Hauth’s posture went rigid. He glanced down at his father. But the King was caressing the Nightmare Card in such a way it was clear what his answer would be. Hauth scowled. “Not very pretty, is she?”
Ione’s entire body tensed.
“There are ways of dealing with that,” the King muttered. He looked up and spoke to Tyrn as if Ione was not there. “I’ll draw the contract myself.”
Ione’s memories jutted forward in a blur. Lights burst before her eyes, her ears buzzing with the sound of thunderous applause. She was looking out at the great hall, and everyone was on their feet, clapping. “Sit,” Hauth said in her ear. “Let them all get a good look at their future Queen.”
Elm could feel Ione’s heart racing. The apples of her cheeks rounded with a smile. “Should I say something?”
“No.”
“I’d like to.”
Hauth’s green eyes stalled on her face. He seemed confused, his expression caught somewhere between attraction and revulsion. His hand pressed into Ione’s shoulder, and he forced her to sit. “You needn’t say anything at all.”
Wine was poured. Ione drank and greeted well-wishers as they filed up to the dais. For every person she spoke to—every smile or laugh or hum in her throat—the attraction in Hauth’s gaze dissipated.
It was strange for Elm to look through the eyes of a drunk person while entirely sober. Ione’s goblet was filled for the eighth time, her vision beginning to tunnel. She was staring into the great hall, swaying in her seat—gazing at a figure seated along the table.
Elm. She was looking at Elm.
He was talking to Jespyr, a remarkably sour look haunting his face.
“Your brother wears a lot of black,” Ione said, her voice too loud. “For a Prince.”
“And old habit of Renelm’s,” Hauth muttered into his goblet.
“For what purpose?”
Hauth looked into her eyes. Smirked. “To hide the blood I dealt him.”
Ione’s mouth dropped open.
Hauth laughed. “Trees. He’s well enough.” His smirk cut away to a sneer. “You should know—you’ve been gazing at him all night. Wipe that dazed look off your face.” He shoved the wine under her nose. “I can’t stand it.”
Ione’s vision buckled, and then she was in the garden, dancing with Hauth. His grip was too loose, the indifference on his face distinct. He let go of her on a twirl, and Ione fell. “Drunk thing,” Hauth said, laughing as she crashed into a circle of men.
They picked her up, too many hands eagerly reaching for her body. Ione jerked away, only to land back in Hauth’s arms. He said something in her ear that was little more than a muffle in Ione’s memory. She tried to back away from him, but his grip tightened, and then he was pulling her through the crowd.
Everything went dark, cold. Ione’s vision was blurry, spinning so fast Elm’s stomach curled. Salt pinched her senses and she coughed—the telltale sensation of a Scythe.
“Put it there,” came Hauth’s echoing voice.
Ione’s hands scraped over a wall—the cracked surface of a long, pale stone dusted with ash—
Go back, Elm whispered into her mind. Show me that again.
The blurry tunnel of Ione’s vision shifted. Once more, fingertips dragging through ash, her hand pressed over a pale, cracked stone.
Twisted by drunkenness, Ione thought she was touching a wall. But the ash was undoubtedly from a hearth. And the pale stone with the wide, jagged crack—
Elm sucked in a breath. I know where your Maiden Card is. He lifted a finger to tap the Nightmare Card, but Ione’s voice stopped him.
Wait, she said into his mind. I want to show you the rest.
The next memory was stark, bereft of drunkenness. She stood in Hauth’s room, morning light streaming through the window.
She was crying.
“Please. I don’t feel like myself. I need the Maiden back.”
Hauth ignored her.
Ione’s vision flashed again, and she was in the yard at Castle Yew. Elspeth was next to her, and so was Elm, all three of them watching as Ravyn and Hauth sparred in front of the Destriers. When Ravyn stomped on Hauth’s hand and the High Prince screamed, Ione smiled. But the effort was taxing.
After, she spoke to Hauth. “I don’t see why you are so determined to lock my feelings away. It’s not as if we are destined to spend much time together.” She clenched her jaw. “If I promise to use the Maiden when we are together at court, will you tell me where it is?”
Hauth’s skin was pale for pain. “No.”
“Then I ask you to release me from this engagement.”
He barked a laugh. “And subject my father to courtly gossip? He’d whip the both of us.”
Ione turned to leave, lingering at the door. Her voice had grown so flat from when she’d spoken on Equinox. “So this is what you would have? A Queen with no heart?”
Hauth’s green eyes held nothing but spite. He tapped his Scythe. “Go away.”
The room bled away to another. One with dark walls and wind that whistled in through the windows.
Spindle House.
There was blood on Hauth’s shoes from where he’d stepped in Elspeth’s dark vomit, left over from the game with the Chalice. He paced the room, the veins in his neck bulging, two empty flagons rolling on the floor. “Your cousin,” he seethed. “She’s infected, isn’t she?”
Ione’s voice was cold. “No.”
He hit her across the face with an open palm—took her yellow hair in his fist. “Tell me the truth, Ione.”
She stayed unmoving, unflinching. “Elspeth isn’t infected.”
His face grew redder. “It’s disgrace enough that my own cousins carry that blight. But now my future wife’s—it is too much.”
He dragged Ione by her hair to the casement window, slammed it open. “You’ll have your wish, my dear,” he said, hauling her over the sill. “I release you from our engagement.”
Ione clawed at him. Screamed. But with one brutal shove—
She was falling.
Elm’s entire body seized, and he fell with Ione down Spindle House’s reaching tower. He heard the sickly crunch of her skull, cracking against brick. When Ione peered down at her body, jagged, red-tipped bones had torn through her clothes.
Blood pulsed in Elm’s ears. He struggled to tap the Nightmare Card. When he opened his eyes, Ione was watching him. He caught her cheek, pressed his forehead over hers. His voice shook. “Did no one help you?”
“It was late. No one saw me fall. And it hurt too much to scream—to even whisper. I simply lay there. Waiting to die.”
She said it with so little affect. Like it bored her, the near-end of her life. “I watched the moon worry across the sky. My blood eased and my bones straightened, snapping back into place. The pain in my head faded, and then…I felt nothing. No despair, no fear. Only then did I truly understand what the Maiden had done to me.
“I left Spindle House and stayed the night in an alley in town. I thought about running away. To go deep in the mist and simply disappear.” She sighed. “But I couldn’t go without my Card. So I walked to Hawthorn House, washed the blood out of my hair, waited for my family. I didn’t want to go back to Stone and face Hauth alone. They never came.” She brushed a loose strand of auburn hair from Elm’s brow hair. “But you, Prince Renelm, did.”