Page 45 of Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales (Emily Wilde #3)

We reached the castle and a pair of tall oak doors. Their hinges were ornate but rusty, and one of the doors had a sag. Yes, surely many generations had passed in the amaranthine eyes of the Folk if even the enchantments that had created this place were worn with age.

We took our leave of the snails then, bowing low to show our thanks.

Wendell knelt to talk quietly to the one he had spoken to before—how he could tell the difference between them, I don’t know.

Afterwards he hesitated upon the threshold, one hand on the stone wall.

Orga hopped to the ground and looked up at him.

“My stepmother has only a little magic,” he said to me. “Her power has always lain in her ability to charm and deceive. I don’t know if she may, somehow, have charmed the magics of this island into protecting her. Let me enter first, and then I will call you.”

He seemed to think I would argue with him, but I had no interest in being blasted in the face by some foul enchantment. “You may enter first,” I said, “but do not think you may enter alone . If you venture beyond my sight I will be very cross, and chase after you.”

“A fire-breathing dragon at my back! No, I would prefer to avoid that. Don’t worry, Em, I have as little desire as you to face this alone.”

Satisfied, I went back to what I had just been doing— scanning every inch of flora in the vicinity for bees. The insect life seemed to comprise mostly beetles and ants. Wendell pushed the doors open and stepped through.

He had been honest in one respect; he went only a half dozen paces before he halted. But he did not call me.

“Wendell?” It came out more annoyed than I truly felt, for I was trying to focus on anything but the fear roiling my stomach. I passed through the doors and stood beside him.

He did not move, and I thought he was merely overwhelmed by the tarnished grandeur around us.

The castle was one open space, though divisions were implied by lines and clusters of trees here and there.

It was roofless, like the banquet hall of our castle—or, more accurately I suppose, it was roofed in dense layers of leaf and branch and enchantment, which kept the elements away.

It consisted of the great hall in which we stood and a wide staircase at the back, which led into the tower that backed onto the hall—I could just see the outline of it through the foliage. Was Queen Arna up there, I wondered?

At the centre of the hall was the largest attentive oak I had ever seen.

Its trunk was too wide for ten men to link arms around, and its roots bullied their way up through the floor.

Its upper canopy was obscured by the other trees, but several lower boughs were visible.

Many of the eyes that stared at me with anger or fear, envy or disdain, were rheumy, with wrinkled lids, and I think some were nearsighted.

They squinted and seemed to have trouble fixing upon us.

Wendell still had not moved. He was staring at something on the other side of the hall, but I could not work out what it was; there were too many trees in the way, offering only a partial picture.

There was a splash of coppery red, an edge of something plaid—fabric?

And, just visible past the trunk of a birch, a single pale foot.

I walked forward slowly. The sound of the wind moving through the trees faded, and all I heard was my thundering heart. Wendell followed, then took my hand and pulled me slightly behind him.

At the far end of the hall was an ornately carved four-poster piled high with blankets, including the plaid one I had glimpsed, which spilled onto the floor. Queen Arna lay upon the blankets, still clad in queenly finery, though it was now tattered and stained. She was dead.

There was no room for debate on this point.

She had taken a dagger and stabbed herself through the chest. It had happened recently—within the last few seconds, I thought, for her body still twitched.

She had heard our voices outside the door.

Her eyes did not gaze in our direction, but stared sightlessly at the canopy.

“She knew I was come to kill her,” Wendell said. His tone was oddly conversational, but his face was flushed, his eyes wet. “So this is what you’ve chosen. Vengeance is so important to you, that even in death—” He gave a soft laugh and rubbed his face.

I pressed his hand. I still remember the feeling of his cold fingers against mine. At the time I was thinking, surely he could not be sad. Not about her.

“I know,” he said, giving me a rueful smile. “I had wanted to say goodbye.”

I surveyed the room. It was a romantic place to die at least. I could summon no more compassion for the queen than that—well and good that she had died by her own hand, I thought; spare Wendell the grief of killing the woman who had raised him.

I touched the queen’s arm, then drew back immediately, for it was still warm. My hand, where it had brushed the bed, came away bloody, and I hurriedly wiped it on my dress. Her blood dripped to the ground in a steady patter like little footsteps. Orga licked at the puddle, and I picked her up.

Something odd was happening to the queen’s body.

Her bare feet were darkening to the greyish-white of the birch trees and growing knots, while moss crept up the side of her neck.

Something moved in her hair—a host of aphids and small white moths seemed to be making themselves at home.

Was this how all monarchs died? I thought of taking my notebook out to make a sketch, but shuddered away from the prospect.

Perhaps Danielle de Grey was correct—there are things in Faerie that are not meant to be known.

“Then the curse is lifted,” I said. “Is it? What do you feel? Must we do anything else? We could collect the queen’s blood, I suppose.” I looked at her strange outline—it was not an appealing prospect. And was it still blood, or had it become sap?

Wendell was gazing at me. One of his faerie looks again, and yet, to my astonishment, he was not entirely opaque to me this time, and what I saw in his eyes made me still. What had he said? The queen had killed herself for vengeance ?

The queen’s body ceased twitching. And the world was suddenly changed, and a great many things happened within the space of a heartbeat. I will record each of my impressions now, hindsight allowing me to piece them out:

A swirling miasma of grey descended upon the castle, like a cloud slowly lowering itself out of the sky. A tendril touched my shoe tip, and I leapt backwards with a shout, for the sensation was like the brush of a hot brand.

Orga began to yowl in a voice I’d never heard from her before—it was closer to the cry of a mortal cat than I had thought her capable of.

Wendell lifted the steel dagger his stepmother had used and drove it through his chest in one swift, impossibly quiet movement, and the motion was familiar to me, somehow, the angle—it was how he had stabbed the woman with the raven-feather hair.

There was only the faintest rustle as the fabric of his cloak parted, then he wrenched the dagger free in a shower of blood bright as rubies.

As the curse descended upon us, something wrapped round my stomach and flung me backwards—I caught a glimpse of glaring eyes, felt the brush of something soft and wet against my arm. I hit the trunk of the attentive oak, and the castle vanished.