Winter Glass (Spindle Fire #2)(44)
The Vultures haul her to her feet, but she still cannot stand. Her left leg doesn’t hurt anymore—she lacks the sense of touch now that Heath is so far away—but something is very, very wrong with it. Two Vultures have their arms under her, helping to carry her away. She limps with them toward the exit but hears a commotion and turns her head.
At the opposite exit, Heath is struggling against his guards. He claws at them, trying to break free, swings with a hidden blade. There’s a tearing sound as his knife meets the thick, tight leather of one of the vulture masks, slicing a hole in the side. Through it, bright red hair, slightly wavy, slightly curly, peeks out. The Vulture swings his head away from Heath and away from danger, momentarily locking eyes with Aurora.
She gasps and swallows, knowledge pulsing into her. Those are the eyes of the same trainer who brought her to Wren. The knowing eyes. The known eyes. She does recognize him. The foxlike hair is a dead giveaway. It cannot be coincidence. Can it?
Or maybe her mind is just desperately clutching again at the hope of something familiar, some reminder of her old self.
As the guards pull her back through the doors and they swing shut behind her, she feels something shutting down within her too. A final narrowing. She has lost Heath—he is a monster. She has lost Wren, who believes Aurora is the monster. And the light of her old self is barely a glimmer in the distance now. If she focuses on it, it will wilt under the harshness of her glare. The faerie queen has taken everything from her, made her a pawn, just like she was when she was a helpless princess back in Deluce.
She has leaped from one form of imprisonment to another. At least here her imprisonment is obvious and not hidden under the delusion of being special. Even Isbe treated her like a child back home, someone who needed to be protected. She realizes, in a wild surge of despair, that Malfleur is the only one who has ever been honest with her.
The guards lead Aurora away through the dim-lit halls of Blackthorn, a weakened, bloodied shell. Everywhere her mind turns lie thoughts of bitterness and hate, ribbons and ribbons of darkness enfolding her, but between them, brief flashes of that pale, cruel face, intent and unsmiling: Malfleur, Malfleur, Malfleur.
She must have her revenge.
19
Wren,
Formerly a Maiden of Sommeil,
Indentured to the Mad Queen Belcoeur
She can’t die. She is the last hope of Sommeil, of the refugees imprisoned in Malfleur’s dungeon, stripped of their home, of everything they knew.
And she is only seventeen.
Wren is not ready to die.
But the stone gathers her skin into a hardness, cropping up everywhere now, the curse tightening its way across her shoulder blades, making her stiff, and moving from her ankles to her knees, so it gets harder and harder to limp along.
Still, at last, somehow, she has made it to Violette’s mansion, which sits in a field of vibrant emerald grass, beside a vast and glimmering lake. The air is fresh, sparkling with moisture and the buzz of spring insects.
No wonder Violette loves to tithe human sight.
Wren knows, from the information she has gathered along the road, that she is right in the center of Deluce. She knows too that this is a kingdom at war, yet she has been helped at every turn by peasants seeking to do some good. And now, the vision of this grand estate moves her, makes her think that perhaps everything will be all right, that there will be spots the war won’t touch, like this. That evil can spread everywhere, but may never take the heart.
As she makes her way on foot down a long private path toward the house, a carriage splashes past her. A man sneers down at her from the driver’s spot—a wealthy gentleman, from the looks of his dapper clothing and upright posture, though it would be odd for a lord to drive his own carriage. He passes her, in the direction of the house.
So, she will not be Violette’s only guest.
Only after she is let inside—with excessive caution, by a bizarrely coiffed and timid butler—does she learn who this other guest is. Another faerie—Lord Barnabé.
The two are seated side by side in a large ballroom full of mirrors. There are so many mirrors that the room feels not like a room at all but like an endless and terrifying world of repetitions.
The chairs seem like they’ve been hastily arranged in the middle of this otherwise empty room, with no other furniture around them, as though not only has Lady Violette rarely received guests but perhaps doesn’t really understand what it means to receive a guest in the first place.
The lord looks down his nose at her. “I have private business with the lady of this house,” he informs her.
Wren holds her ground. “So do I.” She has not come this far only to be intimidated.
The lord bristles but turns to stare in a mirror and adjust his cravat.
Violette walks in, guided by the awkward, overly groomed butler, as well as a maid. They each hold an arm, as though the lady can’t walk on her own.
Wren sits up straighter. Whatever she expected, this isn’t it.
The woman looks, well, insane. She has flaming red hair stacked high on her head, huge lips like two halves of a purple butterfly, drawn-on eyebrows, and a bustle so high it’s practically a hunchback. The sagging skin of her chin is literally pinned back by something like jeweled hairpins at the sides, giving the illusion of slenderness around the neck, stretching her mouth into something halfway between a smile and a grimace. It must hurt, but if it does, she must be used to it.