“I don’t like that gleam in your eyes, Clem.”
“Imonie,” I said, and my mind reeled with possibilities. I could feel my magic wake, like embers being stirred back to life, and I grinned a slow, sharp smile. “Imonie . . . I have an idea. And I need your help.”
If she had known what I truly planned to do, Imonie would have never assisted me. But I saw the longing for the mountains in her every time she glanced out the window and viewed nothing but brick walls, chimneys, and wrought-iron gates, and we crafted a plan. She had some estranged family in the city of Marksworth, and she asked my parents for a week’s worth of vacation, to go and visit them in the neighboring province.
I made my case to accompany her, and my parents relented after they argued about me leaving the city. Papa said no, my mother said yes, and she thankfully won that spar.
Imonie and I bought a passage on a stagecoach, something that would fly along the roads of Azenor, but instead of taking us north to Marksworth, it took us west to Hereswith. Time was the most vital thread of the plan; I had only a week to get to Hereswith and back before Phelan held interviews for a partner.
“I wish you would tell me what you plan, Clementine,” Imonie grunted as the coach jostled us back and forth.
I shifted my satchel of art supplies on my lap. “You’ll know soon, Imonie.”
“Your plan doesn’t have anything to do with that Lennox Vesper, does it?”
“No. He won’t even know we are in Hereswith. And we’ll be back in Endellion on Tuesday, if everything goes smoothly.”
“I’m not going to like this, am I?” She narrowed her eyes.
“I honestly don’t know what you’ll think, but I ask you to trust me.”
She was quiet after that, watching the land pass by in a blur. We reached Hereswith in only three days. I had to pay the driver extra to let us disembark before we reached town, and then Imonie and I carried our satchels and walked through the valley into the forest that crowned Hereswith. Evening was falling, and the air was cool and sweet with the promise of autumn, the mountain wind rushing to greet us among the pines.
Imonie was savoring the fragrance, the gentle sway of the trees, until her nostrils flared and she stopped upright.
“Clementine.”
I stopped to look at her in the starlight. She must have smelled it on the wind, the place I was guiding her. “Don’t worry, Imonie.”
“Whatever you plan to do upon coming here . . . you should change your mind. This is reckless, dangerous. What would your parents think if they knew?”
I didn’t know what they would think about my decision, what they would do once they discovered what I had done. The uncertainty churned my stomach, but I had lost too much and come too far to turn around as a coward.
“I’m not changing my mind. I need you to wait here for me. I’ll return shortly.”
She didn’t like that. But she heeded me, settling down on a log with the wind for company, and I continued to weave through the woods.
Soon, the pines grew sparse and I could see the lights of Hereswith, shining like fallen stars. I arrived at the mansion’s backyard, a verdant garden meticulously maintained by one of the town boys, and I walked the gravel path to the back door.
My heart was hummingbird swift within me, and a tremor shook my bones as I arrived on the porch, as I lifted my hand.
I had a piercing moment of doubt. But I saw myself and who I wanted to become, and my confidence returned, limning my resolve.
I knocked on Mazarine’s door.
She was exactly where I knew she would be—sitting on a plush divan in her library with the curtains drawn, candlesticks burning and dripping wax onto the floor. She was dressed in black velvet with an amethyst hanging at her throat, and she smiled when she saw me enter the chamber.
“Clementine Madigan,” she greeted me. “I did not expect to see you again so soon. Although defeat does not suit you.”
I wondered if anger had grown a film over my eyes, something I could not blink away, and I suddenly felt a sting of vulnerability. Her comment unsteadied me for a breath.
“I have a question for you, Ms. Thimble,” I said, finding my courage once more. “I seek your knowledge.”
“Do you? Sit and tell me what knowledge you hunger for.”
I sat in my usual chair, the one where I had drawn her human face countless times. I kept my art satchel on my lap, feeling safer with something between us.
“What do you seek, child?” the troll whispered to me in a soft, enticing tone.
I studied her guise boldly. It was so skillfully rendered; she looked every bit of human as I was. Only the mirror had given her away. Only her reflection had betrayed her.
“The magic of disguise you’re wearing,” I began, and my heart was beating again, so fast it turned my voice into a wisp. “How did you weave it? How did you cast it? Is it metamara magic?”
Mazarine’s grin widened. “And you desire to know this why?”
“Because I want to cast it on myself.”
“Defeat does not suit you, and yet you think deceit would, Clementine?”
Her words provoked me, but my silence only amused her more. She leaned closer to me, her amethyst necklace swinging with her languid movements.
“You want revenge, young one?”
“I want what is mine,” I said. “I want to regain what was stolen from me.” And I had no doubt that one day I would win back Hereswith and call it home again. But I needed to bring the Vesper family to their knees in order to do so.
“And you believe disguising yourself will enable you to attain such things?”
“Yes.”
She sat back, but she was reveling in my answers. “Do you know where I was born? I come from the mountains, from a duchy you can only imagine despite the fact that you lived for so long in its shadow. The magic I wear is not something you have ever encountered here, Clementine. It is old, ancient. I created this enchantment of disguise long before the cruel duke was assassinated.”
I had always wondered how old she was. To know she had been alive before the Seren Duchy fell apart informed me that she was well over a hundred years in age, and I shivered. She had lived in an era that was nothing but legends now, and I sought to rectify it. Perhaps trolls had longer life spans than humans. But even as I tried to convince myself . . . something didn’t feel quite right, as if time had turned sour in the room. As if Mazarine had stopped the hours from touching her, somehow.
“My magic is very dangerous, and it will require a great cost,” she continued. “And I do not know if a human girl is strong enough to bear such a price.”
She’s trying to frighten me, I thought. She’s testing my mettle. Don’t back down, don’t be afraid. . . .
“Then I suppose there is only one way to discover if your words are truth, Mazarine,” I said.
“Perhaps. But I also do not give my knowledge and magic away freely,” she countered, lacing her long, gnarled fingers together. “And I do not think you have enough gold or bone marrow to satisfy me.”
“No, I don’t,” I agreed, choosing not to dwell on the bone marrow part. “But there is something I have that I think you will want.”
She waited, watching as I opened my leather satchel. I withdrew a fresh sheet of parchment, a stick of charcoal, and she laughed.