The day before my Becoming, I got up early and walked out of the house. Madame Linea had assumed I would spend my last day and the few coins she’d given me to pamper myself and say goodbye to my youth. But I wasn’t doing that at all. Instead, I was preparing. It wasn’t an easy thing to kill a queen.
I took the long way back to the Enchanted Forest. I had not been there since the day I had decided to stop being a Shadow and become a Couterie.
I had so much to do to get ready, but I allowed myself one indulgence before my life changed completely—again.
I let Hecate’s ashes roam free in the Reverie. They flew away from me in a rush and took a tour through every room of the ruins before soaring back and taking form in front of me.
“We’re home, Hecate. At least for today,” I said.
I didn’t know if Hecate was happy anywhere. But I believed that if she could be, it was here.
“Tomorrow we finally get our revenge. But I could use a little help. Do you think you could put in a word for me with Fate?”
The ashes separated and then reconfigured themselves in her favorite spot—the rock near the tree where I kept the wands I’d whittled.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” I said firmly. I needed her to be with me on this.
I took the wands out of their hiding place, deep in the hollow of one of the oldest wand trees. The wands for every Entente, with images that reminded me of them—the powers we had and the things we loved. I had carved them hoping that perhaps the spirit of the Entente would somehow help me regain my magic.
Magic never really dies. You can wield it, but it is never really yours, Iolanta had said. But after a time, I think I was really just memorializing my lost family.
Even though he wasn’t a true Entente, my first wand had been for South. My last had been mine. I had one more wand to make. My own, for the new me. For the me I had become.
I began with the faces of my glamours . . . then the wings that I had created for South . . . his shoe . . . Hecate’s ashes . . . a letter to represent Tork and Lavendra . . . and I ended with a carving of a crown.
I stretched out the wand again. This was what I’d come here for. To try again.
Maybe Fate wanted me to wait till I needed it most.
“One last time,” I whispered.
I called on my lost magic, I called on my lost sisters, and I called on my lost self. I squeezed my eyes shut so tightly, my face hurt, and I whispered to them all.
Come back to me
One last time.
Let this be the instrument of the Future
And the Queen’s Fate.
It’s not too late.
“ ‘Marry your words to your will and you can do almost anything.’ You said it then. I need it to be true now . . . ,” I added.
I tried to change the leaves from green to any other color. I was attempting a beginner spell—the kind we’d learned when we were small. But there was no change in the leaves at all.
I looked down at the wand in my hand and the others on the ground. I thought I had come here to try again. But maybe I had really come to say goodbye.
“Hecate, it looks like we have to make our own fate this time.”
Hecate cocked her head, seemingly looking at me.
I pulled the knife out of my pocket and added something to my new wand.
We were supposed to carve only what had happened—not what we wanted to have happen. But I made an exception in case this was my very last carving. “There,” I said out loud as I etched a dagger through it. The dagger through the crown was my Future. Or at least I hoped it would be.
Then when I was done, I carved the wand itself to a very sharp point. It was a crude weapon, but hopefully an effective one. I would use it to kill her. Fates willing.
I slipped the wand into my pocket and looked up at Hecate.
Hecate’s ashes were sitting on a rock, hunched over, as if she were crying.
“Hecate, I’m sorry. But I am doing this for you. For all of us.”
I remembered Hecate, my Hecate, as she once was, after I had given South wings. She was in her room, pulling a dress out of her closet. She had sent Bari and Amantha to dinner but had kept me behind. I had pleaded with her to fix him.
Hecate had not moved a muscle. She was my mother, even if I hadn’t known it. And she was my teacher, even if I never fully understood what she wanted me to learn. She had refused to fix South, which I could not understand. Why did Hecate make everything so hard when she could fix anything with the wave of her wand?
I wondered what the consequences of killing the Queen would be. Would the world be saved? Or would it be the start of something else entirely? We were taught to only make small gestures to keep Fate on course. But what I was going to do was bigger than what I had done with the Challenge. I wasn’t just changing lives; I was taking one. What would that do to the Queendoms? What would it do to me?
I noticed the sun was meeting the horizon line and the forest was becoming dark. It was time to go back. I got to my feet and shouted to Hecate.
“If you don’t come back now, I’m heading to the Couterie without you,” I threatened. “You have to be a little proud of me, Hecate. After all these years, we’re going back to the palace. I’m going to make her pay, Hecate. For you. For my sisters. For the life I should have had. We should have had . . . Everything is happening now.”
The darkening sky broke and her ashes came at me all at once.
Hecate didn’t agree with me, but she wasn’t leaving me either.
The day of my Becoming would bring me one step closer to completing my mission, which was in odd contrast to the grand celebration Madame Linea and the Couterie had prepared.
The sitting room was filled with champagne and a spread of the prince’s favorite foods. Couterie and Shadow alike congratulated me on my Becoming.
The day of the Becoming was also Prince Mather’s eighteenth birthday. My own had come and gone without an ounce of fanfare, which was the Entente’s way, as well as the Couterie’s. But I could not help but note the disparity. Noble people’s lives were celebrated in ways our own never would be. The prince was literally being given another person for his birthday, one raised for his every whim, and on our own birthdays we received not so much as a piece of cake. But on the day before I was to be given to him, I was given the first and only party in my honor in all my years.
“You are transformed. You are Couterie,” Madame Linea said, raising a glass in my direction. “Cheers to Farrow’s Becoming. May she make the prince’s every dream come true.”
“Cheers to Farrow!” Tork said, sidling up next to me. He took my hand and gave it a squeeze before slipping a small packet into my palm.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“I have treasured our time together. Call it a thank-you from a friend,” he said in a low voice. “They’re sleeping pills. You know, in case things get out of hand with the prince tonight. One if you want not to care. Two if you want to forget. Three if you want to sleep through till sunrise.”
“You are a friend, indeed,” I said, suddenly sad that I might never see Tork again.
“Here’s to you,” Tork said, touching his glass to mine.
I raised my glass back and toasted to my future success.
“Now I want you to give me a present in return,” Tork said.
“You do know that is not how presents work,” I countered.
“Not a present then, a promise.”
“What do you want me to promise?”
“That you won’t fall in love. I think we Couterie are highly susceptible to getting our hearts broken. I made up a connection with Lavendra in my head because I was lonely. A connection she never encouraged and never returned in her heart. Because we have been told our whole lives not to love. I just want you to avoid making the same mistake I made,” Tork said gently.
“And what mistake was that? Falling in love? I assure you that I am in no danger.”
“I saw him in the drawing room. Even I’m a little in love with the prince,” he said.
The prince was undoubtedly handsome, brilliant, and kind to other humans. But he was also his mother’s son.
“No, you’re not,” I said pointedly, changing the subject back to Lavendra.
“No, I’m not. You’re relentless. But you’re not being realistic about how the Hinter works—about how the world works, about how people work.”
“Then explain it to me.”
“I stood outside Lavendra’s door with my stupid letter night after night because I was afraid of love. Of how we would survive outside the Couterie. And I have to live with that cowardice for the rest of my life.”
“Tork . . .” I wasn’t pretending now. I felt genuinely sorry for this human and the pain I’d inflicted on him.
“Please, Farrow. I want better for you.”
“I promise you, the only heart that is in danger is the prince’s.”
He raised his glass and clinked it against mine.
While the rest of the Couterie celebrated, Madame Linea took me aside.
“Come, Farrow,” she said, sweeping me out to the hall and into her private chambers. “There’s one last thing to do, and there are things you should know. Things I must tell you before you leave for the royal palace.”
Linea’s suite was decorated like her: tasteful but a bit stuffy.
She led me into her bathroom and told me to disrobe. She wanted to paint something special on my back. She told me it would be a surprise for the prince.
“Your time with us has come to an end,” Madame Linea said as she carefully brushed henna ink across my body. “The rest is up to you.”
When she was finished, I took a seat on the chaise in her room.
“Now I will share something very important with you before you Become.”
She went to her dresser drawer. When she returned, she was holding a large golden box. She opened the box and handed me the mirror inside.
I turned the mirror over and over in my hand. It weirdly did not show my reflection. “This mirror doesn’t work.”
“It’s Gray Glass. It’s from the Entente.”
I had never heard of Gray Glass. I didn’t understand. I knew all about Black Glass, but this was something else.
“With it, she could show me the Future. She could show me who belonged to each other,” Madame Linea continued.
Only one Entente could show the Future. Hecate. My Hecate.
I reached for the pouch where I kept Hecate, but I came up empty. I’d left her pouch in my dress pocket.
“You’re saying that the Entente picked your Couterie? They picked me?” I asked, incredulous.
Madame Linea nodded. “The prince, every queen, every nobleperson held the mirror, and the name or face of the matching Couterie would appear in it. And then I would go to the orphanage and find him or her. How do you think I have always chosen so well? Never a Couterie rejected. Never a Shadow used. Until Lavendra.”
“But once the Entente disappeared . . . It’s been years. What did you do? How did you match up the Couterie with their royal counterparts?”
“Once Hecate was burned in the square, the Gray Glass stopped working. So I improvised. And no one has been the wiser. You were the last Couterie who was chosen. You were chosen long ago. That was your fate. Hecate told me that your case would be different, that I wouldn’t find you for several summers. And she was right.”
My mind was blown. Hecate knew I would come to be Couterie. And more than that, she had sent Madame Linea to find me.
“And now that you’re about to head off to Prince Mather and Queen Magrit to meet your fate, you should know what happened to Queen Magrit’s Couterie.”
It had never occurred to me that Magrit had gone through the same process of Becoming as every other royal and that she would also have a Couterie.
“What happened?” I asked, dread rising.
“Elon was a kind soul, filled with empathy to counter her lack of it. And she was rather fond of him. But she realized how very much her Couterie knew about her, and she didn’t like that. Then one day he disappeared . . . Nobody knows what really happened to him.”
I digested this and realized Madame Linea was giving me a warning.
“You think Prince Mather will do the same to me?” I guessed.
“Prince Mather is harmless, but Queen Magrit could wake up tomorrow and decide that what you know far outweighs the service you provide.”
“I can handle myself. You taught me how,” I reassured her.
“Against the prince, but not the Queen and her army. I taught Elon too.”
“It won’t be the same. I’m not Elon.”
Madame Linea sighed. “I wish you all the luck in the Queendoms, Farrow,” she said, taking the mirror and dismissing me.
As I walked back to my room, I thought about Prince Mather and the Queen.
I couldn’t tell Madame Linea that it wouldn’t be an issue. I did not plan on having a lifetime of being his Couterie. Only a single night.
There was still one thing left to do. I locked my door and released Hecate’s ashes from her pouch.
“What the hells, Hecate? This is what my Fate is? You knew this whole time and didn’t tell me?” I asked.
She remained infuriatingly still. Was this my Fate? Or did she still think I could change it?
“Hecate, please, why did you send me here if you did not want me to kill the Queen?”
The ashes finally moved, and she put her arms around me. There was no warmth in the embrace, but the gesture itself caused a tingly rush of feeling over me. In all these years, Hecate’s ashes had never tried to hug me.
We stayed like that for the longest time, and when we broke apart again, I felt nothing but forgiveness for her. Hecate had done whatever she had done for me. I only wished she could tell me what would happen next.