“You are so pretty now,” Lidi murmured, taking my face in her small hands. “Will I ever be pretty like you, Cara?”
Horror washed over me. I wanted to tell her no, and I barely managed to stop myself. She wouldn’t understand.
“The queen has reunited us all together,” Tay said cheerfully. He caught Lidi and me up in his arms in a hug altogether. Lidi laughed with all the delighted happiness of a small child pressed at the center of a hug.
“You have to get out of here.” I had to get Fear to?—
I had to stop depending on Fear.
My first impulse had been to go to him, even after everything he had done, and that was madness. There was no reason tobelieve he would help my family unless it served his strategy. Perhaps he would. Perhaps keeping my trust and affection would be weighed and win out on his scales.
Or perhaps my crystalized hatred of the queen would serve his purposes better. Perhaps he had some plan that I could not even yet imagine.
“The castle is so beautiful!” Lidi said. “We have such a fancy place to sleep!”
Where were they? I needed to know where the queen caged them. “Oh? Do you look out on the sea or on the city?”
“On the city!”
“Do you go up a lot of stairs to get there?”
She nodded happily. “We are in a tower! We can see everything, almost all the way back to Stonehaven!”
At least that gave me something. Clearly it was all I would have, because Lidi had just noticed the flowers that grew up the wall of the queen’s study, and she ran to them, entranced.
Tay turned back to Mam. “It wasn’t a bad journey, was it? I don’t remember coming here. I was so sick, but now I am well.”
He sounded grateful. That left me rather unwell, but while they were distracted, I lifted the knife from the chest. The silk slid across the backs of my fingers, smooth and cool, and then the hard hilt was in my hand, the jewels biting into my skin with the force of my grip. I didn’t want to hold the damned knife, but it didn’t make sense to close my options down yet.
I didn’t know if I would kill my husband or not.
I slid the knife into my belt where it would be unnoticed by anyone but Fear—Fear who was always so damned clever when it came to reading me.
Then I went to Tay and my mother. Mam was still silent, which was unusual; she put her hands on my shoulders and clung to me, her fingers curling deep into my flesh in a way I associated with whispered but intense childhood scoldings. Butthough my heart quickened as if I were once again a little girl who wanted to please but could not quite manage, her eyes had flooded with tears.
“Cara,” she murmured. “Can you get Lidi out of here?”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I’ll find a way.”
Lidi leaned into my mother’s skirts. There was red in her hair, and I jolted in fear, thinking it was blood. Then I saw she had a bouquet of red flowers in her hands, another tucked into her braid.
Lidi misread my spurt of fear. “The queen said I may have all the flowers I like!”
“Lovely,” I managed.
“And my magic back!”
The queen had told them she would raise them? I cast a worried look at my mother.
“She won’t care about Lidi,” my mother murmured. “You can get her free. I’ll stay with Tay.”
“I’ll get you all free,” I promised.
Tay was useless, under the queen’s enchantment, and Lidi was just a little girl. They needed me to save them. From the danger I’d created in the first place, flirting with Fieran.
“Stay together,” I told them, and my mother’s face relaxed in relief at the promise that I had a plan. She touched my face, tenderness rising in her own for once. “I will protect you. Whatever it takes. We will be together again, truly.”
I wouldn’t let them be raised.
