Page 25

She’d made it a question, but it wasn’t, really.

The certainty settled into her bones, alongside an internal ‘of course’.

Of course there was something wrong with her—hadn’t there always been?

Of course nothing involving magic ever went smoothly.

Of course Malediction couldn’t be trusted, even when he had the best of intentions.

She couldn’t even summon anger at the thought, only a kind of tired resignation.

“Ah—‘wrong’ suggests more certainty than I have,” he temporised, clearly searching for a diplomatic response.

“You don’t have to figure out a nice way to say ‘yes, your magic is as scrambled as an omelette’, you know. I can cope,” she told him, oddly touched that he was even trying.

“You shouldn’t have to cope!” he burst out, his tail lashing.

She blinked at him, unsure what to make of this moment of temper or if it was even directed at her.

He tugged irritably at his neckcloth. “Sorry. I meant…I wanted this to go well for you, and I’m annoyed at myself for failing to anticipate how the bond between us had scrambled your magic into an omelette.

I missed a factor somewhere; it must have overloaded the sphere.

I need to go back through my equations.” He pounded the waybroad into an even pastier paste.

She smiled. “I think that’s sufficiently mashed. Give me another few minutes in the water first, though.”

“How do you know so much about healing plants?” he asked, setting the mortar and pestle aside.

She shrugged. “I like plants, and I’ve always been interested in their uses.

It’s also easier to interact with people outside.

More space. I bothered the Leafling Sisters at the palace a lot when I was younger.

Sister Griselda was an old battleaxe who didn’t suffer fools, but she could tell I had real interest. She taught me a lot.

” Her smile faded. The Sisters had continued to welcome her in the stillroom even when her presence had grown so uncomfortable they couldn’t in good conscience let her near patients, but she had felt too guilty to keep forcing herself into close proximity with any of them.

“Why did you plant such a large garden?”

He grinned. “Are you implying I might have been overly ambitious?”

“Yes,” she said frankly. “You’re a terrible gardener. Why in Panthea didn’t you start with something more manageable? How did you even get all this planted in the first place?”

“It did rather get away from me,” he acknowledged.

His gaze rested on an overturned pot, where a small crystal-scaled lizard was sunbathing.

“I suppose I wanted Skymallow to have everything it should. A house should have a garden, and the ruins that were here before… I don’t know, it felt like the garden needed to be where it is now.

That was how far the nascent version of Skymallow’s presence extended.

And I like the plants, even if they have got a touch out of hand.

There’s something joyful in their exuberance, isn’t there?

There were gardens where I grew up, but they weren’t anything like this. Too dry for it.”

“No self-respecting garden is anything like this,” Gisele said flatteningly.

He smiled, stubbornly un-flattened. “You like it.”

“It’s not a particular distinction if I do; I like all gardens.” Could Skymallow understand her? She added, directed less at Malediction than at the general air. “Of course, it has lovely bones. A lot of potential.”

“The house doesn’t truly understand speech,” he assured her.

“It picks up your meaning more than your precise words, but even then, people are mostly too quick-moving for it. It has to focus to comprehend us.” His expression turned wry.

“Unfortunately, there are only the two of us for it to focus on, plus Zingiber, so it listens to more of our conversations than a busier house would.”

“Where did you grow up?” she asked, curious about that ‘too dry’ detail.

His expression shuttered. “Far away from here.”

“And you haven’t been back?”

“I can’t go back to my family without my name,” he said abruptly.

His lips pressed tightly together. “They don’t recognise me.

Or rather, they know who I am in an intellectual sense, but they don’t feel it.

Losing my true name—them forgetting it—hollowed out their memories, leaving duty without sentiment.

It’s difficult to explain. It’s worse than if they didn’t know me at all. They were not unkind, but?—”

“They don’t love you anymore, and you still love them,” Gisele said softly.

He gave a startled gasp of a laugh. “Yes. It sounds so childish to complain that that makes it impossible to visit them, but?—”

“They did—love you—before?”

He nodded, though there was a shadow of doubt in his eyes that made her own chest ache. Oh, she knew what it was to be unsure of your family’s love, to feel its conditionality. To fear getting too close to its limits.

“It doesn’t sound childish to me at all,” she said, and their gazes caught and held for a long, pregnant moment.

He looked away first. “It’s…I don’t have the same problem with people I’ve met since losing my name. It’s only those I knew before. I didn’t realise what the effect would be until it was too late.”

“Would you still have done it, if you’d known?”

A smile curled in the corner of his mouth, almost a grimace, and the same mixed humour lurked in his eyes when he looked up. “Because everything else worked out swimmingly otherwise? Where do I even start to rewrite my decisions, princess, once I begin?”

She laughed and was surprised by it.

“Let me see your hand.” He held out his hand for hers.

She ignored it and instead examined her own palm. The cold water had helped; it was red but hadn’t blistered. That was something, at least. She relented, extending it towards him. “Put a bit of the poultice on it before you wrap it. It helps with pain and inflammation.”

He followed her instructions, each touch of his fingers sending zings of awareness through her, a welcome distraction from the throb of the burn.

“I’m going to need more bandages if we continue to accumulate injuries at this rate,” he said mildly. “Might I suggest we desist from doing so until the next shopping trip?”

“Shopping trip?”

“The house can’t supply all its own materials, though it does manage a great deal. The Goblin Market is highly anonymous, or sometimes I order things by post.”

The glimpse into his mundane life fascinated her, but belatedly, her conscience pulled her back a few sentences to the bandage reference. “How is your arm?” She ought to have remembered sooner, except that he excelled at giving the impression of being fine. He’s even better than you are at it .

He smiled, a spark of mischief in his eyes. “Oh, so you haven’t entirely forgotten trying to kill me, then? It’s improving. Fae heal faster than humans. There.” He carefully finished bandaging her hand and returned it to her, nothing in his demeanour suggesting the touch affected him.

She could be just as unaffected. “Does this mean no more magic lessons?”

His nose wrinkled. “Perhaps theoretical lessons might be better until I can figure out what is causing the instability. Clearly the bond between us is impacting it, but I can’t tell exactly how .”

She thought of the miles of ornamental gold in the house. “How am I to keep from exploding things in the meantime? Your house is full of gold; it’s impossible I won’t touch some of it at the wrong moment at some point. Even the taps in my bathroom are inlaid with gold detailing.”

“I see now that I ought not to have let the house indulge in such excess. The magazines gave it ideas, you see,” he apologised.

She paused in her inspection of her new bandage, not sure she’d heard correctly. “Magazines?”

“I let Skymallow subscribe to interior decorating publications. I think it might have been a mistake,” he admitted.

“I could have overruled it; it’s my hand doing the carving and gilding, after all, but it was so taken with this particular style that I didn’t have the heart to—” He broke off because she couldn’t hold her laughter back any longer.

This wasn’t yesterday’s hysteria; this was sheer delight. “Your house subscribes to magazines. There are magazines in Faerie.” She didn’t know which part of that amused her more.

“We’re fae, not barbarians,” he said with dignity, but his eyes danced. “All right, fine. I suppose it is a little unusual for a house to have its own subscription. But Skymallow only has me for company; it needs more distractions than most siden. For both our sakes,” he added fervently.

“That makes me even more reluctant to risk damaging Skymallow’s favourite decor.”

“I suppose… but no—” Whatever he’d thought of had drained the amusement from him. The softer, sunlit version of him folded away, replaced by this nobleman with sharp-cut cheekbones and guarded eyes.

She didn’t know what to make of the ominous mood shift. “Just tell me,” she prompted in the end. “You’ve clearly thought of something.”

His tail lashed. “I will think of something else.”

“Why don’t you tell me what it is before you go deciding my fate for me again?”

He flinched. “Dismae. They block fae magic when worn.”

This sounded perfect to her, but…“I assume there’s a reason you sound like you’re announcing a horrible wasting disease?”

He gave a hollow laugh. “Most fae would not be excited to have their magic bound. It’s uncomfortable.”

“Painful?” His deep-seated dread seeping through the bond was giving her chills, despite the sunshine.

He shook his head. “No, but besides making one vulnerable, dismae muffle one’s sense of the world. It’s the magical equivalent of walking around with your ears stuffed.” He shivered.