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MISTRESS MALLOW IS VICTORIOUS AGAIN!

A small rebellion broke out at Castle Javis last night, led by insurgents and Evermore sympathizers. The rocky beach at Javis provided minor cover for the rebels as Mallow’s forces gathered and vanquished their foes.

There were limited casualties for the Bomardi at the skirmish, but considerable losses for the rebels who scrambled back to their hole in the ground, their tails between their legs.

In the wake of the new International Portal Prohibition, the rebels attempted to cross the portal barrier by boat, bypassing the line by non-magical means.

Orion Hearst was first on the scene, ruthlessly cutting off the boat supply and taking out several essential faces of the rebellion in the process, including cousin to Rory the Slain, Finola Rosewood.

B RIONY SQUEEZED HER EYES SHUT , struggling to take in air.

Finola was dead.

Orion had killed her.

It felt like her chest had been cracked open. Briony’s breath trembled.

Who else had died that day? Sammy? Didion? Would they have been mentioned?

She pressed a hand to her stomach and focused on breathing, swiping away the tears pouring down her face. She called back on her meditations.

Think of a lake with still waters.

After several minutes of deep breathing, her eyes dry once more, Briony was able to close off her emotional reaction and focus on the things she needed to cogitate.

There were portal boundaries, limiting travel to inside Moreland only.

Although it was rare to portal across countries and large bodies of water, it wasn’t unheard of.

People with exceptionally powerful magic could manage it.

But if Mallow had tightened the borders, if there were now actual magical limitations, that would make it incredibly difficult for people to get out of Bomard.

Was escape truly the plan for the remaining Eversuns? Not fighting?

The lake inside her mind rippled.

Orion Hearst killed Finola.

She braced herself on the wall, feeling breath pull sharply at her lungs.

How many others had died? The article only mentioned Finola.

The words “limited casualties for the Bomardi” ran across her eyes over and over. Was Toven one of the “limited casualties”?

She knew that the Journal was probably filled with propaganda these days, but would it actually gloss over the death of one of the Ten’s successors?

She took a ragged breath and pressed her face into her hands, trying to find that lake with still waters in her mind. When she opened her eyes a few moments later, a determined fire filled her chest.

Briony marched to the library. It didn’t matter if Mallow could see into her mind; she could no longer sit and wait.

The double doors swung open easily for her. She moved to the catalog and called up all books on magical brands. The shelves shook, and books of all sizes slithered out to hover in the aisles. Briony collected each of them and laid them out on the long research table.

She sat herself down and dove in.

***

The house began to respond to her requests gradually. It was almost as if the walls were in mourning—slow to respond, distracted in granting requests. She asked for breakfast the next morning and received roast duck. It was delicious, but it wasn’t breakfast.

Briony checked the Journal page first thing in the morning, researched in the library after breakfast, and explored Hearst Hall when she began to go cross-eyed in the afternoon.

Pacing and meditation failed to banish the horrified dread in her stomach, so she went out to the grounds and found the boundary again, reaching her arm out to test the tattoo.

It shocked her—unpleasant but not truly painful.

Walking the perimeter, she kept trying her arm on different spots until her fingers went numb and all her racing thoughts were forgotten.

She looked for Vesper in the forest, until she realized the fox must be with Toven as he recovered.

On the third day of her solitude, Briony was leaving the kitchen after a quick lunch when she passed the tapestry of the Ash Wood and the door to the meditation chamber. She pondered, again, who it was that used it at Hearst Hall.

Since Toven was the one to bring her to the chamber, did that mean he was the one who used it?

And why had he shown her where it was? Surely it was dangerous for Briony to know about such a room when it implied that the Hearsts used illegal mind magic in some way.

Especially if Mallow were to look inside her mind again.

Briony tilted her head at the door, thinking. She reached out to open it but didn’t step inside. The white walls stared back at her.

What an incredible risk he’d taken in showing her the meditation chamber … unless she was supposed to learn how to conceal its existence in her mind.

Briony thought of the moment the mind barriers book had slid from the bookshelf. The way it had come as if called. And Toven Hearst sitting innocently near the catalog.

If Toven had given her a book on mind barriers and then shown her the meditation chamber …

Toven Hearst wanted her to learn mind barriers. Why ? Because he wasn’t using her as a heartspring? Or were there more secrets in Hearst Hall than she could possibly imagine?

She gazed into the white room as if it held answers for her.

A chill passed over her as she remembered being locked inside—the way she’d scratched at the wall until the room released her.

Briony’s lips parted in thought. She’d believed Toven was punishing her for taking a book on mind barriers by locking her in the room, but he’d been just outside the door, waiting for her. Hadn’t he?

It reminded her suddenly of the night Vesper had attacked her. He’d appeared in the center of her room within seconds. She’d never considered where Toven’s bedroom was, but if he’d been ready for bed when he heard her scream, certainly his room was nearby.

Briony headed up to the second floor. She checked over every room on the floor, finding nothing. Frowning at her own door several paces away, she considered if Toven had just been passing through that night. If perhaps he’d come to check on her.

Sighing and resigning herself to searching the other wings of the hall in the morning, she turned to go to bed. Something flashed, catching the light, and she stumbled to a halt, turning to see the figure of a fox with an onyx eye winking at her from an ornate carved wooden door.

She blinked back at it. That door hadn’t been there a minute ago. It was charmed to blend in.

Her fingers touched the cool brass doorknob, turning it. The carved fox stared at her as she pushed the door open and stepped inside.

This was undoubtedly Toven Hearst’s bedroom. Grays and silvers. A Bomardi crest on the wall across from her. A dark-wooded bed. Bookshelves filled to bursting.

She moved inside, her nose picking up his familiar scent. She wondered again if he would ever return. Her chest tightened, and she swallowed.

The bedroom was on the corner of the house, with windows facing north and east. It was almost twice as large as her room, but there were similarities in the design.

As she looked it over, Briony realized that Toven Hearst had set her up in a suite as close as physically possible to him, and yet had not used her as his heartspring.

Why?

Briony wondered if the meditation chamber downstairs only scratched the surface of the ways the Hearsts rebelled against the Bomardi laws and customs. Was it possible that they did not support Mallow as fully as Briony had thought?

She turned her attention to the shelves, to the trinkets, searching for answers.

There was a carved statue of a fox next to a framed sketch of Toven with Finn and Liam. Neither item gave her any information.

Sliding closer to the bed, she gave in to the urge to drag her fingers across the fabric.

His sheets reminded her of her life before, when the thread counts were high, and gold and silver wound through every brocade.

The bed was made, and when she remembered the way he’d folded his trousers on the dock, she thought maybe it wasn’t the magic of the hall that took care of the tidiness.

She pulled open the drawers in his bedside table, finding nothing but trinkets.

The bookshelf near his bed was filled with familiar titles, and she let her hands drift along the books he kept close to him.

The bathroom had a similar tub to her own, tidy counters, and a mirror she could imagine him in, sweeping his hair back or deciding to let it loose.

She examined his products, some with expensive-sounding names.

She could imagine him here, stepping out of the tub, wrapped up in luscious towels, taking care of his fair skin with the creams and products in the drawers.

Her smile faded in the mirror as she wondered if he would ever complete those rituals again.

She pulled open the closet doors, finding a vast space for all of Toven Hearst’s grays and cobalts. She checked the pockets for anything interesting, some clue as to who he really was, and found nothing.

Although rifling through his drawers was a clear breach of privacy, she had bigger issues to worry about. She shoved aside her guilt and pulled open the next drawer.

Laid on top of other grays and blacks was a soft blue sweater that she wasn’t sure she’d seen him wear. It reminded her of the rich fabrics she used to wear as the Princess of Evermore. She had to resist the urge to bury her face in it.

She pulled open the drawers against the wall and blushed to find his trunks. Black. Of course. The next drawer was socks—none of them properly paired. She scowled down at the sock drawer, as if it was a problem to solve.

The bottom drawer had extra blankets and a black shoebox. She pried the top open and found nothing inside but a green lace ribbon.

Briony stared down at it for several moments, trying to place it, trying to account for its presence here, in Toven Hearst’s closet.

Because the ribbon looked an awful lot like one to tie back hair. Girls’ hair.

And as her mind cataloged it, bringing up thoughts and sending others back, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she knew this ribbon.

She carefully placed the lid back on the shoebox, feeling like she’d been caught doing something terribly invasive. Leaving Toven’s room, she returned to her own, letting her mind run as she leaned back on her closed door.

She blinked, rearranging the ideas in her mind, categorizing her findings.

There was a drawer in Toven Hearst’s bedroom that contained a shoebox. Inside that shoebox was a hair ribbon.

And try as she may to rationalize it in any other way … that ribbon was hers.