I tilted my head, observing her. She reminded me, in a way, of my mother, if not more vulgar. “You were lowborn.”
Thalassa sat up straight as though affronted. “Stag chose me just like the rest.”
Definitely lowborn; she wore her ego right under the skin.
I lowered my bowl. “Were you in the first trials?”
“Aye.” Thalassa took a long, loud sip. Her affront had slid off her like a shadow. “The stag’s doing. I never did enter the great tree but once. Never seen Carys but once, inside the citadel the day she sent us here.”
I stilled. A sudden thought chilled me. “You entered the trials… and never left this place.”
Dorian groaned from the other room.
Thalassa gave a precise nod and set her empty bowl down.
I set my elbow on the table and lowered my face into my hand. Defeat slid through me like a serpent, slow and predatory.
“It wasn’t so bad,” Thalassa said, “once I figured out the secret of the hedge.”
I parted my fingers and looked at her between them. “The secret?”
She swept a hand toward the wall. “It’s not ordinary flora. You know that by now.”
“How did you do this?” I asked. “Get inside, create the riddle to gain entry?”
“Magic,” she said simply. Her eyes drifted to the soup pot. “More?”
“Please,” I said—partly because I didn’t know when I’d eat again, partly to keep her talking.
She ladled more into the bowl I held out.
“What kind of magic?” I asked.
“Feralis, of course.” She nodded toward the other room. “He has it too. Though men never form quite the same bond with it.”
“What isit?”
“Nature,” she said simply. “The four elements.”
“Earth, air…”
“Fire, water,” she said.
The four elements of nature. Autumn magic. Feralis.
Now I didn’t feel hungry. “How much greater is the connection for a woman?”
She tapped a slow rhythm on the tabletop with her long nails. “A man might be able to make the wind gust a little harder. We women can make it storm.”
A thrill crawled down my spine—threaded with something sharper, something that twisted. Jealousy. Her face was too serious for exaggeration.
“But there is a cost.” Thalassa lifted the jug and filled our cups. “And it is great.”
“A cost?”
“Unseelie magic corrupts. Unless you return to the grove to cleanse yourself, you walk a dangerous path.”
Unseelie magic. I desperately wanted to know more.
