20
Fi
fi entered the castle library, clutching a wide silver serving tray in both hands. She had made a short detour to the kitchen to snag the shining tray, ignoring the silver eyes that marked her passage. She couldn’t care less what the Wraith thought she was up to.
Fi’s nighttime trip to the library had put a thought into her head that she hadn’t been able to shake. Either her instincts were right and she was going to get some answers, or she was about to look very foolish.
The great library of Andar was even more beautiful in the daytime. The bookshelves were all made of cherrywood that shone in the light streaming through the wide picture windows. The curved balcony of the upper level traced the contours of the room, and spiral staircases led between the floors, the steps decorated with light and dark woods patterned with intricate medallions. The library had been designed so that everything flowed together, the bookshelves curving around corners and topped with sinuous whorls. And there were roses everywhere, carved deep into the banisters and adorning the scrollwork of the windows.
Fi tried to take it all in at once. Every corner was crammed with books, their pages bound in blue and red and rich green vellum, the titles traced onto their spines in precise thread. In the nooks between shelves, she could see sturdy tables and long satin-cushioned benches made for lounging, not to mention the wide, deep windows that Fi knew she could curl up in for hours with a stack of books at her side.
She craned her head back to study the chandeliers cast of gleaming gold, each one hung with hundreds of translucent gems shimmering in the sunlight. At first, Fi thought they were crystals, like the ones she’d occasionally seen in the manor houses of Darfell, but then she noticed the little rainbows being thrown across the wall of the second floor. The pieces had to be glass. It seemed odd for such a rich library to have only a simple glass chandelier, but then again, the rainbows were lovely, and they added to the magical atmosphere created by the rose motif. Fi felt like she was wandering in some great garden of books.
She almost tripped down the stairs, staring up at the chandeliers instead of watching her step. The serving tray banged against the railing as she caught herself. There was a pattern of vines and roses carved into the high ceiling. Fi let her feet wander as she followed the whorls of vines, great bursts of roses blooming from every coil—except in one spot. In the center of the great library, the ceiling writhed with vines, but the roses in bloom had disappeared, leaving only buds and slightly parted petals.
Fi’s pulse picked up. She’d seen that before—in the hidden room of Aurora’s tomb.
It had to be a clue. In the tomb, the lack of roses had hinted that Aurora was not in the black coffin. Fi wondered what it meant this time. She tugged at her earlobe, pondering the roses and the tomb and Camellia’s riddle until her neck was sore.
Out of ideas for now, she headed for the part of the library where she’d been the night before. She passed through rows and rows of books, moving faster when she recognized the giant glass door that led out to a low balcony—the one where she could have sworn she’d seen a flash of movement.
Figuring out the first line of Camellia’s riddle had restored a little of Fi’s faith in herself. She was no longer so sure the movement had just been a figment of her imagination. After thinking about it all night long, she had come up with a guess about who could have been reflected in the glass. That’s what the serving tray was for.
Fi stopped in front of the door. Its frame, made of the same cherrywood, was built into a lattice of crisscross diamonds, each set with a piece of glass. Fi ran her hands along the pattern, wincing at the thought of what she was about to do. Then she lifted the serving tray and used it to splinter the delicate wooden crosspiece at one joint.
Once the wood bowed in, Fi shrugged off her vest and wrapped it over her hands to protect them while she worked the piece of glass free. She placed the glass on the serving tray and slipped her vest back on, heading for a dark alcove underneath a curl of spiraling stairs. As far as she knew, the Lord of the Butterflies could only hide himself inside mirrors, but all glass could be a mirror under the right circumstances.
Under the stairs, she found a little desk tucked against the wall. Fi set the shiny tray upright on the scarred surface, holding it in place with a heavy book. Then she leaned the square of glass against it, pushing the cool diamond flush against the polished metal until the glass turned opaque. Fi’s hazy reflection stared back at her as she sat down.
“I know you’re in there,” she said. At least, she hoped he was. She held her breath as the silence stretched out.
Then the reflection shuddered, and suddenly Fi was sitting across from the Lord of the Butterflies. He looked older than before, and weary, with worry lines carved deep into his forehead. His long gray hair hung limply around his shoulders, almost invisible against his jet-black robe. The scars over his left eye were lighter and thinner, faded with age.
“I suppose I have no need to hide from you,” he said, looking Fi over. “You seem remarkably unsurprised to find a Witch lurking in the window of this castle.”
“I’ve met one of you before,” Fi explained, leaning forward. “But I’ll admit I didn’t expect you to be in this particular library.”
“And why is that?” he asked curiously.
Fi sucked in a breath. “Because of this,” she said, raising her hand to reveal the Butterfly Curse.
The man’s eyes widened, first in surprise and then in interest. He lifted his own palm, revealing the twin mark fluttering on his skin. “I see you know a little about my situation,” he said, lips twisting into a bitter smile. “I was banished for many, many years before I made my way back to Aurora’s castle. This is the last piece of myself I left anywhere.”
“And you never got rid of the curse?”
“No.” The Lord of the Butterflies rested his chin on his hand. “I suppose you were hoping for a different answer.”
Fi clenched her palm against the desk, crushing down the disappointment. “I’m more interested in what happened to you. If you’re the last sliver of the Lord of the Butterflies, then you must know the whole story. Everything that happened in Andar.”
This was what Fi really needed—information, history, facts to fill in the gaps. And the Lord of the Butterflies might be just curious enough to give them to her.
“What were you and Aurora to each other?” she asked, thinking of the letters in Everlynd’s library and the memory Aurora had shown her. “Were you lovers?”
The Lord of the Butterflies chuckled. “Nothing so ordinary,” he promised, a little gleam coming back into his one piercing green eye. “We were something much rarer—kindred spirits in our thirst for knowledge. Specifically, knowledge of magic. I was the more powerful Witch—even her teacher for a time—but Aurora was so clever. I never knew what to expect from her.”
Fi was fascinated. This wasn’t just a piece of a man trapped in this mirror; it was a piece of lost history. “And the Spindle Witch?” she breathed. “Where does she fit in?”
“She was the wedge between us.” The man shook his head. “My greatest pleasure at that time was researching new forms of magic. Aurora often came along on my investigations, though her ministers would have preferred her moldering away on her throne. One day, we found ourselves in a dead valley beneath a black tower ringed in bones. And in the tower was a girl.”
A chill ran down Fi’s spine as she thought of the tall spire and the lonely window. “I’ve seen it,” she whispered.
The Lord of the Butterflies lifted an eyebrow. “Then you understand why we felt for her. She was a Witch, half-mad from talking only to the crows, but she had magic like I had never seen. To the little spider, snuffing the life out of things with her golden hair came as naturally as breathing.”
His voice was fond, and Fi felt an unpleasant prickle on her skin. Here he was, the man she recognized from the letters—dangerously fascinated by the Spindle Witch and far too unconcerned about the consequences.
“Aurora and I agreed to break the enchantment that held her prisoner. It was ancient and intricate, binding her magic to that tower and to the earth itself. The answer seemed simple: sever the girl from her magic, and she would be free. But Aurora realized the truth before I did.
“The girl was dead. She’d been dead long before we ever found her in that tower. But her will to live was immense. And so was her magic.” His eyes glowed with a strange, reverent light. “Her magic brought her back in the same way she could use it to animate skeletons and half-dead creatures. Alone in that tower, she forgot she’d ever died.”
Fi’s stomach lurched as she recalled the girl from Aurora’s memories manipulating the corpse of the crow with her golden threads. Who are we to decide what true life is or isn’t? the Lord of the Butterflies had said. So Perrin had been right when he theorized that consuming magic was what had kept the Spindle Witch alive for centuries.
“So you and Aurora fought about what to do with her,” Fi guessed.
“Bitterly,” the man said with a sigh. “I had been working on a relic to sever the girl from her magic—a pin to place in those lovely, magical locks. But if her magic was the only thing keeping her alive, then by severing her from it, I would kill her.”
“The butterfly hairpin.” Fi couldn’t believe it. She’d held that hairpin—turned it every which way, even tested the sharpness of the pin on her fingertip, never guessing it was a weapon that could have killed the Spindle Witch.
Something of her thoughts must have shown on her face.
“It doesn’t work,” the Lord of the Butterflies told her dismissively. “I left the enchantment unfinished. I couldn’t imagine destroying her.” He turned his head, his gaze suddenly very far away. “You see, if I ever loved anyone at all, it was her. All she wanted was to be free from that tower and the incessant hunger she’d felt all her life. Aurora wouldn’t allow it as long as she had to devour others to live. So I took matters into my own hands. I began researching a new kind of magic, a series of spells that would allow me to drain the power from the enchantment, the tower, the earth around it—everything.”
Fi’s breath stuck in her throat. “You created the Siphoning Spells for the Spindle Witch. To set her free. Even though you’d seen the tower, the valley of bones.”
The decision to let the Spindle Witch out—that must have been what he’d written about with so much vehemence in his letters, insisting that Aurora couldn’t change his mind.
Fi shook her head in disbelief. “Why? You had to know what she would do. How many people she would kill.”
“You sound like Aurora,” the Lord of the Butterflies said, and Fi got the distinct impression it wasn’t a compliment. Seeing that feverish gleam in his eye, it wasn’t hard to picture the young Witch who fancied himself a researcher and had rationalized away all the harm the Spindle Witch would do. With that cold dispassion, he could justify anything—even unleashing a monster that would turn entire kingdoms to dust.
“But Aurora stopped you,” Fi said.
The Lord of the Butterflies gave her a wry smile. “I see you know some of this story already, so I’ll skip to the end. I was much more powerful than Aurora—I assumed I had nothing to fear from a Witch of her caliber. Then she sent me a certain letter opener with a swallowtail handle.”
The mark on Fi’s palm ached. She felt it all over again, the agony as the Curse of the Wandering Butterfly burned into her skin.
“She used my own magic against me,” the Lord of the Butterflies said, sounding impressed. “As I said, she was quite clever. Though, as her former teacher, I suppose I share a little of the credit.”
Fi closed her fist around the butterfly mark. “But, in the end, the Spindle Witch got out of the tower anyway.”
He shrugged. “Unfortunately, the wheels had already been set into motion. I’d taught the girl to strengthen her magic by tying her hair into twists and knots. From there, she taught herself to spin, growing ever more powerful while the enchantment Aurora and I had tried to dismantle grew weaker and weaker. It was only a matter of time.”
Fi’s head was a whirl. He had told her so much; whether she could use any of it was a different matter. But she had one lingering question.
“Why did you come back and leave a piece of yourself here?”
“You are so young.” The Lord of the Butterflies sighed heavily. “With age came a wisdom Aurora attained long before me. A terrible hunger lives inside the little spider. She consumes life and magic to survive, but it never fills the gnawing hole inside her. Nothing can—because no matter how much magic she consumes, she can never truly live again.” He tapped his fingernail against the table. “I understood too late what Aurora was trying to tell me: siphoning is far too dangerous. It’s a magic that never should have existed.”
And Fi had gotten the Spindle Witch that much closer to finding it. She felt sick, knowing she had delivered Camellia’s riddle and the Rose Crown right into her hands. If the Spindle Witch managed to put it all together before Fi did, she would carry the guilt of everything that happened next—but probably not for very long, because she doubted the Spindle Witch would leave anything alive.
“As to why I put myself into the glass of the library,” the man continued, “I guess I was just hoping to see her one last time.”
Fi wasn’t sure who he meant, Aurora or the Spindle Witch. Before she could ask, the man held up a finger.
“Someone’s looking for you,” he murmured, with a secretive smile. Then Fi felt her head sliding down to pool on the desk in front of her, her eyes slipping helplessly shut.
fi stood in the darkness barefoot. The dream was familiar by now, and she reached down, picking up the golden thread that trailed away into the blackness. She definitely hadn’t nodded off; the Lord of the Butterflies must have made her fall asleep. He’d said someone was looking for her. Could he mean Briar?
Her bare feet slapped against the stone as Fi began to wander, waiting for the rattle of bones. Instead, she found herself walking through a pool of mist, silvery and cold, and then at last Fi heard a voice calling her name. It wasn’t Briar. It was . . .
“Perrin!” she yelled. She forgot following the golden thread, letting it trail behind her as she wandered farther into the mist, searching for the boy.
“Fi!” She heard him calling, closer now.
Fi ran, her nightgown swishing around her. The mist rose up before her like a wall. She closed her eyes as she burst through, only to find she was suddenly sitting across from Perrin in a little rowboat. Inky water stretched out around them, the weather-worn craft lilting gently on a calm lake. She could only see snatches of it through the mist, but she thought she recognized it. Evista Lake from Everlynd.
Perrin leaned toward her, a deep blue robe shimmering around him like water. “Fi.”
“How is this possible?” she asked. “Are you really here?” She was desperate—so desperate for this not to be some kind of trick.
“Yes!” Perrin said excitedly, leaning forward to seize her arms. “I’m here inside your dream. I did it—I’m dream walking. This is my medium.” He waved an arm at the lake and the rippling water. Fi’s mind flashed back to the dream journey she’d shared with Briar on this same lake and the island of gold sand created by the magic of the original Dream Witch.
“Are you all right?” Perrin asked, looking her over anxiously.
“I’m not hurt,” she promised, squeezing his hands. “But I am locked in the castle of Andar. I can’t get out. And I didn’t defeat the Spindle Witch.” Her heart clenched as she said it, wondering if Shane was somewhere on the other side. The boat trembled as though it might capsize.
“It’s okay. We have a plan.” Ripples spread through the water as Perrin sat back, steadying the craft. “We’ve found something that can sever the Spindle Witch from her magic.”
Fi’s breath caught, the conversation she’d just had with the Lord of the Butterflies playing in her mind. “It’s that hairpin, isn’t it? The one Red and Shane found.”
Perrin shot her a look. “You’re oddly knowledgeable for someone trapped in a castle.”
The details of Everlynd from Fi’s memories were starting to bleed through the mist, lanterns winking on the distant shore. “There’s something important I have to tell you,” Fi said quickly. “That pin—it’s incomplete.”
Perrin shook his head. “At some point, you are going to have to tell me how you’re doing this,” he muttered. “The pin was incomplete, but we fixed it—mostly. Now we just need you to finish it.”
“Me?” Fi repeated. “I’m no Witch.”
“No, but you do have some of the Lord of the Butterflies’s magic in that curse mark on your hand,” Perrin explained, waving his own palm for emphasis. “All you have to do is touch the pin, and the spell will be complete. So we just need to get you out of the castle.”
Fi’s heart leapt at the idea of being freed from this prison. But that would leave the Spindle Witch here alone, with the Rose Crown and the riddle, just a hair’s breadth from the Siphoning Spells. Everything the Great Witches had sacrificed themselves to keep safe. She had to stay.
“No,” she said. “Don’t get me out. Get the hairpin inside. If there’s a chance to sever the Spindle Witch from her magic, it will be in here, where she’s least expecting it.”
Perrin seemed to glow for a moment, rippling as though he might wink out of the dream. The water around the boat became choppy and uneven, and the shores disappeared into thick white fog.
Perrin’s voice was muffled, and it took Fi a moment to realize he wasn’t talking to her. “That’s what she said—I don’t—one at a time!”
Fi smiled. Suddenly, she could picture exactly who was on the other side, clamoring in Perrin’s ear. She reached out a hand, snagging his wavering form.
“Tell Shane I’m sorry,” she said. “And that I’m really on the right side this time.”
Perrin nodded, a wide smile stretching across his face. His hand slipped through Fi’s, suddenly insubstantial, and she looked around, willing the boat and the swaying water to hold. There was only a tiny circle of Perrin’s dream left, the mist closing in from all sides.
Perrin jerked forward, making the boat rock. “Shane says we can be there in six days,” he said, hurrying as though he, too, knew their time was almost up. “And it won’t just be us, Fi. We’ll convince the Witches of Everlynd to march with us, too. Can you be ready on your side?”
“I’ll be ready,” Fi promised.
“Good,” Perrin said with a sigh. “I didn’t really know how we were going to reschedule this if you said no. Six days, Fi,” he confirmed. “The attack will start at dawn, and Shane will get you the pin as fast as she can.”
“I can help with that,” Fi said. Perrin had started to disappear little by little, his blue robe running like drops of water. “There’s a door beneath the eastern tower,” she said, remembering the outer gate where she’d given up on her escape. “I’ll make sure it’s unlocked. Follow the blue pennants, and there’s a path straight to the library. I’ll be there—and so will the Spindle Witch. Tell Shane to be careful.”
Perrin chuckled, even as the rest of his body began to shimmer. “Shane says she doesn’t want to hear that from someone who threw herself off a cliff.”
Fi choked on a little laugh. That sounded exactly like Shane.
“I don’t think I can hold this any longer,” Perrin admitted. The mist was so thick Fi was breathing it. Then her eyes widened.
“Wait!” Fi said, grabbing him. “Can you do one more thing for me? Can you put me in Briar’s dream? There’s something I need to ask him.”
“Fi, it took everything I had to find you. Making a connection with him, too . . .” Perrin was little more than a translucent body with uncertain eyes, held together as precariously as a raindrop.
“But there’s already a connection.” Fi lifted her hand, the one that was always tangled in golden thread. “Briar’s at the other end,” she promised. “Please, Perrin.”
“I’ll try,” he whispered, and even though he was almost invisible, she could make out the crease of his smile. “But I’ve only been a full-fledged dream Witch for a few days, you know.”
The golden thread rose from Fi’s hand, hovering in the air. In the space between heartbeats, Fi felt like she saw Perrin in the boat, and then a flash of the glorious dreamscape of Evista Lake, and then it was like the water was rising all around her, a great torrent of rain surging up from the ground. It surrounded her in a rush. The last thing she felt was Perrin’s hand on her back giving her a gentle shove.
Fi stumbled forward into a dream she had never seen before. A baby wailed while a blond-haired woman in a high four-poster bed reached desperately toward it. The baby was ashen and weak, barely moving in the bassinet that spilled over with rich blankets.
“Please,” the woman was begging, “please don’t let him die. I would pay any price—just save my baby. Save Briar Rose.”
The Spindle Witch swept over to the bed, her long black skirts trailing, and Fi realized with a start exactly what she was seeing. This was the moment the queen had bargained for the life of her child—the moment the Spindle Witch had betrayed Andar.
Fi took a step backward and collided with something solid. The breath left her lungs as she looked up to find the creature with the horned skull beside her. The last flickering bits of red in the empty eye sockets were focused on the memory playing out before them.
“Any price, Your Majesty?” the Spindle Witch asked, eyes glittering.
“Any price, Spindle Witch,” the queen agreed, sealing her own fate.
A smile spread across the Spindle Witch’s lips. She reached beneath her veil, pulling forth a long golden thread and twirling it through her fingers. Tears streamed down the queen’s face as she scooted to the edge of the bed, wrapping the baby’s tiny hand in her own.
The Spindle Witch loomed over them. She looped the end of her golden thread like she was tying a knot and then reached down and slipped it into the baby’s chest, right over his heart, her deft fingers pulling the end tight. She attached the other end to the queen.
She was draining the life from Briar’s mother and giving it to him, Fi realized. The color drained from the queen as her life was sucked away, and the baby began to move again, his crystal-blue eyes opening. The Spindle Witch stood over the dead queen and the baby and cooed. Her golden braid slipped out from under the veil.
And then suddenly the baby was crying again, and the queen was alive in the bed, reaching for him. The memory had started over. Briar’s mother begged for the life of her baby, and the Spindle Witch exacted her promise, reaching up under her veil and tying a golden thread around the baby’s heart. The memory played over and over.
“I don’t understand,” Fi said, turning to the skeletal creature.
The skull head tipped, those last pinpricks of red burning into Fi. He reached for the golden thread stretching from his empty chest. Behind them, the Spindle Witch reached under her veil, pulling the golden thread, tying it around the baby’s heart.
Where does it lead? he begged.
Suddenly, Fi understood what Briar had been trying to tell her all along.
she woke with a start in front of a dull pane of glass. Fi surged to her feet, knocking over her chair as she leaned into the desk, breathing hard.
Shakily, she put the chair back on its feet. Hours had passed, by the position of the shadows in the room, and it would be night soon. Fi didn’t imagine she would sleep a wink. She had a lot to do in the next six days.