Page 178 of The Witch Queen

“Where is she?” Jacquetta asks.

“I don’t know. Maybe—”

Movement ripples from the darkness of the trees. Even from a distance, I know it’s the creature. Her body is contorted at wrong angles. Rotting flesh hangs from her form. The clumps of her wispy white hair stir in the breeze. And she’s not alone. Another figure glides behind her, shadows trailing in his wake: Shade. Fresh betrayal aches in my chest.

“Ah,” the creature says, her unearthly yellow gaze fixed on me. “The so-calledqueen.”

Her lips curl into a horrifying rictus smile.

Jacquetta wastes no time.

A spell pours out of her. Roots spring up from the earth, wrapping around the creature’s body and binding tight. But the lost princess merely gives a rattling laugh. She rolls her crooked shoulders and the roots slough away from her body, withered and grayed on the ground.

“A gallant effort,” the creature says. “But a foolish one.”

She flings her arm out and a wave of shadows pummels toward us.

“Run!” Jacquetta shouts, pivoting left.

She’s too slow. The shadows—myshadows—crash into the other witch. Jacquetta is tossed backward as if she weighs no more than a sack of flour. There’s a sickening crack as she collides with the side of the cottage, then slumps to the ground, unmoving.

“No!” I shout, racing toward her.

A wall of shadow springs up, blocking my path. I turn, brandishing my knife like an idiot.

“Stay back!” I warn.

My pulse speeds up as I brace myself for the creature’s next move. For Shade himself to rip out my heart. But nothing happens. The creature just stands there. Her yellow eyes gleam with something that might be amusement.

“Such courage,” she says. “I always have admired it.”

Always?The meager thread of my power taps a warning against my sternum.

The creature must read the confusion on my face.

“Do you not recognize me, Ayleth?”

The sound of my own name freezes me in place. The creature lifts her hands, drawing the shadows around her. And then, to my complete astonishment, her visage begins to shift. The loose skin of her frame tightens and knits itself together. The warped angles of her body snap back into place. Her white hair thickens and darkens to a gleaming shade of auburn. And the yellow of her eyes deepens to hazel. My breath halts. Because I have seen those eyes—watched them flash inanger or harden with disappointment. Prayed for them to look at me with even a hint of love or pride. It’s—

“Mother.”

—

For a moment, the world narrows to the two of us. My mind spins, unable to process what’s right in front of me. The last time I stood in Mother’s presence was the night I took her power. After that, there were only glimpses of her in the mirror until she disappeared. Until…

“You’redead,” I say, finally finding my voice. “You died. Jacquetta saw you. She said they burned your body.”

“Did she?” Mother asks, glancing in the other witch’s direction. “Well, Nerissa’s girl was never very skilled at seeing the truth of things. Or have you forgotten what occurred in the forest?”

It takes me a beat to place what she means: The night after the Hunt’s raid on Stonehaven, when Mother disguised herself as me in order to scare Jacquetta away. A glamour spell, I register dully. The same magic Mother used to enchant the real Sisters at Stonehaven so that we could assume their identities. Could she have cast something similar to stage her own death? To become the creature I believed was a resurrected princess bent on revenge? It should be impossible, and yet…

“Itookyour power,” I insist. “You can’t have been able to do…this.”

I gesture helplessly around me, recalling the floor in the Great Hall wrenching open. The statues coming to life. Trees uprooting themselves. Was all of that really her?

“You”—Mother points at me—“lit a fire within me. You were right all along, Daughter. About the Heirs. The craft. There issomuch more to power than their pathetic spells and potions and rituals. It took me time to hone such abilities, but now I can share them with you, Ayleth. My heart.”

The words shudder through me, touching that wounded place in my soul. I flinch against it, hating the fact that Mother can make me feel anything at all.