“Welcome, honored guests.” The queen extends her arms over the feast. “How lovely it is to have you all here today.”
“You terrify me,” Althea Jones pipes up. “I’d really rather not be here.”
The queen shoots her a deadly glare. “Well, you are here, and you will be here as long as I am amused.”
I tense up, terrified for Althea. She’s usually such a shy girl.
“Well, I’m honored to be here,” chimes in the man I suspect is Faith’s father. “I never thought we’d be invited again after my little secret was revealed.” He gestures to Faith.
Faith spits out her tea. “Secret? I’m a person.”
“Don’t take that tone,” her grandmother snaps. “He’s done you a favor by acknowledging you now. He could have left you to rot with that whore mother of yours forever.”
“That’s enough!” Marion bellows.
“Marion—” Faith whispers, like she doesn’t want the rest of us to hear her.
“They don’t get to speak to you like that,” Marion says.
“I’ll speak to my daughter however I please.”
Soon everyone around the table is in a frenzy. “What is happening?” I ask.
The queen claps her hands with glee. “I’m so glad you asked, Lady Ivy.” The crowd goes still. “Welcome to my next lesson. Any wife of Bram’s will need to learn to tolerate gossip and rumor. What better way to test that than to have your friends and family tell you exactly what it is they think of you. Your loved ones have been enchanted to speak the truth, without the filter of civility or concern for your feelings. When they leave this room, they will forget this day ever happened.”
But we’ll remember. That goes unsaid. We’ll be left to live with whatever we learn today.
The deer skull, the awful music, the piles of food all make more sense now. The queen isn’t throwing us a normal party. This is likethe faerie revels I used to imagine. If everyone but us is going to forget, she might as well throw exactly the kind of party she wants.
She wants to be entertained, that’s all. I remember what Eduart said.After an eternity, there is only boredom or the lack of it.
The chatter starts back up. Emmy bursts into tears at something her mother has said and runs for the door. She pulls and pulls, but it’s locked.
“You must last an hour,” the queen declares, watching with a glint in her eye.
I turn to my family.
“I was the one who spilled that bottle of ink on your favorite shawl two years ago,” Lydia says. “I’m sorry I blamed it on the cook’s cat.”
“I know. Your hands were smeared with black, and you’re a terrible liar,” I reply.
The worst part of me thinks about asking them both for things I know I don’t actually want the answer to, like which one of us is my mother’s favorite or if Lydia loves me as much as I love her.
But there’s only one thing I truly want to know.
“You might as well tell me—” I say to Lydia. She doesn’t need me to complete the rest of the sentence.You might as well tell me where youactually werethose two weeks you went missing.
Lydia sighs, exasperated. “Ivy, I don’t remember where I was. It’s all one big blank spot.”
She has to be telling the truth. Nausea pools in my stomach. “You don’t remember anything?”
“Not one single thing. But I have these dreams.” Her voice trails off, soft and distant.
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. I can’t explain it any better than that.”
My mother watches us, that uncanny glazed look in her eyes.
