Magda shoveled the food into her mouth, suddenly famished in a way that she hadn’t been in weeks.
“Good,” Flor said, leaning back in her chair. “I’m glad to see you have an appetite. Now about your hair.”
Magda swallowed down the slightly overripe tomato. “I like my hair.”
“I like it too,” Flor said.
A piece of apple lodged in Magda’s throat. She coughed it loose.
“You do?” Kaelan asked the question Magda couldn’t.
“Yes. Don’t you?” Flor snapped at him, arching an eyebrow in a manner that suggested his answer should be yes.
“You said it was scandalous,” he replied.
“It is. No Rae cuts her hair short,” Flor said. “It’s just not done.”
After a long drink of water, Magda’s throat cleared. She ran her hand over the soft scruff on the back of her scalp. It had grown shaggy.
“Well, I’m not going to take some potion to make it grow,” she said.
“I said, I like it,” Flor stated. “In fact, I want you to cut mine in the same style.”
Magda stared. “You’re not serious.”
Flor pulled a pair of silver scissors from her coat pocket and set them down on the table. “I’m quite serious. It will be our statement. Your return will be shocking enough. Add to that Caden and...” Flor leaned forward, fixing Magda with her steely stare, sharper than the gleaming scissors. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten how it is at the Spire, Magdalena. But you are about to create one of the greatest upheavals in the history of the court. Regardless of the outcome, what you’re setting out to do will be talked about for... centuries.”
Magda cracked open a walnut and tapped the meat out into her palm. The combined weight of Kaelan and Flor’s attention pressed heavy upon her.
“I can’t do it, Flor,” she said after a moment. “All of the parties and the visitations and the ass-kissing...”
“No, dear, of course not,” Flor said, leaning back again, folding her hands over her stomach. “You’ve obviously become a savage in your exile and to put him in those situations”—she flicked her fingers towards Kaelan—“would surely give him away. So this is what’s going to happen. That letter to my brother contained another letter, which he is to send to our family at the Spire.”
“Do you think that’s wise?” Magda asked, pouring herself more water from a crystal decanter. “Won’t Lavana be there?”
“Yes, of course, she will. Do you take me for an imbecile? Do you think that Damion is the only one in the family who has wanted to bring you back to challenge Lavana? Even I knew of the talk, secluded as I’ve been. The letter will be delivered discreetly to particular members of the family we know to be sympathetic. They will begin the process. I will write another letter tonight. If my brother followed my instructions, he should be sending some of his brownies to carry the letters. By the time we arrive at the Spire, those who support us will be prepared for what is to come.”
While Flor spoke, Magda ate and ate and ate. Kaelan picked at his food like a sullen child, watching Magda from the tops of his eyes.
“As prepared as they can be,” Magda said, shooting Kaelan an irritated look. His eyes fell, but then immediately rose up to her again.
“We will begin a campaign,” Flor went on. “My brother’s granddaughter lives at court. She is an attendant to the Crown’s own daughter. If the stories my brother has told me lately are true, then she is the worst kind of insipid little breeder, flighty and flimsy and concerned with nothing more than gossiping and currying favor. She will be perfect.”
“Perfect for what?”
“For spreading your story. Honey told me about what you’ve done. How you endured torture and escaped an iron prison. How you defeated an empusa and dealt with an oracle and a dwarf lord who had the audacity to steal the Enneahedron. How you faced the manticores and, once-again, bested the witch.”
“That’s not exactly what—”
Flor’s hand smacked against her own thigh. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “The truth is not important. Whatisimportant is the story. The exiled Rae, daughter of one of the most storied and respected Radiants to have lived in recent memory, returned from the human world, determined to bring the Enneahedron before the Crown and reclaim her rightful place amongst her kind. That will be the story and the simpering court-watchers will devour it. You will be the fallen daughter risen up, who fought her way back from the iron wastes of the mortal realms. And you,” she said, pointing a finger with a nail in need of trimming at Kaelan, “will make the story irresistible. For not only did Magdalena fall, only to rise again, she also found my son, who had been lost in the mortal realm all of these years, waiting to be called home by his Rae, thought dead”—her chin trembled slightly—“but not dead. Change now.”
Kaelan pulled his gaze away from Magda, as though his eyes were leaden and unable to move. “What?”
“I’ve shown you his portraits and those of his father and all of our relatives. Let’s see what you can make of him.”
“Now?”
“Yes, now!” Flor banged her fist upon the stone table, rattling her tarnished cutlery. “Stand up.”
