“Cyrus told me about the choice you made,” she ventured. Emma said the words quietly, but I flinched as if she had shouted them.
Against my will, I thought of the last time I’d seen Cyrus. He’d stood in the yard, facing me, a glimmer of scales across his neck and a yellow tint to his eyes. Eyes filled with pain.
“I never should have put him in that position,” I said, voicing my thoughts out loud.
The old woman was silent for a moment. Her expression was thoughtful, her lips twisted as she considered what I’d said. “Do you regret it? Becoming human?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said instantly. I didn’t need to think about it. “But… it’s what I deserve.”
Emma snorted, telling me with a single sound what she thought of that. She turned her face toward the TV, but she didn’t watch it. Her lips were twisted again. The pause was longer this time. Lucy and Ethel moved and spoke on the screen.
After a minute or two, Emma refocused on me. “You deserve to be happy, Fortuna. Is there a way to reverse it? The dragonfire?”
I was already shaking my head. I opened my mouth to answer, but something made me pause. I mentally replayed the question exactly as she’d asked it. Is there a way to reverse it? The dragonfire? It felt like someone had set off a tripwire. Internal alarms blared a warning. I went still, studying every inch of Emma’s face. She looked back with concern, at first. When I didn’t speak or look away, concern became confusion. Every expression looked genuine. Every reaction sincere.
I pretended to watch the show to buy myself some time. Agitation was coursing through my veins now, almost as strong as the drugs Belanor had given me. Without any explanation to Emma, I stood up. She remained silent as I went to the window and rested my fingertips against the cool glass.
Outside, Cyrus’s porch lights cast a glow over the yard. Snow covered the ground and the trees were spindly, frosted sentries from another dimension. There were tiny footsteps around the base of each one, and at the sight of them, I let out a wistful breath that fogged the window. Matthew.
It felt so real. God, I hoped it was real. I swallowed my fear down and faced Emma again. “Why did you ask me about reversing the dragonfire?” I made myself ask.
The old woman frowned. She stayed where she was, resting her arm along the top of the couch. Beneath that frilly nightgown, the lines of her body looked tense. “I was just hoping there was a way to ease your pain,” she said.
Wrong answer. My heart turned to iron and sank in my chest. Slowly I said, “Emma Miller would never ask me something like that. She likes to let people come to her. Confide in her at their own pace.”
That wasn’t the only reason I was so certain something was off—it also seemed like she asked the question too quickly after I had supposedly just escaped a sadistic faerie. Emma Miller would be telling me to get some rest, or she’d distract me with chitchat about some mundane topic. Her favorite strain of marijuana, probably.
We looked at each other for another long moment.
“You’re safe at home,” Emma said abruptly. At that moment, she looked eerie, the pale glow from the television making her skin unnaturally white. “You’re not suspicious of anything. You trust the human’s motives for asking about the dragonfire.”
Certainty tightened in my stomach.
“Who the fuck are you?” I hissed, pressing my back against the window. I darted a glance around us, instinctively searching for anything to use as a weapon. Book. Painting. Flower vase.
“She knows.”
At this, my attention snapped back to Emma. Any lingering hope I might’ve had withered and collapsed to dust. Though her gaze never left my face, I knew these words weren’t intended for me. She’d spoken with an accent I’d never heard her use before, and her features had slackened. A horrified scream lodged in my throat.
Before I could utter a sound, a new voice spoke, and it seemed to come out of nowhere. Through the vents and the walls. “You’re not trying very hard, Claude,” it chided.
“She’s strong. It’s not my fault,” came the reply. It was the accented voice that had come out of Emma’s mouth, but this time her lips weren’t moving. She wasn’t moving at all, in fact—the old woman stared at me with eyes that were cold and vacant. A puppet’s eyes.
“Then I suppose it wouldn’t be my fault if I had you executed, considering you’ve annoyed me,” the second voice countered.
“I’m telling maman you said that.”
There was a sigh.
Then I blinked, and I was back in the Nymphenburg Palace. Morning poured through the windows in pale streams. The change was too abrupt—for a terrible second, it was all I could do not to vomit. When it was safe to open my eyes again, I was greeted with the sight of Belanor standing in front of the fireplace. It was still unlit, as it had been since Fende left. The future Seelie King had his arms tucked behind his back, and he wore a different suit from the last time I’d seen him. I was back in the extravagant bed. Back in chains. I resisted the urge to yank at them and scream my frustration.
Something moved on my other side. I whipped my face toward it with a panicked breath, forgetting the chains as adrenaline surged.
Sitting next to me, perched on the very edge of the mattress, was a fae youth. He was apple-cheeked and pouting, and the instant he saw I was awake, he leaped off the bed with a small sound of terror. His clothing looked like they’d been made in the 1700s, which meant his mother was probably ancient. The old ones were slower to adapt to modern ways.
“Good morning, Miss Sworn. Allow me to introduce you to my cousin, Claude of the bloodline Venhorn,” Belanor said with a weary air. He didn’t turn away from the fireplace, as if there truly were flames crackling in its depths. “A distant cousin. Fortunately for him, he’s quite gifted, and therefore useful to me. Not to mention the many sizable donations his mother makes to the royal coffers. Doubtless it’s how she manages to hold a chair on the council.”
Gifted. I was still struggling to adjust, but my mind latched onto that word. It was the truth I’d needed to hear. The confirmation that none of it had been real. I wasn’t safe at home, Belanor wasn’t dead, and Emma hadn’t told me I was strong.
But that didn’t mean the Emma in the hallucination had been wrong.
My eyes went back to the young faerie, and suddenly I felt more clear-headed. There was a reason Belanor had summoned this boy, a purpose to him being in this room with us. I tried to remember what I’d heard them say in the hallucination with Emma.
You’re not trying very hard.
She’s strong. It’s not my fault.
That was his “gift”. This boy was getting in my head, somehow. Rummaging through my past and using it to Belanor’s advantage. It was something I’d done, as a Nightmare, nearly every day—it wasn’t the invasion that made my chest tighten with rage.
It was that he’d done it to my family. These were their memories, too. Their secret pains, too. Belanor could hurt me all he wanted, but they were off limits.
“We have much to do today,” he said now, his tone returning to that grating pleasantness. “Breakfast shall need to wait, seeing as your human biology has proven to be more… delicate than I thought it would be, and I simply can’t spare the staff to clean this room again. There also won’t be any time for bathroom breaks, so I’ve had Iris make some adjustments.”