Page 79 of The Witch Queen
“Some of the others mentioned seeing…strangeoccurrences throughout the realm,” she says at last. “Animals with their hearts removed. Graves dug up. With what the Followers are claiming about Meira…”
I bark a laugh. “You don’t actually think that’s true.”
“No. Butsomeonehas to be doing this. And it’s not us.”
The wind picks up, rattling the branches overhead. That same tendril of fear tingles down my spine, but I refuse to give in to it. Refuse to give in toher.
“Is this the Heirs’ plan?” I ask, gesturing around us with the knife.“To frighten me with stories about some mysterious witch who doesn’t exist?”
“Stories? You saw what happened in the forest.”
“I don’t know what I saw.”
“Oh yes, you do,” she insists. “You just don’t want to admit that there’s someone out there who’s better than you are.”
The ridges of my ears burn. “That’s not it.”
“That’s exactly what it is. You want to be the most powerful witch in the world”—she waggles her fingers—“the witch from that nonsense prophecy Selene is obsessed with. You look ridiculous.”
Malum swells in my chest. Shadows dart around me, and it is everything I can do to keep from lashing out at her.
“You think your opinion matters to me?” I ask through gritted teeth. “I spent twenty-three years being told I was nothing. Now I’ve finally found my true gift and—”
“It’s not a gift, Ayleth,” Jacquetta all but shouts. “All Malum does is cause pain and destruction.”
“And what wouldyouwant to do?” I challenge. “If you had been trapped in a world of darkness for centuries? Imprisoned for the sole crime of being different? Because you were different? Because people feared what they didn’t understand?”
A muscle tightens in Jacquetta’s jaw. “That’s not—”
“Itiswhat happened,” I interrupt. “To Shade and all the other creatures thatIfreed. They deserve to have a life as much as you do.”
“They’renotalive,” she says, throwing up her hands. “They’re Malum.”
It shouldn’t surprise me that Jacquetta believes such cruelty, but it stings nonetheless.
“You know,” I reply icily, “that’s the same thing people used to assume about witches,” I reply icily.
Jacquetta swallows. Without another word, she stalks off the way we came.
This time I let her go, needing distance between us so I don’t use my shadows to throttle her. In the quiet that follows, I study the tree again. Its bark is black in the moonlight, glistening with that blood-likesubstance. Its limbs, gnarled and ominous, stretch up into the night. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it looked like the tree in the forest where Jacquetta and I carved our initials what seems a hundred years ago:
A + J
The memory twists through me like a knife, dredging up the question I’ve never been able to answer: Had the tree died because of what we’d done—a warning carried up through its very roots?
That, together, we are cursed.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Blodwyn
Thunder booms outside. It’s been storming since late last night, the sheets of rain so thick that I can’t even see the palace gardens outside my window. Wind moans down the chimney, stirring the fire. Within the flames, I can almost imagine the shape of a face. That, beneath the raging storm, I hear the echo of a scream: the woman from last night.
The incident keeps replaying in my mind. The terror on the woman’s face. Her bare feet skidding on the food and manure smeared on the floor. But much more unsettling than the poor woman’s fate was the court itself—their glee at tormenting her. And it wasAunt Margaretwho instigated the spectacle. I’ve never seen that side of my aunt before, so brutal and ruthless. The same words she’s used to describe Ayleth.
“Keep still, please, Highness,” the seamstress chides me around the dozen or so pins held between her lips. “Almost finished.”
I shift on my feet, which ache from standing on the stool for the last hour while the seamstress makes final adjustments to my gown. Just as I feared, it’s heavy enough that I have no idea how I’m going to be expected to dance, much less move, at the ball.
