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Lord Dellier came forward. In his hands lay a flat golden band. The sight of it filled Celestyna with dread so sharp she saw black.

“I’m sorry, child,” said Lord Dellier, his voice gentle and cracking, his weary eyes ringed with shadows.

Then the cold metal band settled around her neck and snapped shut.

Immediately the world dimmed, like someone had stuffed wool in Celestyna’s ears and drawn a veil over her eyes.

It wasn’t such a bad veil. And the wool, scratchy as it was, felt almost pleasant, if you liked that sort of thing.

Celestyna found that she did.

She could still feel the curse binding her will to the Gulgot, but it was not so eager now, and not so near.

Celestyna listened for the curse’s whispers, and heard them, faintly, but the words were gibberish to her ears.

Lord Dellier helped her stand. He and Madame Berrie escorted Celestyna to her rooms. Madame Berrie was crying. Lord Dellier’s voice was an exhausted thread.

“I know everything, Celestyna,” he said. “Everything.I have watched over you, and I watched over your parents, and before me it was my father, and before him it was my grandmother. For generations we have guarded your family.”

He drew a breath, rubbed his face. They were in her rooms, now. Madame Berrie helped Celestyna sit in her favorite blue chair. Celestyna stared at Lord Dellier. She was tired. She wished he would let her sleep.

“The Fetterwitch made the collar long ago, in the case of her death,” Lord Dellier said. “She told my family what signs to look for. How to recognize the curse. We have kept this collar under close guard. I think it will help you sleep. Your other advisers and I, we sent soldiers on a mission to the Star Lands to bring you another witch. One to bear the weight of the curse, as theFetterwitch did. We sent them weeks ago. She was growing frail. We thought it was time to try for a replacement, and then—”

“And then I killed her,” Celestyna concluded.

A pause. “Then you killed her,” Lord Dellier agreed.

“It hurts less now, with the collar,” she said curiously. “The curse, I mean. It’s quieter.”

Madame Berrie wept into her hands.

Lord Dellier looked ten years older than he had only that morning. “Yes, my queen.”

Celestyna didn’t understand why they looked so upset. Then she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, saw her face branched with black veins and her cheeks hollowed with hunger.

A ripple of something passed through her, but she was too numb to feel afraid. She touched two fingers to the metal band at her neck, blinked up at Lord Dellier, and whispered, “Thank you.”

The Fetterwitch’s collar sat cold and smooth around Celestyna’s neck, like a snake pressed flat and gilded.

The queen of the Vale laid her head on her pillow and stared at the ceiling. She didn’t care that Orelia had been hysterical since finding the collar around her sister’s neck and seeing hersister’s cursed hand. That Orelia had been confined to her room with the nurses until she’d calmed down. That she hadn’t come close to calming down.

Celestyna heard Orelia crying from inside her rooms. She heard, and she didn’t care.

The important thing, she knew, was for her to remain calm, so the curse could function properly, so she would not endanger herself or others or the Vale. And the collar would help her with that.

“Don’t show them you’re afraid,” she whispered to the darkness of her lovely rooms. Mistbirds watched from the rafters, cooing their soft trills. Their eyes followed the trails of their queen’s floating black veins, drifting like thin malevolent clouds beneath her skin.

“Don’t smile too much,” whispered Celestyna.

“Don’t talk too loudly.”

“Don’t...”

Sleep snatched her quietly, like a thief.

.29.

The Liar’s Trick