All these years, I thought he was crafting them for me as a gift, a means to see my sister as what she might have become.

Gunter, begging for my forgiveness as he died at my hands. I thought he was apologizing for leaving me.

But…

“How?” I whisper, my mind not quite comprehending it.

The queen shakes her head. “I do not know. That male’s mind was not like ours, Farin. Where we see prisms, he sees worlds. Where we see darkness, he sees color. Saw color, I suppose.”

I’m suddenly overcome with the urge to sit down, but of course, there’s no place to sit but the throne. My knees don’t know the difference though, and they shake, threatening to buckle all the same.

The flax shipment from Rivre.

He hadn’t ordered it for Blaise, to assist in extracting the parasite.

It was the same flax he’d been ordering for years, ever since Abra took my sister captive, ever since Gunter forced my sister into a wakeless dream.

“His last tapestry,” I say. “It’s still in his room. He never finished it.”

The queen nods. “He told me long ago that if he died, the girl would be released. Gunter never did trust me, it seems, and I suppose he thought that knowledge would keep me from harming him should he fail me. I believed her sleep was tied to his life somehow. I watched her for hours after it happened, sure she would wake any minute. But hours passed, then days, and still she does not wake. I do not understand why. Perhaps she isn’t ready. Perhaps she has not fulfilled her purpose in whatever life Gunter weaved her into. Perhaps she must make her way to the end of the last tapestry. Perhaps she simply does not wish to return. Either way, in being indirectly involved in Gunter’s death, I fulfilled my part in releasing your sister, even if that was not my intention. I cannot help it if she chooses to remain bound.”

Anger guts me, slicing through my fingertips like needle pricks, and I can’t distinguish who it’s directed at. Gunter for lying to me all these years, for claiming he hurt for me with the loss of my sister, when he was the one imprisoning her; the queen for neglecting to inform me that our bargain had become null, for allowing me to experiment on Blaise for her own gain; Zora for not waking up.

Zora for not waking up.

It’s that thought that has me running.

I burst through the throne room doors into the corridor and sprint up three flights of stairs into the abandoned hall. The door is left ajar and I don’t think about why I don’t need the queen’s handprint to unlock its seal.

When I cross the room to my sister and wipe her golden hair from her forehead, I whisper to her that it’s time to wake up.

Zora doesn’t stir, and now I’m shaking at her shoulders, and her head is bobbing against the table, and I’m screaming at her to wake up. To come back. Not to leave me.

I’m not thinking when hours later, I let my grief lull me asleep next to her, my knees against the ground as I rest my head on the corner of the dais.

I’m certainly not thinking when I wake in the center of the room, a flurry of white runes scattered on the floor all around me like snowflakes.

I’m not thinking when the moonlight bathes the floor in a river of scattered white flecks.

And then, when the magic of my own ritual surges, I’m not thinking at all.

CHAPTER 48

BLAISE

It only takes me two nights of sleeping in caves during the daylight hours to reach Othian from Ermengarde. I find my body is swift and graceful, bounding with renewed energy that propels my legs as long as I stop to hunt game every few hours.

Othian has changed in the months I’ve been away, though I’m not sure why I was expecting anything else. In a city of humans constantly striving to keep pace with immortals, pivoting their ideals and fashions and beliefs based on the whims of the fae nobility, change is inevitable.

Many of the humans who walk the streets of Othian have bandages over their ears. It’s not uncommon to behold, because many elect to have their ears surgically carved into points like the fae, but the more closely I look, the more I see scars on rounded ears.

Evidence of the humans having had the procedures reversed, probably in an attempt to mimic their new princess.

I see Ellie everywhere.

I see her in the way no one wears crystal or jewels anymore, but earrings and baubles made of glass. I see her in their glass slippers that clink against the pavement, in the stained windows that decorate the faces of storefronts.

It’s night in Othian, but that doesn’t stop me from seeing as well as I might during the day.

It doesn’t stop me from missing the day.

I remember now how I used to sleep through most of it, how I spent all hours of the night getting into trouble around town, drowning the past in the attention of boys, sneaking up to the windows of noblemen and women in the hopes I might catch the glimpse of a child and see my smile reflected in their face.

I wish I had spent more time awake during the day when I had the chance. My skin is cold, and it misses the sun’s comforting rays.

I keep my hood drawn as I glide through town.

I am a wanted criminal after all.

But then I reach the corner I’ve been dreading since the moment I left Mystral, and I find my feet halting in place.

If Nox were here, his hands would find mine, and even though in my daydreams the shadows of his hood are cast over his face, I can see his blue eyes fixated on me like I’m the only thing worth looking at.

There was a time that daydreams like this would have made my heart skip a beat, and perhaps tomorrow it will, but tonight it hurts.

It hurts sometimes, to love and to be loved in return.

It feels a bit like being stabbed in the heart with the gentlest of knives.

“We don’t have to do this, you know,” he would say if he were here, brushing his thumb over the back of my mind.

“I thought I told you not to try and talk me out of it,” I imagine telling him.

“I’m not,” he says. “If this is what you want, I’ll be by your side for every moment of it.”

Tears sting at my eyes. There are plenty of things that are different about this new body of mine, but it can still cry.

It’s not the type of thing I would have expected to be grateful for, but it is.

“This is what I want,” I say, and in my mind, Nox squeezes my hand and pulls me around the corner.

The manor is in disarray.

Ivy snakes up the brown brick, and though I used to find it lovely and whimsical, now it’s overcome the gutters and blocked the windows. Sludge stains sections of the walls toward the ground, and my heart gives a violent lurch to find my father’s prized home so unkept.

I reach the door, and if Nox were here, he’d take one last look at me, a question in his glowing eyes.

I close my own, squeezing back the tears, trying my best to swallow the dread, the anxious energy that’s welled up inside me during my journey, but it won’t be forced down, it won’t be tucked away.