The answer came like a gift from the Only Himself, in the form of a messenger in livery.
The messenger approached with the breathless dignity inherent to his profession. “Captain Trevelyan, the king has summoned you to the war council.”
Chapter forty-two
Valenna
Valenna’s bedroom door burst open, and Cadmus swept in, his velvet cloak billowing. He was breathless from the climb up the steep, winding stairs, and so he paused in the doorway, panting. Valenna, bathing her face in the washbasin, didn’t bother to raise her head.
The room was foggy with rotten magic, a veritable thicket of brambles and bindweed. Vines laced over the walls, seeping toxic sap that puddled on the floor like blood.
Valenna was sinking again into her old darkness. Her arms and legs were torn by thorns, her knuckles pink with nettle burns. When she heard Cadmus’s voice, her hatred overwhelmed her. She gripped the scar on her wrist.
You are the wife of a good man, not the daughter of an evil one.
But a voice in her mind bit back,A good man wouldn’t take you back.
“I want you to come to the war council,” Cadmus announced.
“Why?” Valenna asked languidly, dabbing her face with a towel.
Cadmus clasped his arms behind his back. “You were a child when you left. Now you’re a woman. I don’t want to drag you into battle; I want to go with you hand-in-hand.”
Valenna’s anger flared like oil thrown on a smoldering hearth.
How dare he? How could he stand there, after years of locking her in her room, berating her until she’d lost her grasp on grief, and ask her to be his ally? The man was delusional.
Her body tremored. She felt like ivy was climbing her ribs like a ladder. How much more of this could she endure? If she didn’t hear news of Evander soon, she feared some horrid tree was going to burst up her throat, and she would be absorbed by her own magic.
She set the towel down and faced her father. Her feet ached with cold. She’d grown pale, her cheeks sunken.
Cadmus crinkled his nose. “You were meant to be our salvation, and you became our shame. Thousands have died while you pretended to be something you’re not. It is time for you to accept who you were born to be.”
“The Botania?” she asked.
Her father’s icy eyes blazed like blue flame. “What did you say?”
Valenna bit back a smile. “Didn’t my mother pass that on to me?”
Cadmus sputtered, his face livid. “How dare you claim your mother’s title. She was magnificent, perfection, and you are a blighted little witch.”
Valenna couldn’t be hurt by this man anymore. His opinion of her didn’t matter. At least, that’s what she told herself to ease the sting. “The people of Talwaith exist. They say if someone with spring magic revived it …”
Cadmus smiled condescendingly. “Yes, well, you don’t have spring magic. You’ve got whatever this wretched mess is.” He swept his hand across the room. “Be grateful you can at least be useful.”
With that, he spun in a dramatic swish of cloak and golden hair, and left.
Scowling, Valenna dressed in a simple black satin dress that flowed around her like smoke. It was flattering, low cut in the front like all the dresses her father had made for her, but dismal. She hated the color black, and she disliked showing cleavage, but Cadmus thought it enhanced her persona.
Glancing in the mirror, she made a gagging sound.
Then she tied her hair into a tight bun, dabbed purple mica powder on her eyelids, and frowned at her gaunt reflection.
At least Evander wouldn’t have to see her like this.
Drawing a deep breath and shaking off a crawling arm of bindweed, Valenna held her head high and walked down the stairs.
Her father kept every room in the manor house bright, the windows always thrown open to the sea air—except the war council room. This room was windowless, with cornflower-colored walls and two dozen candles mounted in front of mirrors directing the light toward a round table adorned with a large, hand-painted map.
