Amora cocks her head. “The same way you did, I expect.”
“Silvia?”
She nods, then grips the bars again, her eyes taking on an edge of desperation. “Please just tell me, is my other daughter anything like her?”
I shake my head vigorously. “Not at all.”
Amora looks relieved for a moment, then frowns looking more heartbroken than ever. “Then the best we can hope for is that she’ll end up locked in here too.”
My chest constricts, but I push that idea aside. That isn’t happening. “What happened between you and Silvia?”
Amora considers for a second, then her shoulders slump. She sinks to the ground, sitting cross-legged in front of the bars ofher cell. Feeling strange to keep standing, looming over her, I sit too.
“I don’t usually like to think about this,” she says, staring into space as if not really seeing me at all. “But I suppose you probably know some of it already?”
I nod. “Beatrix told?—”
“Beatrix?” she asks, her voice ringing in excitement. “Do you know her?”
I nod.
“Is she well? I owe her everything.”
“She’s fine. Her son, Daemon, is a king now. Do you remember him?”
She shakes her head. “We never met. I knew she had a son, but he was sent to Dyaspora by the time…” she trails off, and I can practically see the calculations happening behind her eyes. She looks like Aurelia when she’s trying to come up with a particularly difficult spell. “I think you and I must have a lot of people in common.”
I nod again. “Yes. When we get out of here, you can see them, but I need you to tell me what happened for you to end up here. What is wrong with Silvia?”
She laughs hollowly “‘Wrong’ is such an interesting word choice. When I first noticed, that was the word I used too. I think she takes after her father.”
“I’ve met Thorne.”
Amora’s face twists with rage, and for a moment she looks almost frightening. “He’s still alive?”
“No,” I say quickly. “He’s dead. Like I was saying, Daemon is the king of Vernallis now.”
“Good.”
She looks lost for a moment, as if deep in thought, then her eyes snap back to mine. “This is a long story, and in someways it doesn’t really start with me, it begins with the Queen of Thermia.”
“I think we have some time, I don’t know how long it will take for my friends to find me—us, I mean. We can get you out too.”
She gives me a shrewd look that I have trouble interpreting. I can’t tell whether she’s going to tell me the story or not. It seems as if she won’t, but then she throws her endless curtain of hair over her shoulder and pulls her knees up to her chest, staring at the floor as she begins to speak.
“About two centuries ago,” Amora begins, “Thermia was ruled by a Fae king, just as all the other kingdoms in Ellender are—don’t ask me his name, I don’t remember.”
“I wasn’t going to ask,” I say dryly.
“Good. He didn’t matter, anyway.” She sucks on her teeth, her eyes shifting as if trying to remember what she was saying. “So there was this nameless king whose soul-bond died before they had any children. It was just after the end of the last Fae war, and the king was afraid that if he had no heirs his kingdom would be conquered by Vernallis. So, even though he was desperately sad about his soul-bond and it physically hurt him to do so, he married again. His second wife was a powerful sorceress, which is exactly why he chose her. That’s a common problem on this continent.”
“What is?”
She smiles bitterly. “Men who hunt women with power, thinking they can harness it like a horse to their chariot, always end up trampled beneath those same hooves.”
My brow furrows. “I don’t understand.”
“That’s because you’re a man,” she says lightly. “It’s okay, it happens to the best of us. See, since the dawn of time powerful men have sought out strong partners, only to try and change and control them. It usually doesn’t go well.”
