Winter Glass (Spindle Fire #2)(30)

Malfleur stares at her blankly. Obviously she can’t understand, can’t hear. Then she gazes down at Wren and grabs her by the chin, tilting her face up. “Please ask the princess why she has come to my palace.”

“Stop! I—I came for you,” Aurora says.

Wren, shaking, meets the queen’s eyes. She clears her throat. “She came for you,” she whispers.

“What a lovely surprise. And we hadn’t even prepared for guests,” Malfleur replies with a smirk. “Perhaps I should rephrase. What is it exactly that the princess wants from me?”

Wren practically snarls. “To demand the freedom of my people.”

Malfleur backhands her across the face with such force that Wren cries out, falling to her elbows on the stone floor. Aurora gasps.

“I didn’t ask you for your own answer, my dear.” The queen looks to Aurora, studying her face for a moment in silence. Aurora tries to keep from trembling. “I imagine, to have come all this way,” Malfleur goes on, “the princess must have been seeking something very important—something important to her.”

A gust of wind blows through the unboarded window, cut high into the walls above their heads. Leaves blast through its bars and swirl in the room. The heat of anger in Aurora’s gut twists into icy fear. Malfleur’s eyes seem to bore through her, pinning her even more strongly than the shackles.

“What did you really want in coming here?”

Aurora shivers. “I—I wanted—I want—” To free Wren’s people. To convince you to stop this war. To save Heath. To . . .

All of these responses are at the tip of her tongue, but something stops her from answering. She thinks, as she often has these past weeks, of the starling that spoke from her bedroom window, taunting her, on the eve of her birthday.

She pushes on, forcing herself to be brave, to stick to her plan. “I’ve come to bargain with you.”

Wren looks at her, a flash of uncertainty in her eyes, before she turns to Malfleur. “She has come to bargain with you.”

“Go on,” the queen says, and Aurora wonders if it’s just her imagination or if Malfleur has leaned in toward her, ever so slightly. She wants to cry out with the sudden power and pleasure of it.

She clears her throat. “I would like you to hold back your forces . . .”

Wren repeats her words to the queen.

“And free your prisoners, returning them to Deluce . . .”

Again, Wren translates.

“And in exchange, I’ll offer you . . .”

Malfleur waits. Wren watches her cautiously.

Once again the starling flutters through her mind. If the queen can give voice to animals, what else might she be able to give voice to? Aurora feels the crudeness of her wish, the baseness and selfishness of it, thrusting up inside her in a nauseous wave.

“Myself.”

“What? Aurora, no!” Wren’s face has gone pale as a grave.

“Tell her,” Aurora insists. “Tell her that I give her myself.”

“Aurora,” Wren protests again, but turns to the queen. “She has offered up . . . herself.”

Malfleur raises an eyebrow. “And what could I possibly want with you?”

“An experiment.” Aurora swallows. “You have great power, so you’ve said. Maybe the greatest there is. You could make an example of me. Return my voice to me.”

Wren repeats, and the queen, to her surprise, barks out a laugh. “I must say I’m impressed. I have heard of you, you see. The princess whose hand is sought the world over. Whose beauty inspires poetry. Whose gentle kindness is enough to melt the hearts of men. A princess whose demure silence makes all those who come to her feel heard and seen.” She says all of these things as if they are insults, points of shame. “So I’m delighted to see the feistier side of you. You’ve come here out of self-interest.”

“But it isn’t for myself,” Aurora insists. “It’s for us both.” Really, it’s not for either of them. Aurora doesn’t need her voice back—she just needs Malfleur to be tempted. Faeries love making deals, Aurora knows. But can one as intelligent at Malfleur be outwitted?

Aurora holds Malfleur’s gaze as Wren translates. “I know what it is to have everything, and yet to want more.”

It’s not entirely a lie. She didn’t do all this—come all this way, risk all these lives—just for her own voice. She’d be happy to never speak again if it meant saving Heath, freeing the others, and putting a peaceful end to the war. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t yearn for things she can never have.

She thinks of Isbe—of the years of abuse she suffered at the hands of the palace staff in Deluce. At the hand, even, of Aurora’s own mother, and their father. Even still, despite Isbe’s insistence that she was the one forced into the shadows while Aurora had all the light, still, still, Aurora would, sometimes, in her heart of hearts, yearn for what Isbe had. Freedom.

“Tell me,” Aurora goes on, feeling more confident in her plan as Malfleur takes her in unwaveringly, hardly glancing at Wren for her translation. “What would make a better pet than a mortal princess you’ve magically cured? Who would not bow to the miracle of it? There’s time enough to conquer land, but why not finish what you’ve started, and lure the world to your side instead, bend it to your will?”