Three days later, the Heir proved Carlow correct. He was in the laboratory every morning with me. The two of us read through his past experiments with his vilewright over tea in the lab, our quiet meetings lasting anywhere from an hour to three. The others rarely showed up until well after, and Carlow, the only one I thought might interrupt us, preferred to work late and sleep later. She had set a series of experiments for me, and the Heir observed my contracts as I attempted to fulfill her tasks. He hummed as I failed again, tapping the feathery tip of his quill against his chin. I groaned.
“I have to be able to see what I’m destroying,” I said. “This won’t work.”
I was trying to destroy only the mechanism of a mechanical horse. The little horse had working legs that moved after a knob was wound, and Carlow had made it, working and painted, in little more than an hour. It was made out of the same type of wood throughout.
“It’s a toy horse, not a torso.” The Heir handed me a cloth from his pockets and made another notation. “How did you destroy those memories in Felhollow, or do you have a better knowledge of the mortal brain than I give you credit for?”
“I don’t,” I said and wiped my bleeding nose. There was not enough in me to sacrifice when I didn’t know what I wanted. My noblewright fluttered about me, all nerves. “That was different. We perform better under pressure.”
“That’s unfortunate,” he said and closed his journal. “Rest. We’ll try again in a moment.”
He slipped out the door to the laboratory. I slumped against the table, a dull ache forming behind my eyes. I wasn’t any good if I couldn’t figure out how to perform all the time and not just when in danger, but my wrights understood danger. They knew that if I died, they died. They didn’t understand pressure. They didn’t understand ambition.
The door opened, slamming against the wall, and heavy footfalls rumbled toward me. I rose, and Carlow shoved me back onto my stool. The mottled red light of dawn seeped into her inscrutable eyes.
“The Crown knows His Majesty has an unbound dualwrought,” she said quietly, her tangle of hair a curtain between us and the rest of the room. “The Heir is arguing with her outside.”
Gooseflesh rose on my arms, and the tea in my stomach rolled. “Is she angry?”
The Sundered Crown Hyacinth Wyrslaine had only ruled for six years. She had been another nameless noble girl married off, a choice candidate given her wrights, and bound to the court so that she could only use her wrights for what they approved of. Then, she bribed enough of them to let her overthrow her husband and his supporters.
She killed his personal guards first. There had been a standoff between her and them, leaving all of them dead and her victorious. The old Crown had barricaded himself in the courtroom with their children, and Hyacinth had confronted him there. In the chaos, their two daughters died, and Hyacinth was caught off guard by her husband’s most loyal guard. Knight Beatrice had struck out in that terrible moment, her sword sinking through Hyacinth’s scalp, cheek, and shoulder before lodging in her chest. Some said a Vile soul where Hyacinth Wyrslaine’s heart should have been stopped the blade.
I figured it was her clavicle and a well-placed prayer to her wrights. Hyacinth Wyrslaine was one of the best healers in the world after all. That was all the court had allowed her to study.
“She is never angry,” said Carlow. “She is at her deadliest when she is calm. Don’t underestimate her.”
My wrights growled so low and so deep that my teeth shook. The door creaked open.
“Franziska,” drawled a gentle voice, “you’re ruining the surprise.”
Carlow dropped to her knees, coat splayed out behind her like bluebird wings, and pressed her forehead to the floor. I copied her and waited. My wrights covered the back of my bare neck.
In the Wallows, royalty had felt like a distant dream. We all lived and died the same no matter who the Crown was because we had no way of changing the court. The peerage was unreachable. The Sundered Crown of Cynlira doubly so.
“Franziska, darling, we will have words about this, but I understand your hesitance.” The Sundered Crown’s voice bounced slightly with amusement. “You may leave.”
Carlow rose. There was a shuffling of steps, the click of the door, and silence. I held my position, legs all pins and needles. Silk rustled over the ground. The Crown sat atop the Heir’s stool.
“So,” she said, “you have both a noblewright and a vilewright?”
“I do, Your Excellency.”
“Come here, Lorena Adler.” She patted the stool I had been sitting on earlier. “I have wanted another dualwrought my entire life, and now here you are. We must talk.”
There were surely rules about looking at the Crown, but the moment I lifted my head, our eyes met. I froze.
She was plain—a small nose, a thin mouth lined fuller with coral pigment, and brown hair streaked with white at her temples—and even though her cosmetics were more expensive than my whole life, I might’ve overlooked her in a crowded room. I would have.
“Let us be honest with each other.” The Crown took my chin between her fingers and turned my face from side to side. I would’ve been as plain as her if not for my red hair. “Your mother was the one who told you to hide, yes? The one from the Wallows? Do you take after her?”
“No, Your Excellency,” I said. My mother had always said I looked like my father, but I’d no memories of him. Angular jaw, downturned hazel eyes, and thin lips gave me a perpetually peevish look. “I don’t believe you would’ve ever seen her or my father though.”
“No, I suppose I would not have.” She smiled, letting me go.
I looked away. The two servants behind her kept their gazes down, but the guard kept their eyes on my hands.
“Did you think I would be scarred beyond recognition?” the Crown asked with a lilting laugh. A servant added honey to her tea and stirred it for her. “Or perhaps that I would be beautiful beyond reason, reworked and remade perfect by my wrights?”
There was a scar, a scar like any other, running from the center of her forehead, through her left brow and eye, down her cheek, and ending in her chest opposite the binding of green and white ink that the court and council used to keep her in check. Her dress was cut to show off both.
“Peers always make their enemies ugly or beautiful, never the between, and always whatever their narrow views of appalling and appealing are. Such unimaginative gossips.” She laid her hands on the table and tapped the long, armored ring adorning her first finger against the top. The nail tips were sharpened for sacrifices. “But you, Lorena Adler, are neither beautiful nor unpleasing. You simply are. Like me. Overlooked. Underestimated. A simple girl amongst hungry wolves.”
She said it so surely that I shuddered. She had healed a killing blow, which meant she was powerful enough to have healed the wound without it scarring. My skin was freckled with scars.
“I thought you’d be prettier,” I said. “Rich people always looked prettier when they drove past the Wallows.”
The Crown sat up straighter. “It’s the money. Money does wonderful things for confidence.”
And clothes. And health. And everything else.
“Now,” she said, peering into the cup that had been her son’s and holding it out. “What does my son have you working on?”
One servant refilled the cup while the other dropped two spoons full of honey into it, never hitting the rim. This woman had never been overlooked or underestimated. She, like her son, was unlike anyone else in Cynlira.
“He’s mostly testing the limits of my contracts and sacrifices now,” I said. There was no clause in my contract barring me from telling his mother what he wanted to do with the Door, but it was clear from our conversations that she didn’t agree with his intentions. It was better to lie, and doing so was second nature now. If she thought me untrained entirely, she’d underestimate me. “I wasn’t taught to contract my wrights, so my ways of working are quite different. It’s not even working today. I’m nothing like you.”
“Indeed,” she said. “And what did my son promise you in exchange for this knowledge?”
“Information and protection,” I said. “No more sacrifices coming from Felhollow. There aren’t enough of us to last a year, and we’re too far away to do much.”
I needed to know more about her sacrifices and why she did them as she did if I was going to help Will.
“You’re too far away to protest as well then,” said the Crown. She sipped her tea, and her servants retreated. “How did you escape notice while living here? I employed a number of noblewrought solely for the purpose of finding wrought children.”
I swallowed. A sickly sweet bile rose up in the back of my throat. “I’m from the Wallows. I stayed out of the way and rarely used my wrights.”
“Yes, Alistair said he was surprised by the speed with which you destroyed and created new memories for my warrant officers,” she said with a smile. “He does love a good puzzle.”
I clasped my hands in my lap, nails digging into my skin. My noblewright whined. My skin felt too tight for all the fear rising in me.
“How did you do it?” she asked.
I swallowed. “I’ve always been better with bodies and memories. I’m an undertaker. I know the mortal form very well.”
“Please, how does someone who has never been trained know how to so quickly and cleanly alter memories like that? You can’t see thoughts while preparing a body for funeral rites. You can’t see feelings when observing mortal nerves. Those are all intangible things. Altering them requires practice.” She leaned in close until I could taste the honey on her words. “You have practiced, though, haven’t you? If you couldn’t perform the most basic creations and destructions, you wouldn’t be useful.”
“No.” I shook my head. “I told you. I haven’t been very useful today.”
“I’m aware,” she said, gazing at me from over her cup, “just as I am aware that you are more dangerous that you have led everyone to believe.”
She pulled a small pistol from the folds of her dress and pressed the muzzle into my gut.
“I’m going to count down from three,” she said, “and you’re either going to figure out how to destroy the mechanism of this gun without being able to see it, or you will get shot. I can repair such a wound of course, but an untrained dualwrought is hardly of use to anyone.”
Use—there it was again.
“Three.”
Destroy the bullet and gunpowder, I prayed. My vilewright tore from me and swept over her before I had even promised it a sacrifice. Could I even sacrifice anything? Would she fire if I stabbed her hand?
“Two.”
Take her nails and the blood that comes from losing them. Take her bangles.
“One.”
I flinched. She pulled the trigger, hammer striking with a sharp clank. Nothing happened, and she set the gun aside. The bracelets and rings that had decorated her hand were gone. She studied her bloody fingers.
“Well,” she said and wiped her hands on the skirts of her dress. “You do work better under pressure.”
“He told you to do this, didn’t he?” I asked through clenched teeth. “That was not fair.”
“His little tests are much better than mine.” She bowed her head slightly, but I didn’t believe her bashful blush for a moment. “The world is not fair. It is best you learn that now. I survived and became Crown because I am strong, not because the world is easy. I earned this, and I enjoy helping others with promise earn worthy lives as well.”
Except she had been born a different sort of strong than us—noble and rich, noblewrought and vilewrought. If this world were a war, she had been born in armor with a sword in her hands, and we had been born with nothing but our teeth and nails and grit. She couldn’t see our truth for the visor she had been born in.
“Do you really think that’s why you survived? That’s why you’re the Crown?” I asked before I could stop. “Because you’re stronger than all the people who work for Cynlira?”
The question struck her. She reared back and laughed, a chiming sound. The Crown rose from her chair, white dress brushing along the floor like a low, shushing voice, and I stood. She was a full head shorter than me, but when she walked, all the presence I had thought she didn’t have took my breath away. She moved as if the world was the one moving and it only moved for her.
“Lorena.” Her hands closed around my shoulders, fingers curled over them as a mother might hold her child still before a mirror. Her blood dripped down my chest. “You may, of course, continue to aid my son, but the Door and who I sacrifice are none of your concern. The Door cannot be destroyed. Your deal with Alistair may stand since the contract is signed, but I would suggest being more honest with my son and steering his research toward something more useful.”
I nodded.
“If you lie to me again, the name Felhollow will only be uttered in dark corners of this world as a word of warning—we don’t want to end up like Felhollow. Do you understand?” she asked. “Do not lie to me again.”
I bowed my head.
“No, no,” she said and clucked her tongue. “I want to hear it this time, darling. You lied so well. Let’s see how much feeling you can put into three words. Do you understand me?”
Three. Not one.
“Yes,” I said. “Your Excellency.”
“Oh, Lorena Adler, do be more careful.” She squeezed my shoulders and let go, and one of her hands drifted to the top of my head. She tucked a few strands of hair behind my ear. “I hope you’re useful for a while. I would hate to find you dead without me having a hand in it.”