Winter Glass (Spindle Fire #2)(71)



But this is not, she understands now, the ending of her story. It is evening. She stands on the parapets of the palace—where until recently she and Aurora used to seek escape and spy on the council meetings—listening to the roar and rage of the strait below, the rustle and slap of sails as the prince’s ship sets off for Aubin.

That—her ending—is something that must still be discovered and created, cut and polished and sized and honed just like the Delucian sapphires that, she once learned, came out of the ground rough and dark and covered in dirt. Mined by the very people who fought and bled for this kingdom.

And though Isabelle has vowed to stop positioning herself in anyone else’s story, a question still remains that keeps her awake at night. If she is Belcoeur’s descendant, doesn’t that mean that she’s part fae, and capable of ruling in her own right? The fae all have magic that is specific somehow to who they are, but if Isbe has any special power, she doesn’t know what it is. She wishes she knew for sure. But nothing ever comes of wishing.

Or does it?

She recalls how hard she wished to see her sister again when she returned from the ?les de Glace, and how that wish swept through her with a physical agony that resulted in, seemingly, its coming true.

What if wishing is what caused her own miraculous survival throughout all of the adventures she’s had?

Gilbert is back and alive. She has not seen him yet, but she knows that he saved the prince in battle.

Maybe he lived because she wished it so.

Maybe William loved her for that reason too.

Maybe the deepest wish of all—to matter, to help—is what killed Malfleur, and not simply the recipe of Belcoeur’s bloodline in Isbe’s veins.

She thinks of what Dariel told her about winter glass—how our stories find us, and not the other way around. Aurora said something similar, and perhaps she’s right. Isbe has spent so much of her life searching, striving. What if the answer was sitting in her heart, plainly, all this time?

There is only one way to find out.

To know for certain, she must make a wish. Just one wish, not enough to turn her mad with greed like so many of the fae. Just enough to prove to herself that she’s right, that the magic in her is real and alive. That her power is wishing.

Just enough to finally know herself.

She doesn’t have to think for even a moment—it’s as if the wish has lived inside her forever. Or at least, since Aurora was born, since the day Isbe was given a sister, and a purpose. The wish has been curled and dormant through everything the sisters have experienced together: through the years of coded messages tapped into Isbe’s palms, through the constructing of snow statues and whole worlds unto themselves. Through summer evenings full of eavesdropping and bartered gossip. Through cold nights haunted by fits of coughing and even colder mornings coated in the frost of unfathomable loss—first one parent, then the other.

Even in her isolation, in her journey away from Aurora, away from all she thought she knew about herself and her sister.

Yes, the wish has always been there; it is there, still, waiting to be wished, and it is the truest form of love that Isabelle knows.

So she closes her eyes, and wishes it.





Epilogue


Violette,


a Faerie Duchess of Remarkable Bearing,

According to Her Selves

The young maiden of Sommeil—Wren is her name—awoke the very next day, the day after Queen Isabelle’s secret wish, to discover that the stone that had begun to usurp her body had vanished with the night, and in its place, flesh had returned, spotted in places like a new leaf, tender and soft and alive. Belcoeur’s curse on her had been lifted.

Or so the rumor goes. Trade routes have reopened, and with them the flow of gossip has returned. Not that Violette prefers the rancid breath of messengers to her own curious thoughts, but occasionally she does take interest in the goings-on of the kingdom, especially when they reflect so highly upon her.

After all, was it not she who amended Wren’s curse in the first place, just like she did Aurora’s? To the blood of Belcoeur you will remain bound, never to fly free, your bond as firm as the stone you’re already starting to become . . . until true love softens the stone back into flesh and bone.

The maiden and the princess had clearly found true love, and that was why the curse was broken. All exactly according to Violette’s own words.

She smiles smugly at the reflection in her billiard table, which is, of course, constructed entirely out of mirrors, except for the velvet-lined pockets. Sometimes she likes to linger in the billiards room, playing games with herself. She almost always lets herself win.

But just as pride surges within her—surely it’s not too presumptuous to assert that she is the real hero of this tale?—she experiences a most discomforting tremor of doubt. The doubt rapidly succumbs to panic, as she recalls a slight snag in her own rationale.

She had not thought true love existed.

It had all been a twisted, painted, yet delightful fiction, presented to impress, like a rouge or fancy hairdo.

And there is a second piece to the gossip, which doesn’t fit with the first.

Soon after the maiden from Sommeil discovered that her curse had been lifted, she told the princess that she longed to fly free. Wren had, after all, spent her whole life trapped—in a world of dreams—and now she saw that she could only be happy if she knew no confines and no bounds, or so the rumors say. There was a great world beyond the palace of Deluce to explore.

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