Winter Glass (Spindle Fire #2)(52)

But she has stalled too long.

Thirty days have passed since Aurora signed Malfleur’s contract, and tomorrow the great hall at Blackthorn Castle will be clamorous with guests. The queen is having a ball, and even though there’s a war on—or perhaps because of the war, and a frantic desire both for distraction and protection—it seems nearly everyone she invited has eagerly agreed to come.

Aurora is disgusted but not surprised. She thinks of the stadium with weapons hidden under a shallow layer of water. Malfleur’s spectacles are rare, which make them even more highly anticipated. Her most recent spectacle, Aurora thinks with irony, was probably Aurora’s own christening: the day Claudine took her voice in exchange for beauty, and Almandine took her sense of touch in exchange for kindness and grace. The day Malfleur tried to take her future.

In the days since her forced combat with Heath, the fight that almost ended in her death—or his—Aurora has stewed in tension, focusing on healing her body and honing her revenge. But in moments of solitude, when she can’t sleep at night, she has thought about him, her muscles throbbing with the memory of their fight. She had already lost Heath once, had finally let go of what she felt toward him, let go of the hope that this feeling would turn into love. She thought she would have been prepared to see him again.

But not like this. She could never have been prepared for what he has become now—a kind of rabid beast, hungry for her blood, hateful and scarily strong. Magically strong. Malfleur’s deadly pet. The idea brings a pain that makes her seethe with anger.

Is that what she has become too?

And what happened to Heath? Was he punished for nearly destroying her? Or sent to rooms similar to these? Is he close by, even now? At any moment, might he burst out of his cell and kill her? Or might she be forced to kill him?

And what of Wren? Aurora can’t stop wondering what’s become of her, if she has successfully escaped, whether she will ever forgive Aurora for nearly killing her. If Aurora succeeds in her plan to murder Malfleur, will Wren celebrate her as a hero or see only that she has become capable of horrors? And in the quietest, most fearful moments of all, she thinks about Wren’s secret—the cool swath of stone stretched across her collarbone.

She slips on her gloves as one of her trainers lights a lantern and brings her down the darkening hall to the sitting room for another meeting with Malfleur. As the flame crackles in the lantern, the sound startles a memory from long ago: of Queen Amélie, before she got sick. Just a fraction of a memory, really. Her mother had been fickle, jealous—mean, even. But she’d also been lively and fun; she could fill a room with her brilliant and cutting observations. And she delighted herself by dressing Aurora up in the finest garments, weaving her hair into towering designs. Aurora didn’t mind being treated like a doll—it was the closest thing to a mother’s love she knew.

She is consumed now by that same sense of anticipation and dread. That same deep tremor of desire to be approved, admired, loved.

She nervously adjusts her gloves.

Malfleur’s smile when Aurora enters the sitting room sends a shiver down her back. The room seems particularly dim—the clock in the corner overly loud, gonging out a warning in rhythm with her heart.

“I’ve seen you soften metal,” the queen says before Aurora has even closed the door. “I’ve seen you freeze liquid.” Aurora turns to face her, and Malfleur settles back in her seat, looking content—smug. “Tonight, I would like to see you shatter glass.”

Aurora is startled. The task seems no more difficult or more special than any other she has been asked to do, but there is a gleam in Malfleur’s eyes that makes Aurora wary. Whatever she has planned for the party, it must involve glass. Perhaps at tomorrow’s ball, she will have Aurora shatter all of the crystal chandeliers, sending glimmering shards raining down on the heads of all her guests and putting out all their light at once.

Or maybe not. Maybe these are just the disturbing thoughts that twist effortlessly through Aurora’s own mind now, drawing up visions that both disgust and delight her imagination.

Malfleur opens her palms. Inside them sits a small glass figurine, delicate and sweet, like a child’s toy. It is cut from black-and-gray glass, or what looks like glass, in the shape of an animal—a fox, Aurora thinks.

For a moment, she turns her concentration to a window in the corner of the room, wondering whether it would be big enough to escape through if she were able to shatter it. But it’s no larger than two hands, and the drop from here to the ground would be deadly.

She turns her attention back to the tiny fox, sending a wave of heat and fury toward not the object itself, which is too darling to look at, but at Malfleur’s hands. Nothing happens. Frustrated, Aurora draws closer to the queen, feeling her own magic spike as she steps toward her, allowing the sickening excitement of it to fill her. She tries again, her eyes blazing hard, her pulse rising; the desire to destroy, to break things apart so that they no longer resemble what they once were, floods her mind in a black wave. She can hardly see. She feels the presence of the glass fox and something else too, a stubbornness—a protection, almost, like a shield around the animal. It feels almost like the wall separating the Borderlands from the Blackthorn of Sommeil. It feels like Queen Belcoeur’s enchantment.

There is a screaming crack, and then the sound of a tiny explosion. Aurora’s vision clears. The fox, strangely, remains intact, and Malfleur looks puzzled, her mouth twisted in a frown. In her peripheral vision, Aurora sees that it was not the figurine that broke, but the face of the grandfather clock, also made of glass.