Next, Aaron Wolfe. Olivette’s father. He didn’t fight or protest as a dagger split his heart. He seemed to welcome the mortal blow, and Olivette lunged to her feet, overturning her chair, screaming and screaming and screaming. Her father didn’t even look at her. He closed his eyes, sorrowful, peaceful. As if he were already dead.
The blood dripped from his chair, pooling on the rug.
My heart pounded in my ears.
An uneven rhythm.
I trembled.
Phelan’s hand remained warm on my knee, holding me steady, holding my guise in place. I drew in slow, deep breaths, but the air was full of copper, the metallic taste of blood.
The duke was next. He didn’t fight it either but surrendered to the blade. It pierced his broad chest and he only sighed, complaining how the countess had just ruined his best waistcoat.
When a dagger found Imonie’s heart, I nearly rose from the table, to lunge across it to reach her. No, no, no, my thoughts rang, until she looked at me and gave the slightest shake of her head. I had seen that look before plenty of times; she was scolding me, even as her blood marred her blue dress.
Stay there, Clem. I read her thoughts. Be patient, be shrewd.
And then my father.
The last servant approached Papa’s chair. A noise of distress slipped from me when I saw the flash of the blade. The dagger sank deep into my father’s heart with a wet thump, down to the silver hilt. His blood rushed forward, fast and bright like a rose had bloomed over his breast. It sprayed over the white tablecloth, speckling the china and the candelabras in crimson. I watched its cascade, numb with shock, waiting to feel my face crack like an eggshell. Because I sensed it rising; somewhere deep within me, Clem was screaming in my bones. Furious to escape. Witnessing Imonie’s and my father’s murder was going to shatter my disguise.
This is the end of me. My lips parted, full of ragged breaths, as if I had run for hours.
But my father remained upright. Soon his blood slowed and then ceased altogether, leaving only a red stain on his waistcoat. He sat in his chair and breathed with a pierced heart. My mother remained at his side, eyes closed and her face pale, but even she was not surprised. She wasn’t protesting or reacting to the violence that was unfolding around the table.
I couldn’t fathom it. I prepared myself to see Papa slump in the chair. To gasp his last breath. But the dagger held no power over him.
My father cannot die.
Olivette continued to weep, but Nura held her in her arms. Nura had known this was coming, I realized. That was what Phelan had whispered to her earlier that night, and Nura stared at him now, both furious and fearful. But Phelan’s focus remained on his mother, who stood at the head of the table, calmly watching the demise of her dinner guests.
I waited for Mazarine the troll, Mr. Wolfe the smith, Lord Deryn the duke, Imonie, and my father the magician to drop dead. But they continued to breathe, sitting in their blood-soaked raiment. Waiting. Their gazes strayed to the countess.
Mazarine laughed, and the sound broke the brittle tension in the room. “You have proven who we are, Lady Raven,” the troll said. “Now prove yourself to us.”
The countess didn’t hesitate. She took the last dagger from the servant who waited beside her chair and she plunged the blade deep into her side.
I felt Phelan flinch, but he said nothing. Beneath the table, I reached for his hand. Our fingers intertwined.
The heiress, I thought, studying the countess. And then I dwelled on her companions—the wraiths who I had held as cards in my hands. Her companions, who she had commemorated by painting them, over and over, lending her magic and her sorrow to a card game. They had been mere illustrations to me in those moments when I had been playing a game, and I had never dared to believe that I would one day sit at a table with them, beholding their accursed state of being. I had never contemplated that I was the daughter of one of them.
The advisor, I thought, staring at my father. He was the mountain advisor.
And Imonie? I wasn’t sure what her title was among the wraiths, but all my life, I’d believed what she had told me—that her ancestry was rooted in the mountains, but she had been born in Bardyllis. Never had I imagined she had been part of the court that had sundered Seren. That she had been there when it fell apart.
My childhood, my entire life, had been built upon lies.
“Welcome, old friends,” the countess said. “It has taken me years to find some of you, thanks to Brin of Stonefall’s magic of disguises. But here we are, reunited after so much time apart.”
“What do you want with us, Lady Raven?” the duke asked, yanking the dagger from his chest. “I was quite happy in Bardyllis. So were you.”
“Happiness never lasts for our kind,” the countess said before glancing at my father. “Ambrose’s twin brother, Emrys, has withstood the curse for a hundred years on the mountain. We left him behind a century ago, the lost one of our alliance. He has carried the curse and walked the fortress in the clouds as penance for slaying my brother, the Duke of Seren, but now Emrys has found his way out.
“He walks dreams on the new moon, taunting us to come home. Twice he has wounded my son, and by the vengeance of his blade, I no longer had a choice but to gather you all to answer his challenge.” She held up her chalice of wine, as if preparing for a toast. “We scattered like chaff when the curse began. We went our own ways and sought to live our own quiet lives. I lost track of you, as you did with me. But the time has come, my old friends. It is time we returned home. It is time we remembered ourselves and dreamt again. That we no longer wake from cold, dreamless slumber. That we live and feel as mortals do. That we die when the time comes. For we have dwelled hidden and forgotten in this province for far too long.”
She paused, and I was suddenly hanging on to her every word. I felt them resound in my soul, in the dreamless depths of my being. “It is time for us to return to the mountain. It is time for us to end the curse.”
Part 3
Mountain of Dreams
32
I stood in the foothills of the Seren Mountains, on the edge of Bardyllis province, savoring the cold bite of the wind as the sun set. It had taken our party a full week to travel from the city to the border, but now we were here, full of anxious thoughts and a heavy sense of foreboding.
We would approach the mountain doors the next day. Part of me hoped the doors would refuse us entrance, but Imonie had once told me that they would open if all the wraiths approached together.
I studied the fortress in the clouds, carved into the summit.
I had been traveling with the Vespers’ party, everyone believing me to be Anna Neven. Save for Phelan and my parents and Imonie, all four of whom I hadn’t properly spoken to since the countess’s bloody dinner. I had an act to perform, and I ignored my family. But at night, when I was alone and embraced by darkness, my anger burned so bright it felt like a fever was ravaging me. Lie after lie, my parents and Imonie had fed me, allowing me to grow up beneath deceit.
I didn’t want to even look at them.
But I knew I needed to eventually speak with Imonie and my father, whose twin brother I had mistaken as him. I needed more information about this mysterious uncle who had almost strangled me on the new moon, and I deigned to ask the countess more about Emrys during our journey.