Unless someone had retrieved it. Someone who wanted her to read her mother’s words.
She stared, disbelieving, at the sangflur ink. It was a page Mia had never seen. Her mother’s handwriting was different from the other entries—her neat, flowery script had sloped into sharp, jagged lines, as if the words had been written many years later, or far more quickly.
Sometimes I think Griffin doesn’t believe the things he teaches. That he knows they are lies, but he doesn’t know how to undo the damage he has done, so he says nothing. That he continues to kill Dujia because he is too cowardly to admit he was wrong.
Your father knows more than he pretends to. I hear him lying to me, his blood thrashing in my ears. I feel the enthrall weakening, whether by some force he is exerting or by my own failure, I do not know. The way he looks at me . . .
If something happens to me, at least you and Angelyne will have each other. This is a great comfort.
But if it comes to this—if there is no other way—then I know what I must do. I have been experimenting, probing the same dark magic I once chastised the woman I loved for using. She was right, and I was wrong. Desperate times call for desperate magic.
I know, when and if the time comes, I will be ready. I will break the Second Law.
My clever daughter, my red raven, my eldest child.
We fought today. I know you didn’t mean the things you said. I see both your tender heart and the way you try to silence it, shore it up with logic, with rules. We mothers know our children better than they think.
You are angry. So angry. I have failed you in this, as in so many things; I have not taught you how to be angry, how to care for yourself in your rage. As Dujia we are taught rage is dangerous—that we must snuff it out. But I disagree. I think rage is most dangerous when it is snuffed out; this is when it grows.
How could a Dujia not feel anger? Ours is a life of shadow and pain, suffering and loss. I believe anger is only frightening when it gets hidden away. Feeling anger is natural, good. But we must channel it toward good, not evil.
My wish for you, little one, is simple: bring your rage into the light, and love will heal it.
Mia, something has happened. I was wrong. About everything.
Your father knows. He says he’s been trying to protect me. He says I am in danger, but not from whom I thought. If it is as I fear . . . if the king suspects . . . then these pages may be the last you ever read.
There is a song you and Angie used to sing. “Under the plums, if it’s meant to be. You’ll come to me, under the snow plum tree.” Fly, my red raven. Fly fast and free.
And if I have one final truth to impart
Fidacteu zeu biqhotz limarya eu naj
promise you will always trust your heart
even if you have to stop
That was where the words ended. Beneath them, her mother had drawn a hasty sketch of a snow plum tree.
The world was spinning around her, taffied shapes and grotesque shadows creeping across the dungeon walls, her memory shifting with them.
Her father knew. He hadn’t turned against her mother—he’d been trying to protect her. But from whom? The king? The other Hunters?
Who else was there that night?
Mia had all the puzzle pieces, but she couldn’t make them fit.
Even if you have to stop . . . what?
A new thought shuddered through her. Her mother had said she was ready to break the Second Law. Magic shall never be used by a Dujia to consciously inflict pain, suffering, or death on herself.
Had Wynna chosen to hurt herself? She wouldn’t need knife or arrow, not when she could use magic to stop her own heart.
Had she taken her own life?
Mia bolted up off the ground. Someone was talking to the jailer upstairs in soft, syrupy tones. Then silence, followed by footsteps, light and quick.
A torch was bobbing in the darkness. If Mia squinted, she could just make out the white cap of one of the kitchen servants. Then a scullery maid stepped into the light, chin-length black hair pinned up under her frilly cap.
“Pilar?”
She looked exactly like she had the night of the final feast, clumsy hands and dark flashing eyes. With two notable differences: the slash of dried blood on her cheek and the heavy ring of metal keys swinging from her hand.
“How did you get out?”
“I have my ways. Not all the guards were wearing uzool.”
“You enthralled the jailer!”
“Naturally.” Pilar wedged the torch into a rift in the wall, rifling through the keys until she found the one she wanted. She sniffed the air. “What died in here?”
“I think you mean who . . .”
“Well it’s not going to be you. Not today.”
The shackles dropped from Mia’s wrists with a pleasing iron clunk. Instinctively she rubbed her wrists.
“Where are the others? Are they safe?”
“Don’t worry about us. You’re here to save your sister. So save her.”
“And Quin’s sister?”
They were both silent. Then Pilar said, “Truth be told, I’m not a very good shot.”
Mia saw the crack in her bravado.
“You were just doing what your mother said.”
“So were you. We both failed.”
Pilar sighed. “You tried, Rose. That’s the important thing. It’s not your fault you don’t know about magic. You didn’t grow up with it like I did. I couldn’t escape it, even if I wanted to.” She darkened. “Sometimes I want to.”
“I tried to heal her. I really tried.”
“I know. You tried to quiet her heart, but you didn’t know your own power, so you silenced it instead. When you stop a heart, you think of stillness. An empty room.”
Pilar shifted her weight. “The kitchens are buzzing with activity. They say the queen is hosting a wedding feast.”
A wedding feast. The words were a white-hot poker searing her flesh. Tristan was back at Kaer Killian, fresh from his rape attempt. Quin was home, too. While Mia didn’t know which boy would be the groom, she knew exactly who would be the bride.
“Go get your sister,” Pilar said. “We’ll worry about the rest.”
Mia had misjudged her. Pil’s heart was true.
She held the torch high as they walked toward the stone stairs. In the winking light, Mia saw a strange shape in the corner of the dungeon. Her heart beat faster. Someone huddled under a thin blanket in the farthest cell.
“Wait.”
Winter whipped across her neck, turning her blood to sludge. She saw a wisp of fair hair peeking out from under the blanket. The shape was much too still.
“Come on, Rose. Let’s go.”
“I need to see who’s under there.”
“They’re not moving.”
“I need to see.”
“Fine. Then see.” She thrust the torch into Mia’s hands. “Find your sister and meet us in the quarry.” With that she vanished up the stairs.
Mia inched forward. She couldn’t hear heartbeats or any blood moving but her own. The stench was overpowering.
“Angie?” Her voice hardly broke the air.
Mia was deadly cold, her fear a manacle of ice around her throat. She could think of nothing more horrible than finding her sister under this blanket, rotting in the dungeons of Kaer Killian. But she had to know.
She gripped a corner of the blanket and ripped it back.
Two bodies decomposed on the dungeon floor, the smaller one trapped in a mass of honeyed blond hair. A family of maggots feasted on the eye sockets of a thin, dead face.
But it wasn’t Angelyne. It was Queen Rowena.
Beside her lay King Ronan.
Chapter 56
Diaphanous
MIA GROPED HER WAY out of the dungeons, past the enthralled jailer and back into the light. She was nauseous, disoriented; she stumbled out into the castle corridors where she collided with a wall of polished stone. All she could see were maggots crawling through the space where Rowena’s violet eyes had been. She stared at the black onyx and tried to focus. Even her reflection unmoored her.