Page 18

SMOKE AND APPLES

M alediction hastily scrambled off her.

She sat up. “What happened? Where are we?”

“My bedroom,” he said, narrowing his eyes at the ceiling. “The house dropped us down here for our own safety. The spell-room is on fire. Don’t worry; Skymallow will put it out, but the easiest way to do that is to shut off all the air to the room.”

His frown transferred from the ceiling to the bed next to her. She followed his gaze and found the ashy remains of the comb crumbled on the bedspread.

“Does that mean your name wasn’t in there?” she asked after a long pause. “I’m assuming that’s not how the spell was supposed to work.”

“No, that wasn’t how it was supposed to work. Though I’m reasonably sure my name isn’t in there; I would have felt its presence during all that.” His frown was now fixed directly on her.

She thought he was going to say something about her obviously dangerously unstable magic, but instead he asked, “Are you hurt? Did any of the hot metal burn you? Any injuries from our hasty exit?”

“I’m fine,” she said, nonplussed, and slid off the bed.

If she’d had any remaining notions of Malediction-as-dread-sorcerer, his room would have disabused her of them.

It was something of a cross between a dandy and a fussy grandmother’s space, decorated in luxurious, brightly coloured fabrics.

Every surface was covered, some deliberately with ornaments but most less deliberately with piles of discarded books and clothing.

The space in front of the mirrored dresser was as littered with make-up accoutrements as an opera singer’s.

A sketchbook lay open on the arm of a plump armchair, showing a pencil sketch for an elaborate necklace with neatly labelled parts.

“What’s this?” She picked up the sketchbook.

He made an abortive movement, as if he would have liked to snatch it from her but had stopped himself. “Ideas and designs for jewellery.” He spun the rings on his hand. “Your magic…” he began.

Gisele put the sketchbook down. “ You said that the worst that could happen was nothing!”

The fur on his ears and tail was at maximum bristle.

“I didn’t lie—fae can’t lie, I told you.

I was just… wrong. I’m sorry,” he said. His gaze took on that unsettling, too-penetrating aspect again, as if he could see beneath skin straight down to the bone.

“There’s something odd going on with your magic, isn’t there?

An instability I didn’t account for in the spell.

Has anything like that happened before?”

She wrapped her arms around herself, hating that he now knew exactly how out of control she was. “Strange things happen with gold, sometimes. It’s gotten more frequent of late,” she eventually admitted. Gold, twisting… “I assume it’s the result of the magic you did for my mother.”

“Spinning straw into gold,” he murmured.

“I’ve been… doing the opposite, sort of. Gold into wood.” She gave a short laugh. “As you can imagine, it’s a much less popular transformation.”

His lips pursed. “Can you show me?” Without hesitation, he removed one of his gold rings and held it out.

With great reluctance, she took it, the muscles in her back tightening. Nothing whatsoever happened.

“If I could do it on command, it wouldn’t be such an issue,” she pointed out. “But it happens only sporadically. Sometimes the gold transforms. Sometimes it explodes or melts or catches fire instead.”

“I see.” His eyes flicked to the ceiling, and he straightened, steeling himself. She caught the faintest trace of emotion from him—apprehension—tinged with his vanilla-copper scent. “There’s nothing for it. I’ll have to teach you how to control your magic.”

Her palm flashed white-hot, and she yelped and dropped the ring.

Malediction knelt and retrieved it. “Wood,” he confirmed, turning the resulting ring this way and that.

“Interesting. It’s normal for fae magic to respond to emotions, you know.

” Some inkling of exactly what her emotions were just now must have transferred itself to him because he cocked his head to one side and said tentatively. “Ah, time for a tea break?”

She squeezed her eyes shut because it was either that or shout at him, and she knew that wasn’t being fair. “I smell like smoke,” she said eventually. “I’m going to change.”

After cleaning up, she gave in and went out to the garden to settle her nerves.

The tea roses were in full bloom, and she couldn’t resist burying her nose in one, drowning out the lingering smell of smoke.

A sleeping bumblebee with purple instead of black stripes woke with the movement, buzzing lazily into flight.

“Look, a BUMbee, Auntie!” The echo of a child’s laughter made her smile, bittersweet.

The children had been the last to feel the curse, and little Maryna had been fascinated by her strange aunt—possibly entirely because she sensed her parents’ disapproval.

The little girl had frequently slipped away from her carers to find Gisele in the palace gardens.

Her smile faded, because it had been a year since Maryna had been able to be in the same room as her without bursting into tears.

The erdhenne slumbered under a grapefruit tree, grey feathers puffed out.

It raised one watchful eye as she passed, clucked an acknowledgement, and settled back down into the dust hollow it had made.

Was it supposed to be here? She wasn’t sure exactly how Skymallow’s wards worked outside the house. It didn’t seem dangerous.

She stopped thoughtfully before an overgrown lavender bush, the recipe for Dagomir’s Mixture for Dreamless Sleep unfurling in her mind.

That wasn’t a bad idea. She certainly didn’t want a repeat of last night, not after today’s events.

She’d had as much Malediction in the waking world as she could stand.

Liar , an internal voice retorted. She ignored it and began filling her apron pockets with the other ingredients: catnip, linden flowers, and poppy seeds.

The issue, the very heart of the issue, was that she was struggling not to like her Malediction, after only two day’s acquaintance.

It worried her that that might be due to a magical effect, their bond pulling them towards each other.

It worried her even more that it might not be magic at all.

What would that say about her? Nothing that she wanted said.

Likeable or not, Malediction wasn’t trustworthy.

Hadn’t he proved that again just now, promising her the ritual would be perfectly safe?

It had been well-meaning misjudgement rather than malice, but still.

It spoke of a certain recklessness of character.

And now he was offering to teach her magic, and she hated that she was going to have to say yes and rely on him even further, because it wasn’t as if there were any better options, and back home she frightened children to tears with her mere presence.

It won’t make you indebted to him , she told herself firmly. He already owes you a lifetime.

That might technically be true, but it still felt like it, and she was so tired of being an unwanted burden of a princess.

Underneath the wild overgrown chaos of the garden, there had once been a rudimentary order to the initial plantings, she decided, stopping next to a crumbling low wall.

The culinary herbs were all situated nearest the kitchen, shifting into flowering shrubs punctuated by the odd tree, which in turn became an orchard, or at least the hope of one.

If she had charge of this garden… She stopped herself, because it was none of her business.

Instead, she wound her way through the jungle, delighted by occasional artefacts—did this ruin predate the house? Had Mal been the one to place this enormous statue of a pissing bull here, and if so, did he have any taste whatsoever?

Eventually she found herself in the orchard.

The trees here were enormous—clearly no one had ever pruned them—creating dappled shade beneath their boughs.

Today wasn’t as humid, but their shelter was still a sharply delicious refuge from the heat.

Gisele let the sound of their leaves in the wind soothe her.

An unsettling darkness beneath one of the trees made her frown and step towards it, but her foot twisted and she found herself abruptly veering onto a different path instead.

She halted. Had she noticed something? She began to walk again.

What had been bothering her? A faint puzzled sense clung to her for a few strides, but, unable to think what it had been, she eventually dismissed the feeling.

She smelled the peach tree before she reached it, the sweet ferment of fallen fruit left to rot, the tree itself heavily laden with golden queens or a similar variety: huge, orange, and delicious.

Honestly, did Malediction not gather any of his fruit?

Much of the tree hung far above her head, but she began to collect the ripe peaches from the branches within arm’s reach, making a basket of her apron.

Standing on her tiptoes so she could pick another, she paused, a shadow in the canopy once again catching her attention.

“They are so lovely at this time of year, aren’t they? And picked by such a lovely maiden, too. Hand me one, won’t you, darling?”

Gisele jerked and nearly dropped her skirtful of peaches.

Swinging around, she found the speaker, an extremely tall and extremely handsome older woman, leaning against the trunk of an apple tree.

A crown of small horns poked through her rather astonishing hair, which was hanging loose and made up of mingled green and red.

The woman’s complexion was the colour of oak, with rosy apples in her cheeks.

She gave Gisele a cheery wave, bright eyes sparkling. “Didn’t mean to startle you, pet. Are you going to give me that peach you’re holding?”