“Le solid ne lunat, Dion y dennaig kvinna…”she said, repeating her chant and pausing after each line. She continued three times, each iteration spreading her magic through my body until the force of it pulled me deeper into the bath.
I slid down the back of the tub, my face lingering above the surface of the water as I drew in deep breaths to prepare for what I knew would come.
This was so much more than what she’d done in the hot springs beneath the mountains.
Her magic was so much stronger than it ever had been there.
“Nes an kellar alwei namn!”she said, her voice dropping even lower on her final recital. Though her hands did not move, the strength of her magic pulled me under the surface of the water in the deep basin, plunging me down until water filled my lungs.
It burned with cold, searing me from the inside for only a brief moment before it released me. I sputtered as I came to the surface, coughing out water as I flung my dark hair out of my face and met Imelda’s shocked gaze.
“That was…” I sputtered, coughing as I grinned at her. I felt nearly human, no press of heat in my veins and my skin feeling chilled in its absence.
Imelda swallowed. The strength of her spell had surprised her, too. “My power has grown since I left Alfheimr centuries ago,” she said, shaking her head as she moved to the table and packed her bag.
“Isn’t that a good thing?” I asked, pulling myself to stand as Imelda shook off her distraction and brought me a cloth to dry myself with.
“Perhaps,” she said, but her gaze remained distant, lost in thought. “But it could also make me a target for the more ambitious of our coven—someone they see as a threat in the pursuit of power.”
“One of these days, you will need to share the secrets of your coven with me,” I said, smiling in an attempt to ease her obvious stress.
“One day, I will take you home to what remains of my coven, so they can see that all our sacrifice was worth every moment,” she said, cupping my cheek briefly before backing away from me. She moved to the door without another word, leaving me to stare after her and wishing she would have stayed.
With a glance around the now empty room, I moved to the window at the edge and stared out over the sand-covered plains.
Her distance stung. I knew I could call her back easily and she would stay with me and offer me comfort. But Imelda had always had her secrets, a life before Nothrek that I knew nothing about.
I just hoped the ghosts of her past didn’t interfere with her future now that she’d returned.
THREEETAN
Rheaghan’s warning was an echo in my mind as I paced in my room days later, feeling restless in my own skin with the need to take action. The memory of those searing hazel eyes was vivid in my mind and had haunted my every dream in the nights that had passed since I’d last seen her. I’d done everything I could to avoid her, thinking distance would be enough to make me forget the way her skin felt on mine.
The way her blood felt on me, and the way Mab’s violence against her seemed so much more horrific than against any of the others. I’d been willing to divert Mab’s attention away from her, even knowing it meant that someone else would fill the vacancy she left and become a plaything. Maybe it was the way she reminded me of the Mab I’d known when we were younger. Maybe it was the possibility that she could be the onlygoodto come from the sunshine girl who had been one of my closest friends.
I wanted to protect her from the darkness that had consumedher mother, to take her out of the shadows so that she could feel the sun on her face. Mab would never allow Rheaghan to take his niece home with him, but she trustedme,and that meant I carried the weight of her fate on my shoulders.
I knew I should make my way downstairs for breakfast, allow Rheaghan to talk me out of the decision I’d already made and fought to deny. But I couldn’t, wouldn’t, be able to stop thinking of her and the strength she’d shown where others might have broken. I wasn’t able to just simply let things be when Mab had continued to torment her in the days that had passed since Rheaghan and I had successfully intervened. Rheaghan had continuously tried and failed to convince his sister to show her own daughter mercy since, and the tales of her suffering had spread around Tar Mesa, reaching me even as I tried to stay away from her.
The need to do what I could to protect her from this fate was overwhelming, even if I sensed it was her own stubbornness that prevented her from giving Mab what she wanted and sparing herself the pain of Mab’s attention.
Rage building in my chest, I tore open my bedroom door and stepped into the hallway, only to find Malachi approaching my room. “The Queen bids you to join her in her bedroom,” he said, and the command struck me deep in the chest. I swallowed, everything within me sinking into a pit. I had counted myself fortunate that in the centuries since I’d come to know the Queen of Air and Darkness, she had not yet summoned me to her bed.
I nodded in spite of myself, the daunting horror of what might wait for me in her chambers overshadowed by reality. As if being forced to entertain Mab wasn’t bad enough, and didn’t fill me with revulsion that made everything within me wither, the knowledge that it would make my relationship with her daughterawkwardat best was an added complication I hadn’t foreseen.
The walk through the halls was both too slow and too quick, leaving me with little hope that I had been summoned for any reason but what I anticipated. Mab was not known for conducting business within her room, only those she summoned for entertainment joining her and her friend, Malazan, in the space they considered private.
Her doors were intricately shaped metal, carved with flowers and thorns. Malachi knocked on the surface three times.
“Enter,” Mab’s voice said, sinking into me and feeling like a death sentence. Malachi responded by pushing the door open, revealing my first glimpse of the inside of Mab’s private quarters. Snakes coveredthe floor between the door and the opulent bed that rested against the other wall, the intricately carved, gilded headboard shimmering against waves of light fabric that lined the walls. The space was as opulent as I’d expected, but it had been filled with traces of warmth and Summer Court touches that I hadn’t.
For the first time, I understood what Rheaghan meant when he claimed his sister was still in there somewhere. Her bedroom was a sanctuary loaded with items that would have reminded a young girl of the home she’d left behind. Whereas Mab decorated the rest of her court with cold, unfeeling touches of stone and iron and all the things that made it feel as empty as it was large, her rooms were smaller and far more personal than anything I could have foreseen. The thought made me uncomfortable, and I shifted from side to side before I caught myself.
I simultaneously wanted to believe that the girl I’d known was still in there and capable of being saved, and that she would never have to know the truth of what she’d become and the things she’d done.
I cleared my throat as Mab sat on her bed, petting one of her snakes on the underside of his head.
Do snakes have chins?
