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Across the Fetterwitch’s pale wrinkled face, thick black veins drifted like drowning worms through a milky-white sea. Her skin bulged, then flattened. Her lips were crusted with dried blood, and her left hand was shriveled and black.

One of the woman’s eyes was glassy ebony, the other white as a unicorn’s belly. She blinked, and the eyes shifted—black to white, white to black.

“Good evening, Your Majesty,” murmured the Fetterwitch. She lifted the hem of her tattered gown. “I’m honored to receive you in my humble home.”

Celestyna’s stomach flipped over, but she was a queen, and she would sound like one.

“I want you to release yourself from the curse you made,” she commanded, “and give it all, in its entirety, to me.”

The Fetterwitch blinked in surprise.

“Clearly you’re no longer strong enough for it, but I am,” Celestyna went on, her heart pounding. “The Gulgot still climbs. You haven’t been able to stop him. I can.”

A scabbed smile stretched across the Fetterwitch’s face.

Celestyna lifted her chin. “You made this curse, you anchored it in my family’s blood, but now—”

“Which they agreed to do,” interrupted the Fetterwitch. “Your great-great-however-many-times-grandmother was happy to help.”

“And you knew what it would do to us,” Celestyna snapped, “how it would hurt us and make us sick, generation after generation.”

“It was aspell, Queenie. Itbecamea curse, as I feared it might, because your family and I were meddling in things we shouldn’t have.”

“And yet you said nothing to warn us, because you’re a filthy liar.”

“Unwise, to insult your curse maker so blithely,” the Fetterwitch murmured. “I have been the thing standing between the Vale and utter destruction all this time, remember.”

“Barely. Darkness floods our land. The earth quakes more every day. Soon it will shatter beyond repair.”

The Fetterwitch’s shifting black-and-white gaze turned cold. “So you trap my people and throw them at the monster.”

“What else would you have us do? Let the Gulgot escape the Break and destroy everything?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” the Fetterwitch moaned, wringing her hands. She looked out at the mountains for a long time. The gray skies loosed a silent snowfall.

“We should never have done it,” she said. “Me, and Celestyna the Sixth. Foolish young girls. A spell to mend the earth and trap a monster? Once the Vale split, that kind of magic fled. Only tatters remained, unstable and unpredictable. We tricked ourselves into thinking this would work.” The Fetterwitch closed her eyes. “He’s coming fast, Queenie. Haven’t you heard? The Gulgot’s climbing for us all. Our curse has made him angry, and it won’t last much longer.”

Celestyna stood. “Then release yourself this instant and give it to me instead.”

“You don’t know what you ask, girl,” said the Fetterwitch, laughing. “Magic isn’t as sweet as all your glittering kiddie stories have told you.”

“I know it isn’t, and I don’t care. I’m stronger than you are.Do it.”

The Fetterwitch watched her slyly. “Tell me, how did it feel, standing over your parents’ bodies? Knowing you killed them?”

Celestyna froze. Shame crawled hotly up her legs and into her throat. “I didn’t kill them.”

“You did.”

“They were already sick!”

“Because the curse was ruining them. You’ll face that agony someday yourself, and now you’re asking for it sooner?” The Fetterwitch’s mismatched eyes gleamed. “And without me to carry the bad parts for you, it’ll be even worse for you than it was for them.”

The Fetterwitch wagged one mottled finger. “You’d better get married, Queenie, and soon, no matter what. This curse is too much for any one human to bear alone. We knew that from the beginning. Celestyna the Sixth was smart about it. She got married right away to some duke with red hair, if I recall correctly.” She shrugged. “With me working the curse, and them anchoring it together, things weren’t so bad.”

“I’llnevermarry,” Celestyna cried. “I’llneverbind another person to this family, like my mother did to my father.”

“Your mother needed help and was wise enough to find it, unlike her fool daughter.” The Fetterwitch scratched the side of her mouth, pondering. “Doesn’thaveto be someone you marry, you know. The magic’s limber enough for that. A good friend could share the curse with you, if you love each other well and true enough and will it to be so. Or Orelia—”