* * *
“What happened?”
It was Rosier’s voice, harsher than I’d ever heard it.
I opened my eyes, and got an odd glimpse of a room, like I was lying on the floor with people’s feet scurrying in front of me.
Maybe because I was lying on the floor with people’s feet scurrying in front of me. My hair was in my face, and this time it was brown. This body was annoyed by that. It wished it had enough strength to remove the glamourie. It didn’t want to die with brown hair.
Or in a female guise. What if the glamourie was too good? What if no one came back for him? What if they left his essence to be absorbed by such a place, always alone, always searching, always trying to connect to what he could never hope to see—
Someone kicked me.
“This one.” It was the older, redheaded witch I’d met at Nimue’s. She looked like she’d like to kill me again, only I was already pretty close. She must have thought so, too, because she didn’t waste the energy.
“One of your own?” Rosier asked, looking confused.
“No. Svarestri.” In her mouth, the name sounded like a curse. “His kind gutted him and slapped a glamourie on him, so we’d think one of ours had been wounded. We had this place locked down while we tried to break Nimue’s spell and get the princess out. But you know how she is. A healer won’t refuse help to the injured.”
“And now that she is the one injured?”
The redhead’s lips all but disappeared, and she didn’t answer. But she shook her head. For a moment, no one spoke.
“And Emrys?” Rosier rasped.
“He showed up just after everything went to hell. Got caught up in the fighting one floor down, or he might have seen it. Glad he didn’t.”
“Where is he now?”
The redhead looked defensive. “We told him. We had to. The damn Svarestri came after her as soon as Aeslinn sprang his trap. They knew she was a threat, but they don’t know about him. Don’t even know he’s her son. She hid him well.”
“Hid?”
The redhead opened her mouth, but someone else made a sound. And Rosier turned away. To where Morgaine was resting by the fire.
I thought that was odd. Why was she on the floor? Sure, she had blankets around her and a pillow between her and the wall, but still . . .
And then I noticed the blood-soaked breast of her gown, and understood.
“I always wanted to be fey,” she said softly as Rosier knelt beside her. “My mother’s dream, passed on to me. She sent me to court, when I was young. But I—” She broke off, gasping.
“You don’t have to speak.” Rosier’s voice was gentle, unlike any I’d ever heard from him, but Morgaine shook her head.
“No. I want to. I must.”
He didn’t try to dissuade her again.
“My sisters stayed behind. Their magic was weak, and they didn’t seem drawn to it as I was. But I jumped at the chance. It was so lovely there, so unlike anything I’d ever seen. I thought my father’s stronghold fearsome once, a great craggy fortress on the coast, the waves smashing into the rocks below like thunder whenever there was a storm. But hers . . . the throne room sits in a huge cavern, under a river. Did I ever tell you?”
He shook his head.
“It glides along suspended overhead, like a great jeweled snake. It casts the most beautiful light everywhere, emerald rays streaming down and moving across the floor. It makes the whole cave gleam like a gemstone. . . . It’s beautiful. Like so much about their world. . . .”
She trailed off, and for a moment, I thought that would be it. She looked pale, her face almost waxen. The only color came from the soft glow of the fire.
But she rallied. “It was my mother’s dream, but it was mine, too. Fey magic was so much stronger, its pull so much sweeter. Earth magic came hard, and grudgingly, to my hand. But theirs . . . tasted like honey.”
“Temptation usually does,” Rosier said softly.