, all muscle and bone—and how she seems to shudder with cold. “I should have known,” the faerie repeats more quietly. “She always wanted what Daisy had.”

“Who’s Daisy?”

“It’s what she called her sister. You look a bit like her—your face, your . . .” She trails off.

“Whose sister?”

“Malfleur’s, of course,” the faerie practically spits. “Their silly flower nicknames. But she was too jealous. Always too jealous of Belcoeur. Belcoeur, who could make even the pestilent vines that pesked pesked pesked the forest and stung our ankles bloooooom with sweet blossoms. Malfleur couldn’t stand it.” Almandine grabs Isbe’s wrist with slender, clammy fingers. Isbe’s pulse races. “I should have known. After what Belcoeur did to her.”

“Let me build you a fire,” Isbe says, thinking quickly, hoping to urge Almandine on. The woman is clearly rattled, but Isbe is desperate to hear more. Belcoeur kind? Beautiful? The envy of Malfleur? It runs against everything she’s ever heard about the famous faerie twins. If she offers further service to the faerie, perhaps the lady will spill more details. “You are too cold.”

“Am I?” she murmurs. “I hadn’t noticed, I . . . It doesn’t matter. I should have . . .” Her listlessness unnerves Isbe. “No wonder her sister stayed in Sommeil. I would have too. I should have known.” That last utterance a stone plunked into a pool, its weight subsumed and silenced by the water.

“Known . . .”

“What Malfleur wanted. What she . . . what she took. What she’ll take. From all of us.” She leans closer to Isbe. “All of us,” she hisses.

Isbe shivers. She fears the woman may topple over and die in her presence. She sounds so weak. Her teeth are beginning to chatter. . . . “What is Sommeil?” Without thinking, Isbe places a reassuring hand on the faerie’s arm.

“Don’t!” Almandine screams. Her scream turns into a hacking cry. “Don’t touch me. Don’t ever touch me. I can’t take it. I can’t—” The woman is wracked with dry, choking heaves.

Isbe has no idea what to do. She recalls from Binks’s story that Almandine is the faerie whose tithe is touch. She’s a known sensualist. Just like Annette said. And yet . . . earlier, the housemaid was talking about Almandine having changed since her visit to LaMorte. Muttering about giant-beaked vultures coming to consume us all.

One thing is clear: whatever happened up there in LaMorte has destroyed Almandine. Which means the faerie queen Malfleur is just as powerful—and just as merciless—as they have feared.

As Almandine’s coarse weeping turns back into a low, unsteady murmuring, Isbe steps away from her and hurries to the exit. She doesn’t want to hear any more. She needs to find William and get out of here.

But the faerie’s words reach her even as she’s fumbling for the door, and they slither around her like poisoned vines.

“They’re coming. They’re coming. They’re coming.”





29


Aurora


The storm has lasted days, and Aurora has yet to fully understand what happened: the kiss that made its mark on her, irremovable—not exactly a wound, but something that she senses will never fully heal or disappear. Her whole body still aches from it. She finds she is trembling as she lies alone in her room, unable to sleep. And yet . . . she thought she’d know when true love happened, like she told Heath. But there are no answers, only more questions, more unfulfilled yearnings, more fears.

In one instance, though, the truth has crystalized.

She was thirteen; Isbe fifteen. It was raining then too. Aurora was going through a phase of always wanting to dress her older sister up, encourage her to look and act more like a princess and less like a ruffian who happened to stumble into the palace on a stray wind. Isbe, of course, couldn’t have been less interested, but that didn’t stop Aurora from trying. Lately, Aurora had come to see her sister as the object of an unfolding romance, and the thought fascinated her to no end. This had come about largely due to the secret love letters they had discovered in a cracked stone just outside Isbe’s bedroom wall, and which Aurora had read and interpreted to Isbe. They were never addressed to a particular person, and they weren’t signed either.