I wasn’t looking where I was running and as I was leaving the grounds, I ran headlong into Tork, almost toppling him over.
“Perfect timing, Farrow. I need your womanly advice this instant!” Tork exclaimed, holding on to me. He looked deeply into my eyes before tearing his gaze away and offering up a smile.
Was it my imagination or was he becoming handsomer every day? But right now he was standing in my way. Just as with the orphanage, I had tried not to get too close to the humans I found myself living with. But Tork had made it his mission to be the center of attention no matter what the room or who was in it. And there were times like these that his persistence out willed my resistance.
“I have written a letter and I need to know if it will make a lady swoon,” he said as he released me.
“I’m not the lady, am I?” I said lightly.
“Certainly not; your heart is harder than those pearls around Linea’s neck. And please don’t take offense. Being heartless is what every Couterie strives for,” he returned, and I laughed.
Tork was the first Couterie I met the day that he and Madame Linea had come to the orphanage, and yet he and I were not friends, but I was always friendly with him. It wasn’t his fault. Shadows and Couterie kept to their stations. As far as humans went, I found him more harmless and more amusing than most, and even Madame Linea was not immune to Tork’s charms. He was her favorite no matter what he did. But right now he was behaving oddly, even for a human. Still, I didn’t have time for his crisis; I had one of my own.
“I don’t have time to help you make the Queen of Blenheim swoon. I have to go. Romancing the Third Queendom will have to wait,” I said curtly, pushing past him and breaking into another run.
A half hour later I found myself in front of Queen Magrit’s palace.
Queen Magrit’s city had indeed become a fortress. Black Glass now covered every wall of the palace. Trying to break in without magic would be pointless. The only people in and out of the palace were those who belonged there by birth. Even the servants’ line was based on inheritance. And the Queen and her son rarely left the royal grounds. All of which made my mission nearly impossible.
Unable to face Lavendra and the Couterie just yet, I took the long walk back to the Enchanted Forest. One of the many advantages of the Couterie over the orphanage was my autonomy. I was free to go anywhere in the Queendom so long as I disguised it as an errand for Lavendra. I usually only returned to my childhood home in the dead of night, but today I made an exception.
Today, I found my favorite spot in the woods behind the structures where my sisters and I had learned our magic and lived our lives. But it hurt too much to go inside. Instead, I headed straight to the place I had played with South all those years ago when Bari and Amantha didn’t want to play with me.
I felt a rustling around my neck and retrieved the silk pouch I had kept secreted beneath my clothes since the day of the Burning. I gently pulled the strings open to free Hecate’s ashes.
“Hello, Hecate.”
I hated keeping Hecate cooped up. But whenever I was alone, I let her out.
Hecate’s ashes materialized from the pouch and danced around me. They dispersed again before settling into a sitting pose on a nearby rock. My breath still caught every time I saw her silhouette.
I tried not to make more of what she was. Was she leftover magic? Just remnants of who Hecate used to be? Or was she still truly conscious with every thought and emotion intact? Even in death, Hecate still held her cards close to the vest.
But she was always with me. I didn’t know how I could have made it through the intervening years without her in whatever form she was in. So I chose to believe in the ashes because they and my vengeance were all I had.
I had a piece of Hecate. Or I suppose really it was a million pieces. I hung the memory of her on the ashes and held on as tightly as I could. But it was not enough. The ashes could not truly answer the anger that still lived in me for the secrets Hecate had kept from me when she was alive. And she could not be the mother I longed for when I ached for her and my sisters or when the reality of being the last Entente in the world hit me all over again.
Hecate cast a look back toward the buildings. She wanted to go back inside the Reverie. Sometimes, I would comply. But not today. While the tomb room had crumbled the day of the Burning, some of the other buildings remained intact but were in disrepair. And without Les Soeurs’ magic, all the magical details of the Reverie were gone. Without all three present to recast the spell, the Reverie had become ruins.
Still, I would curl up in my old bed. And I would sit in front of Hecate’s mirror. I would raise my useless wand in the courtyard. I would stand by the water where South stretched his wings. My sisters never joined me. But Hecate did. She’d be by my side in front of the mirror as if ready to give me a brand-new yellow dress. She would fill the doorway of the bedroom I shared with Amantha, ready to admonish me for giving South wings. And she would stand next to me by the river as if she was catching me with South all over again. I never reentered Iolanta’s room, because it made me too sad. But when I opened the door before closing it again, I could see that the pictures Iolanta had drawn were still there. I could almost hear my sisters’ laughter. I could see their magic. I could taste the food—but they were not there. I would raise my wand to play Entente since I could no longer truly be one.
“Not today, Hecate,” I whispered. “We have a problem.”
The ashes shifted and turned away from me as if she could not be bothered to listen.
“Please don’t start,” I said, looking at them. At her.
Hecate had never seemed to like my plan for vengeance. But getting into the palace to kill the Queen was the only thing that had kept me alive since the day I’d watched Hecate burn in the square.
The ashes dispersed and flew back into the pouch. Even if we disagreed, Hecate would never leave my side, not after she had defied death to stay with me.
Sighing, I pulled a branch down from the tree above, hoping this time would be different. I snapped off a piece of wood and began to whittle a wand.
I doubted the wand would work. I had tried countless times before, to no avail. I couldn’t stop myself from trying to rekindle my magic any more than I could stop myself from coming back here—no matter how dangerous it was. Soldiers still swept through periodically, hoping to find a “witch” dumb enough to come home again. They did not and could not know the Reverie’s precise location. But judging from the boot prints I’d found nearby over the years, they had come close—and there was always the danger of being found near it. Not that even if I were discovered would I likely be recognized as a witch.
Iolanta had once said that magic never really died. If I found the right branch . . . If I said the right words . . . Maybe then magic would come back to me. I hadn’t given up on magic. Even though it had clearly given up on me.
I thought of Bari, Amantha, and South. Sweet South, with his brown eyes, long brown curls, and plump little face, always naively waiting for magic to come to him. Then I remembered his bloody shoe lying in the rubble.
I focused on the task at hand. If nothing else, it was comforting to feel the wood move beneath my knife. We were supposed to carve the story of our lives on each wand. Instead, I carved a wand for each sister I had lost. I tried to re-create their wands as I remembered them. Just as I had tried to re-create the memory of each of my sisters, even though sometimes it felt as if they were fading no matter how tightly I held on to them.
Hecate’s, Iolanta’s, and Galatea’s wands were filled with tales of queens and armies and romances and wars. Bari’s wand was made of the oldest oak in all of Hinter and had a small beetle and a bird on the hilt. Her first successful spell had been turning a beetle into a bird and back again.
Amantha’s appeared blank, but if you looked closely, you could see a gust of wind. Odette’s had food, representing her magical cuisine, which I missed no matter how many bites of honeybread I snuck. Tere’s was sun and clouds and rain. Sistine’s was a music note. And on and on the wands went . . .
Finally, I carved my own out of baby redwood, which was barely part of the century. It had a series of faces on the hilt, because the only magic I’d done well as a child had been transforming my own features and making some minor apparitions.
I held out the wand in front of me. I closed my eyes and wished for magic, like I had hundreds of times before. Magic was supposed to be a gift, one we used to serve humanity. It wasn’t meant to wield power.
But humans, or at least the ones we’d trusted most, had betrayed us. Now I needed just a little magic. Just enough to finish this.
I cast a spell, and then opened my eyes.
Nothing had changed. Nothing had happened. Nothing ever happened. I threw the wand down onto the ground in frustration.
I had been so absorbed, I hadn’t noticed the man standing on the other side of the clearing. He was striking-looking, with dark hair and eyes, and an easy smile of someone comfortable in his skin.
“I’ll trade you, miss?”
The man was tall, and his eyes were kind. He took a step toward me.
I picked up the useless wand defensively.
“Hello there,” he called, and I immediately relaxed.
What was he doing here? My lessons from the Entente had taught me to pay attention to details. The finery of his coat. The perfect crop of his hair. The manicured arch of his nails told the story of a man well taken care of. He wasn’t a soldier. He was a noble.
“My horse got tuckered out and I was looking for some water,” he offered, holding up a leather canteen gingerly. “But instead it looks like I found an artist.”
I looked around and saw a white-and-brown spotted stallion trailing behind him.
“I apologize. I didn’t mean to startle you, miss.”
He made a small bow and withdrew a step, which I assumed was meant to make me feel more comfortable.
“The spring is through there,” I said, pointing in the opposite direction, toward the stream where I’d once played. I made eye contact with the horse, who bent his head toward me almost in greeting. I smiled and the horse seemed encouraged, pulling his owner toward me. The man steadied himself and gently pulled the horse back.
“So sorry, he usually doesn’t take to anyone . . .”
“Well, that makes two of us . . . ,” I said lightly.
“Thank you again. I’ll be on my way then,” he said, turning to go, but something seemed to stop him and he turned back.
He looked down, spotting one of the wands that I had apparently dropped before I settled on the rock. He leaned down to pick it up and hand it back to me.
Inside, I cursed my mistake. If the wrong person found these and knew what they were, I might be found out.
“Is this yours?”
“It . . .” I stopped myself. I had been caught carving the wand. What lie could I tell to extricate myself from this?
“May I say that your work is exquisite? I’ve never seen carvings like these. Do you think I could buy one for my daughter?” the man asked.
“Buy?” I asked, trying to grasp the question. “Don’t you know these things are forbidden?” I countered. “What could you possibly want with a wand? If the guards caught you, there would be hell to pay.”
He shrugged as if he could not be bothered, or perhaps he was of such a high rank that he believed he was untouchable to the Queen and her guard.
“Not everyone in the Hinter is happy about what happened to the Entente. Some of us think that they were the only thing keeping us from the darkness.”
“Well, they’re gone. Long live the Queen,” I said, feigning indifference.
The man ignored my sarcasm and studied me a beat.
“I don’t think everyone in the Hinter or the other Queendoms agrees with that sentiment. I want my daughter to know that once upon a time there was magic in Hinter. And that perhaps there is magic still. The Entente were a brave, generous people. They served the Queendoms well. And they were rewarded with nothing but pain. I want Ella to know that they existed and were brave enough to challenge the Queen. They were more than a fairy tale.”
“Very well,” I said.
Putting my own wand safely in my dress pocket, I considered the other wands. I picked up the one that represented South. I ran my fingers over the wings I’d carved into the wood. He’d grown up with us. But aside from Les Soeurs, the other Entente never made him, a human, feel truly welcome. And I had played my own cruel part in that. Giving his wand a home suddenly seemed fitting.
“For your daughter. But I cannot take a single coin.”
I turned and left the woods. I didn’t know why I’d given the man the wand. He was human. But something about him pushed me forward. Something he said gave me a glimmer of hope.
I had not figured out the puzzle of my magic. But I would not lose my chance at getting into the palace.
There was another way to kill the Queen.