It lay in my palm, the crystal cool against my skin. Once it had belonged to my mother. It was the only thing I had that belonged to her. So many times I’d look into its flashing depths and see what I’d want to see: escape, hope, home. Love. In the dream it was there, too, resting against my skin, under the white dress. Remembering this, I looked into the crystal. I saw nothing but my face, reflected in miniature a dozen times. There was no hope. No escape.
I heard his voice again. Their voices. So calm, despite their words. To them I was a prize, a pawn. And more than that now, it seemed.
Slipping the crystal heart back on its silver chain around my neck, I studied the room that had been my prison for ten long years. My eyes swept across the bed, the desk, the chair, the carpet, the small closet that was my washroom. I knew every bit of that place – every thread of the carpet, every scratch in the steel wall, every crack in the stone floor. I had memorised each brushstroke of the four pictures on the wall – scenes of spring, summer, autumn, winter. Every book on that shelf I’d read several times over, I knew every word in the notebooks I’d kept for so long, and every inch of the small portion of landscape I could see through the darkened window. How it distorted the life outside, the houses, the people far below scurrying like ants, and yet how beautiful it looked to me right then! For a moment it seemed like the best place on earth. Only a moment.
I was not resigned. I’d tried to be but I couldn’t. Everything was taken from me, everything I cared about, everything I knew. At first I was angry, frightened. I tried to think of ways to escape. Nothing worked, and I grew desperate, numb. It was like that all the time, passing from hope to fear to anger to numbness, then back to hope. Since I’d started having the dream, hope had returned, and these last couple of years, whenever I got a visit from one of them, I’d try my best to make them see that I was of no threat to them. I promised to persuade my father to bring lasting peace between our people. And for a while, I’d imagined it was working. That they were beginning to see they could one day let me go.
What a fool I was. They never intended on letting me go. There was nothing I could do. Nothing I …
What was that? The elevator already? No, it couldn’t be – they said it wouldn’t be till the night began its march to morning. The wolf-hour – the darkest time of night – and that’s hours away yet.
But why should I have believed anything they said? They have lied to me over and over and over again, especially the one they call the Commander. He had never been unkind to me. Lately, he’d even said things were looking different – that treaties could be renegotiated and arrangements could be made. I had been co-operative – that would be taken into account. It was he who told me in the end what was to happen to me.
I heard the rattle of the platform coming to a stop. And all at once I felt as if a great burden had slid off my shoulders. I no longer had to fight. It was over. I stood there, straight and tall, ready to meet my fate with all the honour and grace my people would expect. But it wasn’t the elevator that slid open. It was the small door of the shaft next to it, which housed the machine that brought up my meals. As I stared in numb perplexity, the door was pushed back and someone half-crawled, half-stumbled out, scrambling almost immediately to his feet, revealing himself to be a tall young man with dishevelled black hair, dressed in the uniform of the Tower Guard, a ragged blindfold covering his eyes.
Why had they sent their assassin this way? ‘Is it part of their plan that I should be brought down by a man who can’t even look at me before he takes me to my death?’ I growled. ‘Is there no honour in your people at all?’
The man gasped and pulled off his blindfold, revealing a pair of long-lashed dark-brown eyes. He’d gone so pale I thought he was going to faint. A spot of blood had appeared on his lip where he’d bitten down on it. He stared at me and whispered, ‘It’s you.’
I stared back at him. ‘Of course it’s me. Who else were you expecting?’
‘You … You are a witch – the immortal witch of the Tower. So how can you also be … her?’
Against the whiteness of his skin, his hair was starkly black and his bloodied lips were scarlet. A shudder rippled through me as I remembered my dream. ‘What do you mean?’ I said quietly.
Something flickered in his eyes. ‘You haven’t turned me to stone.’
‘What?’ My wonder was ebbing and I was beginning to think he was touched.
‘They said you would turn any who laid eyes on you to stone.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t understand any of it. All I know is that you’re just –’ he swallowed – ‘you’re just a girl.’
I couldn’t help a bitter smile. ‘Is that what I am now? And who are you?’
‘Me? I’m – I’m Kasper. Kasper Bator.’ Seeing my baffled expression, he added, ‘Nobody important.’ He looked miserable. ‘I don’t understand. Are you a witch?’
‘A witch?’ I echoed. Inside me a little seed of hope was growing. Why he had come I had no idea, but I knew that I must not let this chance slip away. ‘Of course I’m not a witch. Though I’ve wished I was often enough. Is that what you’ve been told?’
‘Yes,’ he breathed, staring at me. ‘An immortal feya witch who helped the Prince of Night.’
I gave a bitter laugh. ‘The Prince of Night has his own power. Why should he need a witch to help him?’
He flinched at this. ‘I don’t know. It is what we have been told.’
‘And now?’ I ask. ‘What do you think now?’
‘All I know is that I heard you …’
‘Please,’ I urged him, ‘you heard me where?’
‘This afternoon – I heard the Commander speaking to you.’
‘What?’
‘I heard him say you were to die on the morning of your eighteenth birthday. And I heard you.’ He looked at me wildly. ‘I heard you ask why you had to die …’
‘How can that be?’ I asked. ‘The Commander told me that weeks ago.’ I backed away from him. ‘Is this some kind of cruel hoax your people have devised?’
‘What?’ The young man paled. ‘No. I swear by the Angels that I heard it today. When I was …’ He passed a hand over his forehead, where beads of sweat had appeared. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said in a hollow voice.
‘Neither do I.’
‘Then it’s true? They want to …’
I reached for the comfort of the crystal heart and tried not to tremble as I spoke. ‘Tomorrow, I am to die.’
‘Angels preserve us,’ he burst out. ‘How can this be? If you are not the witch – then who are you? Why are you here?’
I looked at him, searching his face to see if he truly did not know. But all I saw was confusion and bewilderment.
Drawing myself up, I said, ‘I am Izolda, the only child of the Prince of Night, and I have been kept as a hostage in this Tower since my capture on my eighth birthday.’
‘No,’ he breathed. ‘The Prince of Night had a child, yes, but she died when she was only …’
‘When she was only eight.’