Winter Glass (Spindle Fire #2)(47)

“The Hart Slayer is Belcoeur’s descendant?” Wren says slowly.

“Why, yes, obviously, that’s what I’m getting at!” Binks says.

“And this Hart Slayer could be the reason my curse is still active. . . . But why are you telling me this, and what did you come to Violette’s for?”

“There’s more to this theory,” he explains. “More than one of the fae have heard Malfleur boast that she cannot be killed, except by one of her own blood. If it were true that Belcoeur had an heir to her magic and her bloodline, even an unknowing one, that descendant might be our only hope against Malfleur. ‘Man’s greatest foe,’ as the myth of the Hart Slayer states.”

“And you wanted Violette’s help in finding the Hart Slayer to save Deluce?” Wren asks.

“Not exactly.” Behind his foppish, aging handsomeness, she sees a true kind of ugliness in his features. “I was going to seek her help in winning over Malfleur. And now you’ve given me hope—you’ve given me a way. You must see how we may come to be aligned after all, you and I!”

Wren pauses, her mind turning. “No, I do not.”

“The Hart Slayer was long thought to be dead. But some, like Claudine, insisted he was still out there. And now, you see, he must be alive—or some descendant of his, anyway. Your little curse is proof of it, isn’t it? Belcoeur’s blood still runs free in this world. The Hart Slayer must be found.”

Wren stalls. “But how? When was he last seen?”

Binks shifts uncomfortably. “Well, that’s the thing. The slight hiccup, you see, is that the Hart Slayer was never seen, except in glimpses. Around the time that the king became engaged to Queen Amélie, the infamous hunter quite simply disappeared, and no one knows what became of him.”

“Queen Amélie . . . ,” Wren says slowly, thinking about what Binks has said. “Princess Aurora’s mother.”

He nods. “Indeed.”

“But the king and queen married and the Hart Slayer disappeared? And no one ever saw this famous hunter?” The answer seems so obvious to Wren that she cocks her head, surprised by Binks’s blustery look of blank confusion. Now it’s her turn to toy with him. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“Obvious? What, girl, what’s so obvious?”

“Queen Amélie. She was the Hart Slayer.”

He stares at her as though she has just sprouted a mushroom from the top of her head. “What?”

“There’s something you should know about me, Lord Barnabé. And that is that I am a very practical person.”

“Then we have very little in common, but go on,” he says.

“People don’t usually just disappear.”

He waits. “Well?”

“Is there any reason this hunter might not have been a huntress? Why couldn’t the Hart Slayer have been a woman? It would certainly explain why she stopped hunting, and the flowers stopped blooming. I imagine it isn’t very easy to run about hunting deer when you have recently wed a king.”

He mulls over what she has just said. In the meantime, their minds seem to leap to the same conclusion. “With Amélie dead, that would mean Princess Aurora was the last descendant of Belcoeur.”

“Aurora is destined to kill Malfleur.” It feels right when she says it. It must be true.

“So are you with me? Will you help?” Binks asks.

“Help?”

He smiles, showing his sharp teeth. “Yes, help. Help kill the Hart Slayer’s daughter.”

Wren’s jaw drops open. “You want to kill the one person who might be able to stop Malfleur’s rise? Why in the world would you want to do that?”

The darkness moves into his eyes. “She’s going to win the war, you know.” Binks states it like a fact. “In the end, it won’t matter what we tried to do to stop it, only that she has won, and she will get to decide what to do with the rest of us, you see.”

“No, I don’t see. I’d never agree to just clear the path for her to take over!”

Besides, he doesn’t know what’s hidden in Wren’s heart. He doesn’t know that she has met Aurora—not just met her, but cares for her. Might care for her more than she’s been able to admit to anyone, including herself.

Binks raises his eyebrows. “Such patriotism in one so new to Deluce. But let me tell you, girl, in times of war, one must not think of flimsy principles like good and evil, but of one thing and one thing only: self-preservation. We must find a way to win Malfleur’s favor before it’s too late.”

A chill moves through her as Wren realizes—in piecing together the theory that Aurora is Belcoeur’s descendant, she has just put a target on the princess’s back.

Could she consider killing Aurora? The thought fills her with horror and revulsion, but then she recalls the same sensations sweeping through her when Aurora nearly killed her. If her theory is right—and she can’t be sure that it is—it would mean that Aurora’s death would save Wren’s life. It would lift the curse on Wren, and she’d no longer turn to stone. The idea seems too cruel to contemplate. Maybe there was never any hope of anything blooming between Wren and Aurora, but that one must die for the other to live seems like an added injustice Wren can hardly fathom.