Winter Glass (Spindle Fire #2)(70)

She raises Cassandra in obscurity, and Cassandra uses every single one of the ice arrowheads in her hunts, so that by the time she has met and fallen in love with King Henri, she knows not who she is or where she came from or that she is in fact part fae, and has given up almost every piece of winter glass that might reveal the secret. All she knows of her past is what she has left of her mother, and her mother before her: one tiny glass slipper, no bigger than a child’s.

Though the knowledge contained in the winter glass has poured over her in an instant—an instant that felt like years—it was just enough time for Isabelle to seize the advantage. Malfleur’s mind clears, her hands and arms drenched in melted ice, just as Isabelle pulls out a real sword hidden beneath her cloak, and plunges it through Malfleur’s chest.

The blade meets her flesh, and in her last gasp, Malfleur feels the love that Belcoeur felt toward her, the love she felt toward the daughter she was forced to leave behind, the hope that Malfleur would one day forgive her, and above all, the heartbreak of knowing she would not.

Malfleur seizes, going stiff. Her eyes fly upward, and she sees only fog, only nothingness. There is no final wisdom, no final redemption, no final good-bye. There is no glory—a wellspring of beautiful magic dies with her.

Her breath goes, brilliantly and suddenly, like a light blown out.

She falls.





31


Isabelle


Timing is everything. Isbe, if anyone, should know that.

And still she wasn’t prepared for the suddenness of Malfleur’s death.

It was as though her dagger had cut a rent through time itself, and everything froze.

Even when the last remaining faerie queen fell to the ground, lifeless, and Isabelle was able to think clearly again, it still seemed as though time was moving more slowly than normal, like mist over water, twinning itself, every moment doubled and rippling.

The Vultures camped in the fields beyond the castle grounds were dismantled from whatever spell of magic the queen had forced over them, and awoke in a great confusion, removing their masks and scratching their heads, splashing cold stream water onto their faces and looking into it for some sign of who they were. Many could not recall their own names.

It was enough of a delay for William to rally one last bout of Delucian soldiers beyond the wall, but the day did not end in mass slaughter, for when the Delucian soldiers arrived at the site and took in the scene, they were struck by its innocence. Many of the unmasked enemy were revealed to be but young boys, lost and trying to find their way home—and those who were men, well, some of them were still full of directionless fury. The conflict was not without further bloodshed, but Deluce regained significant advantage and, in the end, drove off the last of Malfleur’s former puppets. Her army was shown for what it had always been: one giant and dreadful enchantment.

It was an illusion that will leave many broken—for there are many who believed in Malfleur’s message, who still thought she was going to make them all knights, going to restore a kind of power and privilege they could not access in this life. Many will not appreciate the return to reality, Isbe knows. The world is not a pleasant place for everyone in it. She learned that much, has seen it, even though she cannot see.

She recalls the stops she and William once made along the Veiled Road—servants willing to rally and support her mission even before she became queen. But she recalls too the many towns where she was unwelcome on her tour as their new queen, where she was accused of being an imposter—or worse, seen as just another aristocrat asking for more and more and more from people who had nothing left to give.

She had come for their men, and though huge numbers signed up willingly to fight for Deluce, many also lost their lives for a kingdom that has seldom if ever come around to earning that allegiance.

She doesn’t know if she can fix it all, or even some of it. She doesn’t know if anything she can do will ever be enough.

But she knows one thing with utter certainty: she can try.

And that is what she’s going to tell William when she finds him to say good-bye.

He’s packing a trunk, and she comes up behind his chair, puts her hand on his shoulder. He turns and pulls slightly away.

“I love you,” she says. The words fly out of her like freed birds. It is perhaps the first and only time she has said it plainly.

Silence.

“Then why?” A question raw with hurt—it reopens the pain in her too.

Why? Does she really have an answer?

She could go with him, as he has begged her so many times to do. Travel to Aubin and help him combat the rise of his brother Edward, attempt to prevent civil war from breaking out. She could leave Aurora here to run Deluce on her own, or perhaps with Wren’s help.

“Because that’s not my story,” she says.

“But it could be.”

“I love my sister. I love my kingdom. I love you too, but I don’t want to have to choose.”

“And yet you have chosen,” he says. And then, “I will still love you, Isabelle. From afar. Not being beside you won’t change that. I haven’t given up.”

“Good,” she says. Then she takes his hand, and places it on her belly, where she feels a tiny stirring, perhaps nascent or perhaps only imagined. “Don’t ever give up on us.”

She puts her forehead against his, and they stay that way, breathing timidly, as if too violent a movement would separate them finally and forever. He does not kiss her, though she can feel his desire to, the heat of him, his intense gaze and his serious chin and his careful hands and the hurt that has chiseled him into the man she has fallen in love with. And she understands why he doesn’t. It would be too much. Already this moment is too much—it contains its own ending, as every moment does.