“This is the only thing you’ve done to help Daigh?” I heard Clara ask through my shield of guys. “There’s been nothing else?”
I lifted my head. Isadora tossed her hair over her shoulder and glared at me. “Only a few weeks before the ritual that bound his powers, he – and by him I mean that man over there—” shepointed at Robert, “came to me with the gift of a painting. In exchange for the canvas, he wanted information about binding. The Soho Coven curates one of the finest witchcraft libraries in the world, containing many rare volumes, not the provincial cabinet you cobbled together at your castle.”
Anger at her insult to Corbin’s greatest joy rushed through me. Beside me, Rowan stiffened.
“Don’t make meunderstandyour face into a new shape,” Arthur growled.
“If you want information from me, you’ll obtain it only when you stop acting like barbarians.”
“Isadora,” Clara warned.
The witch sighed. “Daigh asked that I not tell Aline he was possessing that fool of a painter or that he came to me for advice about binding.”
“Rob was no fool,” Robert chirped up. “Rob knew the birds from the trees from the flowers from the bees.”
“Do keep the monkey quiet,” Isadora frowned.
I snorted. “You call Robert a monkey when you were the one dancing for Daigh’s amusement? Daigh got himself one sweet deal when he found you – a weak witch willing to do his bidding for the chance to lick his boots.”
“Oh no, I received more than sufficient payment for my services.” Isadora smiled, baring a row of white teeth. “Although the painting was wretched. It had no touch of Daigh’s magic. When I took it into Sotheby’s, they laughed me out the door. I finally managed to sell it online, but for a twentieth of the price Daigh promised me it was worth.”
My head snapped up. I remembered something Hendricks, the guide at the National Gallery, had said about a final Robert Smithers portrait that hit the market just before he was institutionalised, and how it seemed as though the painter had lost his talent overnight. It was too much of a coincidence.
Isadora had owned that last painting. Maybe it would tell us something that could help us understand how this binding had affected me and my magic.
Flynn sensed it, too. His grip on my arm tightened. “Did you keep a copy of it?”
“Of course not. It was ghastly.”
“Can you remember the details? Was there anything in it that could link it to the fae or?—”
Isadora wrinkled her nose. “One cursory inspection was all I needed to ascertain the artist had lost his talent forever. I never so much as glanced at it again. I cannot even remember the subject of the portrait.”
I slumped back on the rug. “It’s buried in a private collection somewhere. We’ll never see it, and it could have been an important piece of Daigh’s plan.”
“Don’t be so sure.” Ryan gestured for Simon to lean down. He whispered something in the butler’s ear. Simon left the room. When Ryan didn’t volunteer any further information, I sat back on my knees and glared at Isadora.
“In London, you said to me that you knew a way to stop Daigh.”
“I did say that, didn’t I?”
“Tell me,” I growled.
“You already have the answers, thanks to Clara’s sticky fingers. You need nothing from me.”
“Tell me!”
“I won’t,” she shot back. “There is little point in dragging up what is past and what is done. Daigh has no power. You have magic enough to defeat the Slaugh. If you want to torture and kill the fae king for his crimes, I won’t stop you. As far as I’m concerned this matter has entirely resolved itself.”
“But the fae?—”
“The fae will continue to be a thorn in our side, as they have been for centuries. After the Slaugh they will be forced back into their realm and they won’t be able to emerge again for some time. It will be as it always was.”
“Don’t you get it? We can’t go back to how it always was. The fae have tasted victory. Theykilledtwenty-two people and turned a whole village against us. They have Liah to lead them, and she has none of Daigh’s earthly attachments to witches. Briarwood’s magic has been broken. Even if we defeat the Slaugh, we’re unprotected. We can’t?—”
Simon entered the room, carrying a square canvas in his arms. He leaned the painting against Ryan’s legs. Ryan turned over the image and held it up, his face beaming in triumph. “Was this what you wanted to see?”
I scrambled to my feet and squinted at the painting, trying to sort out what I was looking at. It was a portrait all right, but it took me a few moments to figure out of who.
