The young woman who stood before Sephia now was no longer straw-haired and green-eyed. Instead, she had Sephia’s own wavy, medium-length black locks. Her eyes were the palest shade of blue imaginable—like chips of ice, Nana Rosa had always said. Even the scar that ran along Sephia’s hand—the result of a careless bit of knife work during one of her many cooking lessons with Chef Talos—had been transferred in exact detail.
Sephia’s stomach gave a little lurch.
This was terrifyingly powerful magic.
Worse, it was magic that she did not fully trust nor understand, despite the countless hours she’d spent studying and preparing for this moment. If she had not been so desperate to take her sister’s place, to protect her, then she never would have dared to set foot in that witch’s domain.
Love could make one face all kinds of terrifying things, she supposed.
For better or worse.
That oddly warm breeze stirred the trees once more, reminding her of thefaemagic that she needed to be more concerned with. That witch’s strange spell was over and done with.
Now comes the hard part, and I need to stay focused.
They undressed and then redressed in each other’s clothing, teeth chattering and skin pebbling all the while. Sephia took great care to not let any part of the ceremonial dress trail through the dirt, to not scuff her shoes, to not let her cut palm drip blood on anything. She even took a moment to pull her hair into a neat bun and secure it with the pins Nora had brought along with her; Nora would never have appeared before any royal processions looking anything other than her best.
And she was Nora now.
She wrapped her cut hand in a thin bandage before slipping Nora’s delicate gloves on, and then she smoothed her skirts while the real Nora, looking enviously comfortable in Sephia’s own trousers and an elegant but simple coat, went back to studying her reflection in the mirror.
“I know it isn’t the point of all of this,” Nora said. “It’s just nice to be beautiful for once.”
Sephia frowned. “You were beautiful before.”
Nora shrugged, a wistful smile playing across her lips, her gaze still locked on her new reflection.
How strange to see my smile through someone else’s eyes,Sephia thought.
“I still believe you got the worse end of the deal,” Nora insisted.
“Hardly.” Sephia grinned. “This time tomorrow, you’ll be sitting in one of Master Sonja’s history lessons, bored to tears, while I’ll be off on a new adventure.”
Nora’s smile remained, though it looked more forced now.
Neither of them dared to bring up the details of what thatadventuremight entail.
“Come on,” Sephia said, tucking away the leftover potion and the vial of Nora’s blood before heading down a narrow trail that led to their tied horses. “We need to hurry, as you said.”
Approaching those horses was the first test of their transformation spell.
Sephia moved toward Daisy—Nora’s horse—slowly, watching for signs that the creature might be confused, or that she might spook. But Daisy only regarded the transformed Sephia with a lazy look, and with a swish of her braided tail she went back to ripping up clumps of the frozen grass.
Nora approached Sephia’s old mare with similar results.
“It’s working as expected,” Nora commented. She sounded awestruck all over again by what they’d done, though itwasexpected; the witch’s potion changed outward appearances. It altered their energies. Their scents. Their voices. Theireverything, almost— though the witch had warned that movements and habits could not be completely disguised, and neither could any illnesses or innate magics that ran too deeply.
So it was enough to trick the horses, but it could not fully hide Sephia’s Shadow magic. Nor could it disguise the way Nora’s hands shook, or the weakness that occasionally overtook the younger twin’s steps.
That shakiness was one of the onlytruerumors about Nora that existed within the endless, cruel stream of them; she trulyhadbeengrowing weaker as the years passed. Sicker—and from an ailment that no doctor had been able to name. Her hands trembled even now, as she worked to shove the mirror back into the leather satchel.
That trembling could give them away, Sephia knew.
It made this plan all the more dangerous.
But it was also the very thing that had driven her to take Nora’s place: She was not going to send her feeble little sister into the clutches of monsters.
The fae were mysterious in many ways, but Sephia knew enough about them to know that they would not treat a sick human with kindness. There was nothing in the bargain struck all of those centuries ago that required them to do so.
