“What’s going to happen?” Sabine asked.

“Watch.”

Crimson splattered up from the depths, and we both jerked back. The surface of the water caught and held the red liquid like a pane of glass, but I knew what it was. Blood, but from who or what, I could not say.

“Eternal youth, eternal youth, eternal youth.” The words started quiet as a thought, but then grew louder and louder until I was sure everyone in the house could hear the voice. Catherine’s voice.

Then abruptly as it had begun, the voice went silent. The bowl of water turned pristine white.

But the memory wasn’t over.

Slowly, the whiteness faded like clouds clearing on a summer sky, and an image appeared. A woman – Catherine – was walking through the corridors of the castle, the skirt she was kicking out in front of her infinitely finer than what she wore now. I could hear her heels against the stone, the swish of the fabric of her dress, although the quality of the sound was strange. She paused in front of a door, looked both ways, then entered into the room.

“I have it.” Catherine spoke, the words echoing as though she stood at the end of a long corridor.

“It took you long enough.” The voice of the woman who spoke was distorted, and Catherine was staring at her feet, so I couldn’t see who it was.

“This is the last batch.” Catherine’s voice shook. “I can’t keep doing this – what if I get caught?”

“Be more afraid of what will happen to you if you stop!” There was a flurry of motion, and the other woman snatched up the jar Catherine was holding and spun away. She finally looked up, but the other woman was wearing a hooded cloak.

“Turn around,” I breathed at the image. “Who are you?”

“It’s getting harder and harder to hide the bodies,” Catherine pleaded. “This is dark magic, mistress. There is always a cost.”

“I don’t care.” The woman whirled around, revealing the cruel beaked mask she wore. It concealed all her features, making it impossible to tell what she looked like or even how old she was. “There is no cost too great. Not for this. I must endure.”

The image vanished, and the basin was once again filled with ordinary water and the sodden bundle of paper, hair, and herb, the magic fading away. Sabine met my eyes. “Do you think that was her?”

I nodded slowly. “The way she said the last bit, I must endure, there was something about her phrasing. Not that her beauty or youth must endure, but that she herself must.”

“It could mean nothing. She could just be a woman desperate to maintain her youth.”

“Or it could mean everything.” Pushing the basin back, I got to my feet. “I need to see Catherine and convince her to tell me what she knows.”

“She’s no more likely to tell you anything now than she was before, Cécile.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” I said. “The desire for revenge is a powerful motivator, and I think I can appeal to that.”

“All right, but there’s still one problem.”

“I know,” I said. “I need to find a way to get past my mother.”

Twenty-Four

Tristan

I frowned at the column of rock rising up before me, then scribbled a series of calculations, pen held with an invisible hand of magic. It had taken me a bit of practice to learn to write this way, but necessity had demanded it. Even if I could manage to grip a pen with my numb fingers, my shaking would have rendered whatever I tried to write illegible. I glanced down at my hands, knowing without removing my gloves that my fingers looked grey and lifeless, the skin surrounding the spikes through my wrists black with iron rot. I was ill and exhausted, my constant use of magic draining me and leaving my body susceptible to the toxic metal.

In the heat of the moment in the throne room, I’d made my promise to Tips without considering the ramifications. And now I was suffering the consequences. To build the tree, I needed to be alive; but the darkening bonding marks on my hand spoke of the deterioration of Cécile’s strength, which, along with the spread of the iron rot in my wrists, was evidence that my days were numbered. Which drove me to work harder.

I couldn’t stop, not to eat or to sleep; and the continual drain on my power allowed the rot to worsen. Which made me work harder still. I was caught in a spiral, and unless something changed, the result was inevitable.

I might have fought the compulsion to build continually a little harder, but there was one other problem: I liked the work.

Liked wasn’t even a strong enough word – I loved it. Loved transforming the vision in my mind into something tangible. Loved that I was creating something permanent. Loved that this was a problem I was solving, unlike the others on my very long list.

I still had no notion of what Lessa had said to my father to set him off so badly. She was effectively my father’s spy in Angoulême’s home, so it might well have been some information she had discovered. Possibly something to do with my brother, the idea of which made me very nervous.

Or it could have been something Lessa had done to anger our father herself, though I couldn’t imagine why she would do that. They were allies in this, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t dispose of her if necessary. I’d avoided her like the snake she was, but I’d seen her enough in the distance to know she was alive and unharmed. Part of me wished she were dead.

“Your Highness?”

I turned to see the crew of half-bloods I was working with standing next to the massive block of stone they’d carefully cut and prepared. “Ready?”