I tense at the name—the name that is not mine but the queen insists on calling me regardless—which is a mistake because even the slight reaction tells Abra she’s won, that she’s gotten to me.

“You haven’t exactly been generous with the information regarding what dwells inside the girl’s body. It’s going to slow me down if I don’t know what I’m looking for.” Usually if there are traces of magic hiding out inside a body, wraithseeker at least allows me to pinpoint the magic, to feel its presence.

But the wraithseeker doesn’t simply pick up on magic. It allows me to taste the auras that swarm within a person or object. If I don’t know exactly what I’m looking for; it’s like trying to identify a specific spice within a meal, except it’s one you’ve never tasted, and the chef used a dozen other spices to mask its flavor.

And this girl?

Her auras are going to be a mess to sort through.

It’s almost overwhelming just touching her.

But again, that could just be my lack of socialization shining through.

“You’re looking for magic. The girl is human, meaning non-magical. It shouldn’t be that difficult,” the queen says, an ever-present bite to her tone.

I open my mouth to argue, but clamp it shut soon enough. It’s not worth wasting breath over. I could probably count the bricks in this castle before I could count how many times I’ve tried to explain to the queen that magic isn’t nearly as elementary as she makes it out to be.

There’s not simply one type of magic. There are many sources, most of which remain untapped if Gunter’s theories hold any credence and if he’s as much of a genius as I think he is.

The queen is convinced that magic is exclusive to Alondria, that when our ancestors left the Nether behind, they abandoned a magicless world. But magic doesn’t belong to Alondria. Magic is the boundary between realms, the barrier between worlds. That which both separates and holds all together.

The magic the queen seems to be most obsessed with is the Old sort, the type that fragmented from that barrier, the beings created when the Fabric between realms frayed.

What the queen forgets is that magic is all around us, maintaining the veil between us and the beings that walk the shadows of other worlds.

But Gunter was in service to the queen long before I became her prisoner. If I’ve told her a hundred times, he’s told her a thousand.

It’s always been peculiar to me—the queen’s misunderstanding of magic. I once thought her brilliant, and I suppose she is, in her own way. The way she can see before she experiments exactly how a pair of ingredients might react. But she only ever seems to understand the what of things. Not the how or the why.

It’s as though branded within the queen’s brain is a map of end results, interactions between elements, but she herself has no idea how the author of the map came to their conclusions.

She herself uses elemental magic in the potions she mixes, yet she acts as if the Old Magic is the only kind to exist.

The female is a walking contradiction.

But if the queen is a puzzle, I much prefer a game of chess.

The queen approaches me from behind and clicks her long red nails against the stone slab on which the girl is still writhing. “I want it extracted by the end of the next mooncycle.”

I flash a grin at my queen and inject it with enough venom to level a heifer. “Maybe if you’re going to insist on doling out deadlines based on celestial events, you might consider letting me outside every so often.”

It’s not true, of course. I go outside plenty, but only at night, and only when the queen is in a foreign kingdom. Plus, there’s the roof of the palace, where I sometimes go to watch the aurora warp into milky plumes across the night sky.

I’m pretty sure the queen knows this and chooses to turn a blind eye.

“Need I remind you what’s at stake if you fail?” the queen asks. I can practically scent the acid dripping from her pale lips.

I swallow and grit my teeth, turning back to the writhing girl. Hate, pure and unrelenting, rears inside my chest, but I keep it at bay.

Lashing out against the queen has only ever made things worse.

If it was just me, I’d gladly take her punishments.

But it’s not just me.

It never has been.

“My queen,” Gunter says, approaching the two of us with another batch of wraithseeker. It’s only now that I realize I’m almost out, that most of the paste has been absorbed into the girl’s pallid skin. He hands me another bowl of the paste before continuing, “Our service would be expedited if you graced us with more information regarding the target you wish to extract.”

The queen’s face softens, as it typically does in Gunter’s presence.

He has this way about him where he can almost always get more out of our sovereign than I can.

I asked him about it one time. He claimed all he does is treat the queen with respect.

I decided that wasn’t going to work for me.

The queen chews at the inside of her cheek, and for a moment, I think Gunter’s actually convinced the monster to tell us what she’s up to.

When the queen received a lead that sent her barreling for Dwellen, I’d never seen her so ecstatic. So drunk on a thrill.

I don’t know what happened in Dwellen, but I’ve scrutinized the queen well enough by now to note her disappointment. Whatever she’d been anticipating, it wasn’t to have to carry this girl all the way back from Mystral and turn her over to me and Gunter.

If I know the queen at all, she expected to waltz into Dwellen, and for the parasite that dwells inside this girl to give itself up to her.

And why should she expect any less?

That’s exactly what I did.

But I was a child when I gave myself over to the queen.

Whatever lurks inside this girl’s mind? I have a gut feeling it’s old enough to know better.

“Perhaps what the two of you need is not information, but motivation,” the queen says through teeth that look as though she’s attempting to pin a blade between them.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I say. “I’m fairly content with torture for the sake of torture.”

As if on cue, the girl lets out a wilting scream, one that sends me into a high, down from which I have to wrestle my mind.

I’ll regret this tomorrow—enjoying her pain.

But for now, my head isn’t pounding, and that’s all I can think about.

Until the queen speaks again. “Find a way to extract the parasite, deliver it to me, and I’ll free you.”

I exhale. Heavily. We both know that if it was my freedom I cared about, I would have broken myself out of here years ago.

“All of your freedoms,” she adds.