Linette’s expression faltered as she shifted awkwardly in her seat.
“What is it?” the king asked.
“It’s…oh, it’s nothing.” She batted her lashes and infused her tone with nonchalance. “It’s just…I’m not very far along. Surely I can dance. I’d hate to let my newest gown go to waste before I grow too large to wear it.”
The pounding in Cora’s head increased, but the invasive energies shifted. They were no longer coming from the rows and rows of tables behind her but the one she stood before. Against her will, her attention focused on one person alone. Queen Linette. Cora felt a rippling anxiety turn in her stomach, a feeling that was not her own. With it came a sinking weight of guilt. Then something darker. Heavier.
“You aren’t with child.” The words left Cora’s mouth before she could swallow them back. She hadn’t yet learned which of her observations were better left unsaid. Had yet to understand why everyone else seemed blind to the things she gleaned so easily. So unwillingly.
Queen Linette’s head whipped toward Cora. “How dare you say such a thing.”
“It’s true.” Her voice came out tremulous. “You…you’re lying. You were never with child.”
“You wretched, awful creature?—”
King Dimetreus held up a hand, silencing his wife. Master Benedict began to tug Cora away, but Dimetreus shook his head. His attention narrowed on Cora, voice soft. “Why would you say such a thing?”
Linette spoke before Cora could. “How many times have I told you, Dimetreus? She needs to be sent to a Godspriest. There’s something wrong with her. She’s infected by the seven devils and must have them cleansed from her soul.”
Cora felt heat rise to her cheeks. “I do not need a Godspriest,” she said, a frantic note to her voice. “I am not infected by the seven devils.”
Linette looked around the dining hall. Cora was suddenly aware that silence had fallen over the room. She could feel the attention of innumerable pairs of eyes boring into her back. Linette spoke softly through her teeth. “Don’t make a scene.”
Cora’s attention darted to Dimetreus. Why wasn’t he speaking up for her? Tears sprang to her eyes as her blood began to boil like never before. It felt as if the energies she’d absorbed were compounding, the tightness in her skull growing sharper. She could still feel the queen’s emotions the most, could feel her fear mixed with disgust, her guilt and her shame and so many things that Cora was too young to understand. “Tell him the truth,” she yelled. “Tell him that you lied.”
Linette rounded the table and grabbed Cora by the arm. “You rotten little witch.”
Cora shrugged free, her breaths coming out in sobbing gasps. “I’m not a witch.” That word had been a filthy thing then, something spoken with disdain. Cora hadn’t yet learned that witches were real, that they were nothing like the storybook monsters she’d heard about.
Linette dragged her away from the table. “You are a witch,” she muttered under her breath, all the while keeping a smile on her lips.
Cora glared up at her. She made no move to lower her voice as she said, “If I’m a witch, then I curse you.”
Linette dropped her arm like she’d been burned. Her chest heaved, eyes roving the room and the eyes that continued to watch them. “Stop,” she said, tears springing to her eyes. The queen shuddered. She was truly afraid of her. It was written in the emotions Cora sensed, writhing, contracting, spilling deeper into her until she felt like her head would explode.
She erupted with a shout. “I curse you to die.”
Without another word, she kicked up her heels and ran from the dining room.
She crossed the threshold, desperate for the relief of the quiet halls.
But the doorway only led her to a room with a bloodstained bed.
“No,” she breathed. The room was as frozen as it had been when she’d left it. The king remained locked in place, the queen staring sightlessly ahead. Only she and Morkai moved.
“You did that,” he said.
“I didn’t mean it,” Cora said. This time, her voice was her own, without a hint of her younger self. “Even if I had, it wasn’t a true curse. Witches don’t curse people.”
“How do you know? You spoke the words, sent them out into the ether. She died that very night.”
“You killed her,” Cora said through her teeth.
“Yes, but what if it was your fault? What if your words sparked a series of events that resulted in her death? Is it really so improbable? You killed the queen. You let Princess Aveline die. Deny it.”
She opened her mouth to say she wasn’t a murderer, but the words turned to ash on her tongue. The version of her that existed outside the dream had ended seven lives mere days ago. Erwin with an arrow to his throat. The hunters who drank her rum.
Morkai took a step closer. The lantern light glinted off the sharp planes of his face, making him look both beautiful and terrifying at once. “Maybe Linette was right all along. Maybe you’re an evil thing. You kill without remorse. You choose death, violence, and solitude over the safety of a new home. You lied to people who loved you. Turned your back on your dearest friend without even a goodbye.”
