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“The idea is to rip the wall down so you can dig your way out. So, however safe that is.”

She considered that, and nodded. “All right. How much longer is it going to take?”

“Hard to say, but it’s going to be a while. A couple of hours, maybe. We might as well get comfortable.” I sat on the floor. After a moment, she did likewise.

“I don’t suppose you’ve got a deck of cards on you?” she asked.

I took out a pack and started to shuffle. “Do you play pinochle?”

Chapter Fourteen

Escape Root

Ilyana was slaughtering me in our latest round of pinochle when she asked, “So, what catastrophes did you get?”

“Sorry?”

“Your fairy gifts. The ones that got you kidnapped.” She slapped down an ace and I dutifully slid my king to her through the bars. “No offense, you’re cute and all, but I’m assuming you’re not the handsomest guy in the world.”

We’d exchanged tales of our abductions while we played—the troll king was my most impressive captor to date; her worst experience was being chained to a rock as an offering to a sea monster.

“I have the ability to grow flowers,” I said. “And, uh…”

“And?” she asked when I didn’t continue. My last face card went to her queen of hearts. “I was given beauty, obviously,” she went on. “And a pleasant aroma, if you can believe that. And I will always speak with polite language. Fizz-dazzlingly polite fluting language.”

“Oh. That explains a lot.”

“Frock yeah, it does.”

I managed to take one last trick before she cleaned me out entirely. She picked up the large pile of cards on her side of the bars and sorted through them, totaling up the remainder of her score.

“No one snatched you away from home because of flower power,” she said.

“It’s more trouble than you’d think.”

Her only response was silence. She paused her card count and drummed her fingers against the metal floor. Watching me. Waiting.

I’d been keeping my other ability secret from everyone but my immediate family for years. It was dangerous to let anyone else know. Every time somebody had heard so much as a whisper of a rumor, bad things had happened. The things that were the topic of this very conversation. I hadn’t even told Queen Jacqueline or King Gervase about it.

I very much wanted to tell Ilyana.

It was so tempting to share it with someone who really understood. Which not even Yudit did, not completely. She had plenty of problems stemming from her own curses, but not this particular one. No one had ever thrown her into a dungeon because they wanted an endless supply of frogs.

I watched Ilyana’s fingers tap. Sometimes long and slender, sometimes short and blunt, the fingernails lengthening and receding.

“I can spit gemstones,” I blurted out. “Very big ones. Very valuable.”

She sucked in a deep breath. Her fingers stilled. “Ouch. That’s bad.”

“I’d appreciate it if you kept it to yourself.”

“Of course. Solidarity among magic gift disaster victims.” She made a fist and stuck her knuckles between the bars. After a moment of confusion, I bumped her fist with mine. “Flanking fairies, am I right?” she said. “Screeching up our lives.”

“Flanking fairies,” I agreed.

“Flake them all.” She finished tallying up her points—she won by quite a lot, naturally—and held out her hand. I passed the cards over for her to shuffle and redeal.

“That must have been some powerful fairy you met,” I said as she slipped my cards between the bars in sets of three. “I’ve heard of beauty being given as a gift, but nothing like what you’ve got.” Not to mention that I was able to detect her scent from several floors away. There’s nothing special about my sense of smell. And she hadn’t just been graced with a knowledge of etiquette. Her words changed as they came out of her mouth, a “gift” so controlling that it bordered on horrifying.