His glowing eyes stayed fixed on me as we approached. He smiled as I stopped a few steps away from him. His gaze darted to the figure beside me, veiled behind the cloak. She stayed very still and did not move.
“My darling Fräulein,” Hyacinth said to me. He drew closer. All around him tittered his ever-present faeries, their blue glow dancing from spot to spot. They whispered harsh, eager things at me. “You’ve done so well. You’ve brought him, as well as yourself.”
As well as yourself.I stared into his lying eyes and saw the hunger there. The queen’s warning echoed in my mind. He did not care if my wish was fulfilled. He would take me tonight, along with my brother, and neither of us would return to the world beyond.
I looked behind us. The path we’d come from had now closed entirely, the thorns cutting off the bridge and the moat.
“I’m here, as you asked,” I said slowly.
Hyacinth’s eyes darted again to the cloaked figure beside me. She stood so calmly. For the first time, I sensed in him a hint of doubt. His faeries flitted about, irritated and skeptical. Hyacinth lifted his face to the sky, closed his eyes, and took a delicate sniff. Then he looked at me again, and when he did, his pupils were narrowed into slits.
“Your brother?” he whispered to me.
I looked back at him as steadily as I had once looked at my father. I realized that I was not afraid now. When I didn’t answer, Hyacinth swiveled his attention back to the cloaked figure and peered into the darkness that shrouded her face. His eyes then went to her hands, to the faint golden glow that came from her palms. When he peered more closely under her hood, he noticed the warm light against her features.
That was when the first hint of fear showed on his face.
“Who is this that you’ve brought with you?” he whispered to me.
I didn’t move from my spot. I only looked to the figure at my side as she removed her hood.
“The queen,” I replied, “the one who truly belongs here.”
He took a step back. A stricken look came onto his face, replaced quickly by anger. In it, I saw a thousand realizations—who I’d brought before him, who had freed her, what she wanted.
The queen stared back at him with an unflinching expression. A small smile tilted up the edges of her lips. She was taller now, her bearing more regal. I wondered how I’d ever mistaken her for anything other than a queen.
“I thought we had a bargain,” Hyacinth said to me. There was real terror in his eyes now. “Bring your brother to me, when the time has come, so that he may take his place in the kingdom. You betrayed me.”
“My brother is on his deathbed,” I replied, finding my strength, “because of you. If I’d brought him here today, you would keep him here eternally, so that he will disappear from my world. You would do the same with me.”
“I am your guardian, Nannerl, not your demise.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Everyone always thinks they are protecting me.”
His mouth twisted into a grimace. His faeries flitted wildly, unsettled and angry. He did not like the look of understanding on my face. “Don’t you want your brother gone? Isn’t this what you’ve always wanted?”
Once, perhaps, when I didn’t understand myself, I’d wanted it.
The queen stirred then, and Hyacinth backed uneasily away from her. She fixed her intense gaze on him and refused to let him look away. “The last time I saw you, you came to me with your glowing eyes and a charming smile on your face,” she said. “You led me away from my children, and into a cavern where you imprisoned me.”
Hyacinth growled, a low rumble that began in his chest and rose through his throat. “Stupid queen,” he said, then glanced at me. “Stupid girl. All your life, you wanted nothing more than to stand tall next to your brother. Now you will be reduced to nothing but a brief mention in history. Perhaps not even that. And for what, my darling? Because you’re afraid to harm your brother?”
I kept my face resolute. “Because I will not make a bargain with a liar. There are too many lies in my life.”
His eyes slid anxiously to the queen again. Suddenly, with his persuasion taken away from him, he seemed weaker, his figure less menacing. The queen stood so tall that I couldn’t even remember how she’d looked in the cave. Her skin began to glow with gold. Every line of her looked regal, unflinching and unafraid, finally ready to face the one who had brought her so much misery. The warmth from her wrapped around me in an embrace.
“You are in a castle where you don’t belong,” the queen said to Hyacinth. As she spoke, the castle stirred and sighed beneath its ivy-choked walls and soot-stained paths, as if remembering its mistress’s voice. “Go back to the woods and torment us no more.”
Hyacinth sneered at her, but already the castle was changing, revitalized by the magic of her warm presence, and as Hyacinth stood there, the thorns and ivy that had started to choke the courtyard walls began to crumple away. I heard the echo of laughter from long ago, the merry voices of villagers who had once strolled this place.
Hyacinth’s smile reappeared. To my horror, his eyes were shifting... molding into something that looked surprisingly like my own eyes. “Little noble lady,” he taunted. “So abruptlychanged. But it is too late for you. You have made your choice, and you have decided to be forgotten.”
This was a final lie. It was not too late yet.
Beside me, the queen lifted her glowing hands. Hyacinth shrank back in terror. His faeries darted away in a uniform wave.
“You’re afraid of the light,” I said to him. “Of warmth. Fire. Life.”
