by Sarina Dorie
“And the first golem,” I said. “You made that one too, in order to amuse yourself?”
“To amuse myself. And to ensure you used one of the favors from the amulet.” She reached forward and untucked the necklace from under my collar. “It would serve the Silver Court well to have you in our possession.”
I fought the urge to squirm back. I wouldn’t allow her to see my fear. Unfortunately, she could probably feel my heart speeding up in my chest.
“What else did you do?” I asked.
She didn’t answer. She adjusted the stones of the necklace and smoothed out my collar, primping as though I were her doll.
“You coerced Vega,” I said. “You could have killed her.” I thought about her other deeds. “You stole the book Vega checked out from the library so I wouldn’t associate your title with you.”
“I couldn’t have you figuring out who I was. You would have tattled on me to Elric.”
But I had asked Elric—by mail. It was very likely she had confiscated those letters.
I considered what else she’d done. The flowers were obvious. So many things had gone wrong in my life, surely they couldn’t all be because of her. I took a chance. “You tried to cause conflict between Elric and Thatch. You created a glamour to trick Elric during my lesson so he would think Thatch was molesting me.”
“Just so.” She ran her tongue along her pointed teeth. “But not only to cause conflict between them. I did it because I wanted to make your heart suffer.”
Loathing boiled inside me. Quenylda was worse than the Raven Queen. I wished I had killed her.
“Why would you do this?” I asked.
She plucked another leaf from my nose. “It amuses me. That, and I don’t like you.”
“I didn’t ever do anything to you.” I attempted to scoot back, but she sat on my skirt.
“Your mother did.” She wasn’t smiling now.
I crossed my arms. “Ah, the sins of the mother and father are passed to the children.” I had no idea she was so Biblical.
“Fae believe in old traditions. I can’t expect a modern witch to understand.”
I wondered when Elric and Thatch would return. It was only a matter of time before this lioness pounced.
“Now what? You’ve had your fun. Are you going to change my nose back?”
“Indeed. It will serve me better if I do.” She waved a gloved hand over my face.
A sharp pain lanced through my nose. I clamped my hands to my face. My nose felt normal, aside from the throbbing.
Her eyes shifted from gold to black. “I told Elric he could have any Morty or Witchkin woman as his mistress. Any, save for Alouette Loraline.” She leaned in closer, examining me dispassionately.
My instincts told me to run.
“I’m not Alouette Loraline.” I grabbed onto my skirt and tried to yank it out from under her, wanting to put distance between us, but it wouldn’t budge.
“So you say. But you look like her. Your magic resembles hers.” She pressed closer, inhaling my hair. “You even smell like her.”
It would have been useful if the Fae had learned a few lessons in genetics. “You look like your parents and your siblings. That doesn’t mean you’re the same person. Look how different you and Elric are.”
“I’d wager the only difference between the two of you is that you have a soul. Perhaps her soul.” Quenylda studied me.
That might have been why my biological mother had been so evil. “See. We are two different people. I’m not my mother. Whatever she did to wrong you, I had nothing to do with it.” I tried to push her away with kinetic energy. If she felt it, she gave no indication. I was still learning the art of telekinetic magic.
“Perhaps,” Quenylda said. “There was just something special about Alouette Loraline. Something beyond being a pretty nymph that drew people to her. It had been so long since I’d seen a Red affinity, I’d forgotten the way they lured us Fae in. My father was smitten—a man who refuses to even dance with a Witchkin—wanted to bed her. My lovers drooled over her. Even my husband snuck off with her.”
Elric had never told me that. “You’re saying Elric had an affair with my biological mother?”
“Probably. He claimed he was speaking with her about his son—his dead son—as if any sensible Fae would care about a child that had died sixty years before.”
Like many Fae, Quenylda had no understanding of love. It must have been alien to her that one of her own kind had the capacity for such regret and sorrow. I didn’t doubt Elric had wanted to speak with my mother about Dox. They had worked together. Elric had deceived me on other matters, but I had a feeling if he had been my mother’s lover, he would have told me.
“I told him he could have any woman but her.” Her eyes narrowed.
Rage radiated from her in waves. I wasn’t trying to use my powers of awareness, but it was hard to not feel the black rage rolling off her.
Her eyes shifted to orange, resembling burning embers. “He didn’t listen, so I ensured she would never bear his heirs. She would never pollute royal blood with more half-breed children descended from Morty blood. No child of my husband would be a Red affinity. I made certain of that. He would thank me if he wasn’t so stubborn.”
She obviously didn’t know his other wives had been Red affinities. Or if she had, she’d ensured their deaths. Perhaps that was why Elric had hidden Dox’s wife away and kept her secret. I had always feared for Imani that the Raven Queen might discover what she was and use her. I had never known Quenylda might also hurt her.
I didn’t know if I could talk any sense into Quenylda, but I had to try. “You do understand, the Red affinities are the only way Fae are going to be able to keep having children at all. If you kill them, you’ll never conceive a child. No man in your family will sire an heir. Your bloodline will die out.”
“Better that than for an impure race to rise.” She stood.
At last my skirt was free of her. I slid away and rose. I tried to reach out to Thatch again, hoping he was less distracted. He was busy trying to calm Josie and assist her in controlling her jorogumo affinity.
Princess Quenylda clucked her tongue at me, her smirk sly. “I’m not done with you yet. I can think of a few more ways you might amuse me.”
I dodged back, ready to flee, but my head spun. My knees went weak, and I fell to the ground. Quenylda stood over me, cackling. My vision became a tunnel, slowly blotting out all light. If it wasn’t one evil queen who wanted to do me in, it was another.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Curses and Hearses
I shifted in and out of consciousness. I became aware of myself as someone cradled me close to his chest, the sway of his body a rhythm as he walked. It might have been Thatch or Elric. I couldn’t tell. I tried to speak, to say that I was under an enchantment, but I couldn’t move my lips. I couldn’t open my eyes.
I attempted to project myself out of my body, but I couldn’t even do that. I was trapped in the prison of my body, blind and mute.
My consciousness dissipated as soon as the man laid me in a bed. I melted into blackness.
My focus returned when Josie took hold of my hand, screaming my name and lamenting over my fate. I wanted to stroke her hair and tell her it would be all right. Pinky spoke quietly to her. I couldn’t hear him beyond the nasally pitch of his voice, but I was reassured that at least he was all right. They were both all right.
The blackness of sleep took me again. I don’t know how much time passed before the hand holding mine grounded me back into my body. His fingers were cool and dry. I reached out, trying to see who he was with my affinity, but my awareness would only go as far as my fingertips. He pressed the back of my hand to his cheek and sighed. In that silent exhalation, I felt his melancholy. I knew the gloominess of his soul.
Thatch’s voice was raspy. “Clarissa, forgive me. I should never have left you alone with a Fae.”
He’d left me wi
th Elric. Did he think Elric had done this?
Thatch cleared his throat. “I wish I could turn back time and make a thousand different choices. I could have told you how it pained me to be forced to hurt you while in the Raven Queen’s keeping, that it made me relive every traumatic childhood experience, and I just needed some time alone to process that damage. You asked me to be honest with you and communicate what’s going on, but sometimes I don’t even know myself.”
I wanted to tell him I forgave him, but my lips wouldn’t move. He’d been suffering from the shell shock of seeing the Raven Queen. I should have been more patient.
There was a rawness in his voice that he rarely let others hear. “I could have done so many things differently. I could have turned down Khaba’s misguided attempt to provide the opportunity for us to talk, and then he would have been there with you to heal you and you wouldn’t be here. I should have insisted you leave Elric’s castle immediately after dinner. I could have slipped a note to you earlier in the week to explain we were being spied on again, and it was someone here in the Silver Court. A thousand times I wanted to confess to you that it breaks my heart to be cruel to you so that no one knows I still love you. So that you wouldn’t know and endanger yourself by being with me.” He sucked in a quivering breath.
His words pained me worse than anything he’d done at the Raven Queen’s court. Quite possibly he would never have been willing to tell me this much had he known I could hear him.
I wanted to tell him I loved him too. I tried to speak, but my lips were glued together. My eyelids remained closed. Every muscle in my body refused my command to move. This was Quenylda’s curse, to make me a living corpse, unable to interact with the world.
“A thousand different possibilities haunt me—yet I’m stuck with the ones I made,” he said. “I have to live with my mistakes, and you’re the one who reaps the consequences. It’s as if I’m reliving every mistake I made with Alouette, only on a greater scale. Just when I think I’m over my past, the old wounds reopen, and they’re just as raw as they were the first time.”
I had no idea what he was talking about now. It was hard to tell when he was being figurative and poetic versus literal.
He kissed my palm. A tingle skated up my arm and warmed my core. My affinity stirred within me. My fingers twitched.
“Clarissa?” He drew my hand away from his lips. “Can you hear me? Are you in there?”
He took both my hands in his. He leaned his face close to mine, so near I could feel his breath on my cheek. I thought he might lean in to kiss me. The idea of it sent a thrill through me, half in excitement and half in anticipation.
A spasm made the muscles in my hand twitch.
He smoothed his thumb over the back of my hand. “Move your hand if you can hear me.”
I focused all my energy on my hand. My thumb trembled.
He massaged the pad of my hand and curled and uncurled my fingers as though he were trying to circulate my blood and make my muscles work again. “Try again.”
I squeezed his hand again, this time with more strength. He squeezed my hand back, hope radiating from him.
“I’m going to bring my awareness into your body. I want to see if I can find the cause of your affliction, if this has something to do with your affinity.” He set my hand down by my side.
The ability to feel my fingers slowly faded. He slid one hand under the small of my back. The other he placed across my belly, shifting his top hand higher and then lower. At least I could feel that. I expanded and contracted my affinity like he’d instructed during our lessons.
“There’s nothing impairing your affinity. The imbalance is somewhere else,” he said.
I contracted my stomach muscles. This was the only part of my body not dead to me. With a great deal of effort, I was able to shift my pelvis ever so slightly.
His voice was patient and calm. “You are moving. Good. Keep focusing.”
Elric’s voice boomed across the silence, muffled as though I had cotton stuffed between my ears. “What are you doing to Clarissa?”
Thatch’s hand moved from under my back. “What are you doing here?”
I lost awareness of my spine. I no longer had control of anything other than my belly muscles.
“What do you mean?” Elric said. “This is my house. I’ve come to check on my guest.”
“You should have stayed with her.”
“How could I do that? An emergency occurred in my house. Did you expect me to ignore it? It was my duty to come to the aid of my guests. You should have stayed behind to ensure Clarissa’s safety.” Elric’s voice grew louder. He took my hand. “What are you doing to her?”
“I’m trying to help revive her.”
Elric snorted. “Is that what you kids call it these days?”
“I’m not molesting her. She’s conscious. She just can’t speak. Or move.”
Hope filled Elric’s voice. “How can you tell she’s conscious?”
“She can contract her muscles when I touch her. It could be a response to stimulus, but I believe she’s responding to my voice.”
No! Why did he assume that? It had to be my affinity responding to touch magic.
Elric squeezed my hand. “Can you hear me, love?”
I tried to squeeze my hand, but my fingers only twitched.
“Massage her palm,” Thatch commanded. He shifted his hand under my back.
For once Elric listened to Thatch. He kneaded circles into my palm. His touch was therapeutic, filled with rainbows and sunshine. I was able to open and close my fingers, though the movement was more a spasm than a controlled one.
“If you can hear me, squeeze his hand once,” Thatch said.
I did so.
“Yay! You did it!” Elric bubbled with enthusiasm. “Squeeze my hand twice.”
I did so.
“Good girl,” Elric said.
“Don’t talk to her like that,” Thatch snapped. “She isn’t a dog.”
I wondered if Quenylda was watching from somewhere. Was this the entertainment she was hoping for, the two of them squabbling?
Elric ignored him. “Squeeze my hand once for yes, twice for no. I’m going to ask you questions.”
I squeezed once.
“Do you know what happened to you?”
I squeezed his hand once. Then I decided that wasn’t quite accurate. I squeezed twice.
“What does three times mean?” he asked.
“Yes and no, or no and yes?” Thatch asked.
I squeezed once for yes.
Elric laughed in delight. “Did you see someone curse you?”
One squeeze. Yes.
“Was it a man?”
No.
“A woman?”
Yes.
“Vega?”
No.
“A Fae?”
Yes.
“Someone at my party?”
Yes. I waited for him to ask if it was his wife.
Elric sighed in exasperation. “Someone probably thinks this is a silly game. Pin the tail on the Witchkin. I’m so sorry, love. I’ll find out which of my guests misbehaved.”
“It was your wife,” Thatch said. He slid his hand an inch lower, just below my belly button. My affinity flickered inside.
Elric gasped. “No, it wasn’t. Quenylda would never do such a thing.”
I squeezed once.
“Am I right?” Thatch asked.
I squeezed again.
“But—but—why?” Elric said. “I’m not seeing you any longer. She’s never been like this with any of my other mortal or Witchkin consorts.”
Actually, she had. He just didn’t know it.
“Revenge?” Thatch asked.
Yes.
“What has Clarissa ever done to Quenylda? She has no need to avenge herself. We broke up,” Elric said.
The inferno of hell could have frozen over from the chill in Thatch’s voic
e. “Revenge on you, more likely.”
I waited for one of them to ask the right question.
“Are you positive? Could you be mistaken?” Elric asked me. “Maybe she said something that sounded like—”
“Slow down,” Thatch said. “Clarissa can’t respond unless you ask one question at a time.”
Elric started again. “Could you have misunderstood an idle threat or—”
No, I told him with two squeezes.
“She told you exactly what she was doing?” Thatch asked.
Not exactly, but close enough. Yes, I said.
“But why? Why would she do this?” Elric asked.
“Go ask your wife,” Thatch said. He shifted his hands once again, his fingers spreading wider.
I could feel his awareness inside me, traveling up my spine, a ghostly presence, probing on a spiritual level more than a physical one.
Elric kissed my fingers. “I think I know what she’s done. It’s a Sleeping Beauty Curse. Clarissa will only wake when her true love gives her a kiss.”
Thatch snorted. “That is so cliché. Only a Fae would reuse the same mythos over and over.”
“It’s classic, not cliché. The true question is, who is her true love? You . . . or me?” I could hear the smirk in his voice.
Thatch’s words came out harsh and sharp. “Neither of us. There’s no such thing as a true love.”
“You’re such a killjoy,” Elric said. “Clarissa, will you let me kiss you?”
“No, she will not kiss you,” Thatch said.
“Let her decide.”
I hesitated. If Elric was right, he might cure me. There was no harm in a kiss, except that it would make Thatch jealous. It might push him away even more. Not that he hadn’t already tried to push me away, supposedly for my own good.
“Clarissa, let me kiss you,” Thatch said.
I felt guilty when I squeezed Elric’s hand to say yes, because I knew Elric wanted to be my true love. Even now with his engagement to Vega, he wanted me. But I didn’t love him—not like that. I felt friendship toward him. He kept holding my hand as if waiting for that second squeeze to say no to Thatch’s words.
