They would be incorrect.
Still, as much as the queen is a prodigy when it comes to potion-making, she is a particular brand of genius. The type who just knows extraordinary things but lacks the ability to discern how she knows them. For example, she might have invented a cure for wrenpox by roasting rose thorns over a fire of scorpion dung before boiling it down to its concentrate and consuming it during the twilight hours. But she cannot explain to me why the potion loses its effectiveness once the sun has set, or the properties that scorpion dung adds to the antidote.
It makes her a horrific teacher, but she’s long since given up trying. When she first brought me to the palace, I think she dreamed she would impart all her knowledge upon me, but it soon became clear that she was incapable of answering my questions adequately.
It was Gunter who had taken the queen’s ancient journals and made the connections that we’d slowly turned into a library over the years.
It was Gunter who could take the queen’s knowledge, see the patterns, link them, and forge something new.
He’d taught me to do the same.
So although our knowledge comes from the queen, we’ve made it our own over the years. It hadn’t taken me long as a child to realize that the queen did not speak our evolving language.
“It seems the parasite within the girl is sentient”—first rule of lying, start with something the hearer already knows to be true—“which we can use to our advantage. Though the parasite has bound itself to its host, the fact she is human keeps her from absorbing the parasite into herself. Meaning the parasite is still fully intact and separable. Gunter and I believe that we can draw from the carithesis”—second rule of lying: use made-up words that the hearer is too proud to ask the meaning of—“and use it to scrape, for lack of a better word, the parasite from the girl’s consciousness.”
When I’m done, I take a bite of my stew, trying to ignore the fact that Simeon added lamb blood to the broth just for me. I made the mistake once of telling him lamb’s blood was the best tasting of all the animals. At the time, I’d been too young and proud to admit that it devastated me to slaughter such innocent creatures. He’s been sneaking it into my meals ever since, and I’ve never had the heart to tell him the thought of their deaths on my behalf makes me want to squirm.
I hold Abra’s gaze, searching her eyes for the flecks normally found around the irises. But the queen’s face-altering potions have long since bleached her of any color she might have once possessed.
That’s the third step of lying—refusing to break eye contact first.
For a moment, I think it’s suspicion that creases her paper-thin lids, but then she reaches across the table for me. I still as she runs her fingers through my thick hair. It’s been years since she touched me like this, and the feel of her frigid, bloodless fingertips against my scalp has me fighting the panic threatening to burst in my chest.
And just like that, I’m a child again. Cold and confused and utterly terrified of the female sitting before me, touching me like she thinks she’s my mother, like she has a claim to me. My spine goes rigid, and the muscles in my throat tighten.
She hasn’t touched me like this since I Turned, and even though the loss of the life I had before was the cost, it’s been a welcome reprieve.
The queen trails her hands down my face and cups my cheek. The touch is so eerily tender, so revolting I want nothing more than to lash out. To rip this female to shreds for daring to stake the right to tenderness toward me. For stealing my mother’s place, though it wasn’t hers to grasp.
But I do nothing. I sit there and let her touch me. I permit the goosebumps to crawl like spiders up my spine, skittering through my gut and causing my stew to splash around franticly.
Because I am not the only one who’s been touched.
I’m not the only one imprisoned here.
“I was so angry with you when you failed me,” she whispers, her breath fogging the frigid dining chamber. “You told me you would bring him back, but it wasn’t true.”
Anxiety grips my chest, and I wonder if she’ll hold it against me forever. If she’ll decide to renege on her promise. Except she can’t take it back, not with the fae curse binding her to her words with iron shackles. “I could never lie to you, my queen. You know as well as anyone that the fae curse would smite me.”
Her bloodless lips falter, and something like sorrow stretches across her face. “Will I always be ‘my queen’ to you, my child?”
I hold my breath for a long moment and try to clamp down on the revulsion climbing my throat as her clammy fingers caress my cheek. To give her what she wants feels like breaking, like bowing at her feet. It feels like the surrender I’ve fought so ardently against.
But I’m not her only prisoner. And is it cowardice to give up one’s spirit, to surrender oneself so that another might one day be free?
The shy smile that grazes my lips, the adoration I allow to swell in my eyes, is greater than any lie I’ve told. “No, Mother. Not always.”
The child in me, the Nox I’ve been clinging to all these years, dies with that single word—Mother.
If I have to kill him so that she can live, so be it.
He died a long time ago, anyway.
Abra lets out a stunted breath, the smallest gasp of delight, and her whitewashed eyes glaze over with tears. “You know, I still feel him when you’re near. I see him in the shadow of your smile. In the shine of your eyes. He’s always here with us.”
As if he hears the call of his mother’s voice, the soul that lurks at the base of my skull stirs.
He’s still hungry.
CHAPTER 8
BLAISE: AGE TWELVE
It’s been a month since Elegance’s curse was supposed to return to smite me, though I’ve yet to wake to my sheets stained with blood.
The first time it happened, I was convinced I was dying. I’m only twelve, so I know very little about human anatomy, but it doesn’t take an apprenticeship with a physician to infer that bleeding from one’s lower half can mean nothing good.
On any normal occasion, I might have been perturbed to discover that Elegance had purchased a curse to place upon me, but when it was between a rather harmless—though mightily inconvenient and extremely painful—curse, and death… Well, the curse hadn’t seemed like such a bad thing.
I’d been pacing about my bedroom, staring at the bloodstain on my sheets when Elegance had burst into my room, demanding something or other about having a gown that needed to be pressed before her next outing.
She’d taken a single glance at the bloodstain on my bed, and a cruel smile had overtaken her pretty features.
Elegance has a tendency of doing that, allowing her personality to make her ugly.
It’s a shame, really. If I were pretty, I wouldn’t allow something as fleeting as a sneer to detract from my appearance.
“I’m doomed to die and you’re grinning?” I ask, furious, wishing more than anything that I could throw my quilt over the bloodstain. Now that Elegance knows I am dying and has deemed it appropriate to gloat, I’m inches away from despair.
It is one thing to die. Another entirely to know you’re giving your nemesis pleasure by doing so.
Elegance just scoffs, crossing her arms in that haughty way she always does. “Doomed to die? You mean you don’t know what that is?”
The way her pitch rises makes me wonder if perhaps I should know.
“Of course I know what it is,” I practically spit, though it’s not at all the truth, and Elegance can surely sense it.
“I forget sometimes that your mother didn’t bother to educate you in the ways of the world.”
The way she says it makes it sound as if it was my mother’s fault that she died before I could form any memories of her.
“Well, I’m sure the all-knowing Elegance will be happy to educate me,” I say, only half under my breath.
My stepsister opens her mouth, her face full of condescension, but then she hesitates and snaps it shut. She uncrosses her arms and walks over to my bedroom door. The latch clicks as she locks me in with her.
For a moment, I wonder if she’s trapped me in here so I’ll bleed out before I have the chance to alert Father’s physician, but then she says, “Don’t fret, little sister. You’re not going to die.”
“Coming from you, I can’t say that brings me much comfort.” I waltz past her over to the door, ready to throw myself at it and scream for help if I have to, but something about Elegance’s next words gives me pause.
