My mouth falls open, realizing Mother has never seemed more brilliant than she does now. Before I can thank her, she takes my hand and presses a pouch into my palm. “Salt all your food. Even a pinch will counteract any harmful magic. Turn your clothes inside out. And wear this at all times.” She takes a long strand of odd-looking red beads and places them around my neck.
I run my fingers along the necklace. Dried rowan berries. I remember what Mr. Meeks said about them, how they help preserve proper brain function through skin contact. Mother has been selling them in her shop for years, something I’d always scoffed at before hearing Mr. Meeks’ explanation today. For once, her craft has aligned with logic.
Yesterday’s magic is today’s science, Mr. Meeks likes to say.
Perhaps my mother deserves more credit. She may be giving people false hope with her silly magic, but only rarely do her treatments cause real harm. I’ll never believe in her craft, but sometimes her treatments are rooted in science. She just doesn’t know it.
More than that, she deserves credit for being my mother. For loving me with all my sharp words and harsh edges, hardly ever giving me more than a word of reproach when I cross the line. If she can love me with all my flaws, I can love her with all of hers. And I do. So much, I feel like my heart is being torn in two.
“Ma.” The word comes out in a sob as I wrap my arms around her neck and breathe in her scent. Her arms go around me, and she rubs my back like I’m a child again. For a while, I let myself be a child, let Mother comfort me and stroke my hair. I take it all in—every word, every whisper, every angle of her face and shade of red in her hair—and lock it into my memory.
That’s the only place I’ll ever see her again.
Chapter Seven
Three hours later, Amelie and I sit in the carriage across from the bespectacled fae ambassador, riding through the night toward the fae lands.
My eyes feel raw and red, my throat like sandpaper each time I swallow. At least my tears have dried. I refuse to show weakness in front of the fae male across from me.
Amelie, on the other hand, continues to whimper and cry. Her cheeks are red and coated in a sheen of fresh tears. We sit close, her arm entwined with mine, my wrist held in her vise-like grip. Her free hand tugs at the seam of her inside-out dress, then fiddles with the strand of rowan berries she wears. I can only imagine her distress at being forced to be dressed so unfashionably, regardless of circumstance.
Once Amelie falls asleep, head on my shoulder, the carriage goes silent. I force myself to stay awake as the hours pass, constantly checking on the presence of my dagger hidden beneath my cloak. The ambassador doesn’t utter a word as he alternates between staring out the window of the carriage and leaning back for a nap.
It isn’t until sunlight is beating my eyelids that I realize I’ve fallen asleep. I jerk upright, my hand flying to my dagger. Still there. The movement has woken Amelie, who lifts her head from my shoulder and sniffles. Her hand returns to squeezing my wrist.
Now that the sun has risen, warm light beams inside the carriage, drawing my curiosity. I lean forward just enough to see out the window. There I find sunlight diffused through a canopy of leaves in reds and golds and coppery brown, blinking like stars as they sway on the wind. The trees are birch and oak and others I can’t identify. September may be beautiful in Sableton, but this is beyond any fall landscape I’ve ever seen. My breath catches in my throat, but I suppress my wonder, forcing my gaze away from the window as I settle back into my seat.
“We’ve entered Autumn, as you can tell,” the ambassador says. He has a lazy, high-pitched way of speaking. It reminds me of the few nobles I’ve met, or snobs like Maddie Coleman.
His words puzzle me, and my intellectual needs override my desire to remain aloof. “When you say we’ve entered autumn, what exactly do you mean?”
“The Autumn Court, obviously,” he says. “Your new home.”
It never occurred to me to care to learn about King Aspen or the court he rules, but it does explain the unearthly beauty of our surroundings. Yet, his words, your new home, have left a sour taste in my mouth that no intellectual stimulus can erase.
His eyes move from me to Amelie. “There’s no reason to be scared, you know. Honestly, it’s silly the way you cower like that.”
I shoot him a glare. “Silly? You think we’re silly? Was it silly for the Holstrom girls to be executed?”
He lets out a trill of laughter. “Oh, that. Yes, I can see why that would frighten you. But you need not worry. That is, unless you’re plotting treason. You don’t seem the type though.”
“Did Theresa and Maryanne seem the type?”
His brows furrow. “Now that I think about it, no, they didn’t. Hmm.” His smile returns as if we haven’t been speaking about death and treason at all.
But I’m not done with the subject. “Why did they die?”
He shrugs. “We already told the human council. They performed an act of treason.”
“Cut the lies,” I say. “What’s the real reason? What exactly did they do to earn a death sentence?”
“First off, fae can’t lie. Second, that is a classified matter. If you’d like to ask the king when you meet him, perhaps he’ll tell you. For now, just know their crime was grave indeed.”
I roll my eyes. “Is that the same excuse you gave for poor Hank Osterman? I’m sure you were sent to tidy up that mess as well. Or did they send the ambassador in the black cloak instead?”
“Ambassador in a black cloak? Hank Osterman? I assure you, I know neither of these people. Care to enlighten me?”
I narrow my eyes at him. “I’m sure you know about Mr. Osterman. He lost his arm because of one of you. A fae tricked him into sticking his hand in a bear trap. What clever words were used to excuse that act?”
The ambassador pulls his head back in surprise. “You mean the Butcher of Stone Ninety-Four?”
“The what?”
“The Butcher of Stone Ninety-Four,” the ambassador says, like it’s supposed to be obvious. “That man is a menace. He comes hunting near the wall and enters Faerwyvae between stone ninety-four and stone ninety-five on the Spring axis. He enters only as far as he can get away with and leaves traps, hoping to catch the kind of fae he can sell for parts. Is that the man you speak of?”
“No, of course not! Hank Osterman would never—”
“He was injured just yesterday, right? Caught in his own bear trap? Fae trap, more like.”
I hesitate. Mr. Osterman hadn’t said if it was his own trap or not, but it’s possible. “Yes, and one of your lesser fae—”
He hisses a sharp intake of breath. “Ah, we don’t use that term. That’s a human convention. Lesser fae and high fae are labels we in Faerwyvae take offense to. We prefer unseelie and seelie.”
I glower. “One of your whatever fae tricked him into mangling his hand. He had to have his entire lower arm amputated.”
The ambassador cackles. “Oh, Lorelei. What a scamp.”
Heat rises to my cheeks. “A scamp. That’s what you call a creature that tricks a man into losing his arm?”
“It’s not like he didn’t have it coming. She isn’t the first fae the Butcher of Stone Ninety-Four has terrorized. He caught Lorelei’s lover too. Probably sold her wings to a merchant and dumped her body in a ditch. Don’t even get me started on the unicorns. I don’t know how much longer I would have been able to cover for his treachery. Lorelei’s little stunt likely saved us from war.”