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Chapter 42

Nora

Modesty had never worn her namesake well. But today, it fit her particularly scantily. In fact, Nora could see right through it.

Even from the opposite side of the party, Nora could feel the gloating oozing off her cousin as she told the story of her encounter with the troll for the fifth time, brandishing two rings. The temperance ring on her ring finger, a new one made of oak on her middle finger. Oak for courage.

She would have to have courage to wear that dress to the governor’s victory party, Nora supposed.

The votes wouldn’t even be fully cast, let alone counted, for hours. But Hugo Arndt had already won. After the disaster of the riots just two days before the election, it was quietly but unanimously decided among the upper circles that Governor Gerwald’s days were numbered. It was time for one of their own to take charge.

For his victory celebration, the garden of the Arndt mansion had been made to look like the woods from a painted storybook. Trees made of glass and gold and silver were dotted through the manicured garden. From their branches hung fruits made of sugar glass, brightly colored drinks in each one.

Modesty was holding a glass apple she had plucked from a nearby tree, sipping at the red and gold-flecked drink inside as she dramatically told her story to the assembled crowd.

All in all, it was probably a good thing Nora hadn’t won the Veritaz ring for temperance, because the rage coursing through her right now would have surely burned it straight off her hand.

Modesty winning one ring was a bad day. A fluke Nora could chalk up to any number of pieces of bad luck.

But a second ring…

It was possible Nora had underestimated her cousin. Or overestimated herself. No, that wasn’t possible. It must be the first one.

Hugo Arndt, the new governor, was standing on the steps of the mansion, glad-handing. “…easy enough to round them up.” She caught the edge of something he was saying to Albertine von Hoff. “All we have to do is wait and see who casts their vote for Isengrim.”

Nora had heard that some countries had anonymous voting. Obviously that would never work in Gamanix, since wealth weighted votes. And the lack of anonymity would make it easy enough for Hugo Arndt to know who had voted against him. And then to round them up .

And suddenly Nora was desperately bored . She was so bored of all of this, of every single one of these people. They were all so predictably simple in their way of thinking. And not a single one of them really understood anything . People could accuse Nora of not caring about their problems, but they could never accuse her of not understanding them.

“I have a question for you, Governor,” Nora interrupted. When a Holtzfall spoke, the governor listened. “Why do you think the lower circles might vote for Isengrim?”

“Well.” Hugo chuckled, and Nora suddenly remembered the time this man had ridden a horse into a party because its coat matched his outfit. “Because they’re poor, for starters.” The crowd around him laughed, and Nora felt anger rise up in her.

“And so because they didn’t choose you, they deserve to be rounded up and imprisoned? Perhaps that explains why so many more people would rather follow Isengrim than you.” Nora could feel herself enjoying the attention, even as a mutter ran through the crowd.

What would she do with the heirship if she had it?

This.

Hugo Arndt’s smile had become fixed. “Perhaps the Holtzfall Heiress and I could have a meeting in private about what best—”

“She’s not the Holtzfall Heiress anymore.” Modesty had meandered over from her rapt audience. “So if you’d like to meet with me , I’m certainly open to ideas of how to crush the Grims for good.”

Nora didn’t realize that she was turning to stride toward Modesty until suddenly there was a figure in her way. It took her a second to realize it was Lotte. Nora was briefly distracted by how incredible Lotte looked wearing the impeccably tailored white silk dress they had bought her. She should have paired it with pearls as well as the gloves perhaps.

And then her mind returned to Modesty.

“I’ve already proven I’m intemperate,” Nora said in a low voice. “There’s nothing to stop me slapping her now.”

“Not even cameras?” Lotte was right, Nora realized. This was the governor’s election party. There were journalists here. All of them armed with lenses and flashbulbs.

Reluctantly, she let Lotte draw her away, ignoring Modesty’s smirk, until they were out of the crowd.

“I would say I owe you one.” Nora shook dark hair off her face, trying to shrug off the unfamiliar feeling of being grateful to one of her cousins. “But I did save your life the other day, so we’ll call it even.”

“Well, imagine you did owe me one,” Lotte said. “For standing me up last night, for instance.”

Amidst infiltrating the Grims and being attacked by a troll, Nora hadn’t had time to come up with a lie about why she’d failed to meet Lotte last night. And before she could, Lotte pulled something from inside her long white silk glove. “I found this at Johannes & Grete.”

Nora recognized the charm instantly. “A bloodvenn.”

Of course. Nora felt like a fool for not realizing that would be what to look for at Johannes & Grete. And then her mind pulled her back a few moments. “Wait, did you go back to Johannes & Grete last night without me ?” She hadn’t anticipated that.

“You thought I’d wait for you?” Lotte raised her pale blonde eyebrows, all pretense of innocence gone from her face.

“Yes,” Nora added. “Or, honestly, I didn’t think you’d be able to get in without me.”

“In that case, it was extra rude to stand me up, wasn’t it?”

Not as rude as trying to steal the information to sell out her cousin’s secrets to Oskar Wallen, but Nora didn’t say that. “Color me impressed, then.” And she meant it.

“So what’s a bloodvenn?” Lotte asked, holding the small glass charm up to the light.

“It’s a charm to make sure that all Holtzfalls are in fact really Holtzfalls,” Nora said drily. “If an impostor ever laid claim to the ax…” A cascade of consequences too terrible to even contemplate went through Nora’s mind. She pushed them aside with a small shiver running through her. “About two hundred years ago, it turned out that Providence Holtzfall’s wife had been unfaithful. None of her three children were his, and no one was the wiser until the day of the ceremony, when the Huldrekall had to break it to him that he had no heirs. That was the last time, before this generation, that a Veritaz was held between Holtzfall cousins instead of siblings, incidentally. In order to avoid such situations, a charmier created bloodvenns. You put two people’s drops of blood on the glass. If they repel, then there is no shared blood. But if they share blood, then the drops will find each other in the charmed glass. The closer they draw together, the more blood they share.”

Nora held the pressed glass up to the sun. “Like they have here. The children of all Holtzfall fathers are tested at birth to make sure they really are Holtzfalls and not the result of straying wives. Before you ask, regrettably, yes, Constance and Clemency did both pass the test. But in your case, there would be no need to test for Holtzfall blood since you are obviously your mother’s child. Which means this other drop of blood isn’t meant to identify our side of the family. It’s meant to identify the other one.”

Nora had sworn off the hunt for her mother’s murderer just hours ago. It was a distraction. It was the reason she had lost. The irony that she might now be holding the answer that Oskar Wallen wanted was not lost on her.

“So in other words,” Lotte was saying, “this is entirely useless unless we know who the other drop of blood belongs to.”

“Well, our grandmother isn’t exactly in the habit of labeling her secrets.” Nora squinted at the glass again, holding it up to the light, moving it back and forth, their reflection dancing over the glass.

She wondered…

Nora pressed her finger to the glass, summoning her Holtzfall gift. There was a flash of movement in the glass as the reflection began to wind back. They were silent as Nora searched in the small piece of glass. “It’s a lot easier with mirrors,” she muttered, keeping her attention on the glass.

Suddenly, Nora’s reflection shifted, becoming Mercy Holtzfall’s. A few years younger, but still the unmistakably steely Holtzfall matriarch. She was leaning over the glass, an eyedropper in her hand. A dot of blood fell onto the glass, obscuring her face. They waited for one beat. Two.

For the second drop of blood.

And then another figure came into the reflection.

Liselotte Rydder. Mercy Holtzfall’s sworn knight.

Nora expected her to draw out another eyedropper. Some blood taken from some man who wasn’t present. But instead she drove a small pin into her finger, the blood blooming on her finger before dropping onto the glass.

The charm sparked to life instantly, drawing the two blood drops together, obscuring the faces staring down at it. Nora pulled her finger away sharply, her breath catching as she released the old reflection, leaving only Lotte’s and Nora’s faces staring into the glass.

Nora had wondered, more than once, what scandal could be so great that it was easier to spirit Lotte away to a convent than for Grace to just marry the man.

She had even begun to wonder if Lotte really was half immortal spirit.

But her father wasn’t a forest being. He wasn’t a 1st-circle dalliance.

He was a Rydder knight.

Which, out of all the possible options, was the most terrifying one.

There were a lot of secrets in the Holtzfall family. But there was one that hung over any other: why it was so fundamentally important for Holtzfalls never to fraternize with the knights. It was a lesson taught over and over again. But the real reason why it was so dangerous, that was only known by Heiresses.

Nora had been an Heiress, once.

She glanced at Lotte out of the corner of her eye, her whole being suddenly aware of her cousin. In a matter of seconds, Lotte had gone from some youthful indiscretion of Aunt Grace’s to a weapon that could bring the Holtzfalls to their knees.

Lotte’s mere existence threatened this family.

This wasn’t a secret Nora could trade to Oskar Wallen, even if that was what had started all of this.

“Lotte—” Nora’s hand brushed her cousin’s arm as she reached for the bloodvenn. But before Nora could say anything, the emotions cascading across Lotte’s face suddenly shifted, her brows furrowing. Like she was listening to something far away.

“You were going to trade my father’s identity?” It took Nora a beat to realize those words had come from Lotte and not her own mind. “You manipulated me into finding out this information because you wanted to trade it?”

Nora’s whole being felt like ice had just dropped over her. How could Lotte possibly know that? Had Modesty told her? No, impossible. Modesty was a tool in her manipulation, but she had no idea of Nora’s endgame.

“Who were you going to trade it to?” Lotte’s voice cracked and, to Nora’s horror, she saw tears in her cousin’s eyes. “To the gossip columns?”

“No—” For the first time in Nora’s life, she felt like her mind wouldn’t work properly, tripping over itself to find some lie even as she reeled away from Lotte’s uncanny knowledge. There was only one way that Lotte could know that. “You’re a mind reader,” Nora realized aloud. It hadn’t even crossed her mind that her cousin would have a Holtzfall gift. Constance and Clemency were born without them, after all. Let alone one of the most coveted Holtzfall gifts there was—

Before Lotte could deny it, movement caught the corner of Nora’s eye, her head whipping around. But all she saw was the carefully manicured hedges that were dotted through the garden.

“Did you see—”

Nora didn’t have time to finish before everything in the garden seemed to burst into motion. Thick green branches sprouted out of the manicured hedges that hemmed the garden, spreading in all directions. Nora and Lotte were on their feet even as the screaming started.

Grass rose up, twisting at an impossible speed around people as trees spread into walls, cutting Nora and Lotte off from the party. Branches and brambles wove themselves into shapes, climbing out and upward.

Nora thought about running, but that was what had cost her the last trial.

Her heart picked up speed in anticipation as the hedges twisted and writhed up and up and up, shaping themselves into a maze around them. This was another trial, another chance for her to prove herself. Another chance to win a ring. Another—

Nora blinked.

And the garden was gone. Instead she was staring at a memorandum charm as it clicked shut.