Page 79 of The Starling and the Hatter

“She was our mother,” I said, shocked by just how heartless he sounded.

“She was a drain on our resources.”

I bit my tongue and took a deep breath. We would never agree on this. He would never give me answers about her. “Why plant the ring on me?” I asked again, needing to at least have that answered.

“The three of us were a team. We suffered together.”

“You mean, you made me suffer,” I corrected.

He ignored me and kept talking. “So when I saw you standing among the other acts, having earned the praise and notoriety we’d worked to achieve for years, I thought it was time that you had to work a little harder, suffer a little more. There are consequences to disloyalty.”

So he really did hate me. I had to swallow down my anger and hurt several times before I could talk past it. “Well. Now you get to see me suffer. And you can suffer along with me.” I turned away, running my hand over my face, unable to believe that this cell was now the reality of my life. Then I turned around. “And what about Robert White?” I asked. “I know he helped you. Are you really content to let him go free while you rot in here?” I looked around, noticing the cell that was beside Daggon’s. A mound of dirty fabric, in the shape of a person, lay on the bench inside. A filthy foot stuck out from underneath. I sucked in an alarmed breath. Was that person dead? Was that to be my fate? Flies buzzed around the filthy lump, but there was no movement to swat it away. There was no movement at all. I swallowed hard and forced my eyes back to my brother. “We’ll waste away together, I suppose—the three infamous Wolfe siblings—while White the magician goes free.”

Daggon just stared at me, his eyes cold and accusatory. I pulled my gaze away and tried to look to the cell beside me, but there was nothing but wall and dark corridor to see. “And what about you, Morley?” I yelled in his direction, frustrated that he had stayed silent this entire time. “Don’t you want to tell me what an ungrateful sister I am?” Because if he did, I’d rather get it over with now. If I were going to stand with arms outstretched and receive the arrows, I wanted them from all sides. Let the pain come now, all together so I could be done with it. “Nothing to say?” I taunted, my voice tight with anger and hurt. “You’ll just let Daggon do all the talking for you?”

Still, he didn’t say anything, and somehow his apathy was even worse than Daggon’s hatred. I could combat words. I could fight against them and contradict them. I could return anger for anger. But Morley’s silence sliced to my core, leaving me with hope that he didn’t hate me, but without any actual proof.

Suddenly I was too tired to hold my head up, and I let it drop against the bars of my cell door as I fought mightily against the tears that wanted to come. Then I turned my back and shuffled over to the hard bench, lying down on it and fixing my gaze on the dark, dirty corner of my prison.

Maddox

After stepping out into the palace grounds, the logical course of action would have been to simply leave. Walk down the path and through the great doors of the outer wall.

But then what? If I left Elise here in the dungeon, where would I go and what would I do? I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t go back to my father and tell him that our Elise had been accused of stealing from the duchess herself and that she was now languishing in a dungeon cell. I wanted to help, but I didn’t know what I could possibly do that would be helpful.

So I stood there on the steps, unable to go back, unwilling to go forward, my gut churning with fear and anxiety. I looked out over the grounds, now lit only by torches placed at intervals. I spotted two guards as they stopped to confer with one another, and realized they were looking for White. Suddenly, I had a target for all my anger. I moved down the stairs, slowing my pace as I passed by the guards.

“Gone, just gone,” one of them said. “None of the men posted at the wall saw him leave.”

“So he’s still here?”

“Unless he already climbed the wall.”

The second man rubbed the back of his hand across his forehead. “Keep searching. And send someone into the maze.” He started walking away, muttering, “It’s a security nightmare” as his armor creaked and his sword thwapped against his leg.

I looked up at the palace, trying to imagine Robert hiding away inside, but that seemed unlikely. Festival rats didn’t like being trapped inside. I studied the outer wall that surrounded the grounds. It was tall, and while it could be climbed, I didn’t think Robert was likely to take that route. He was an illusionist, not an acrobat.

The maze then? The guard had been right, it was an easy place to hide. Plenty of shadows and cover. But with the way the guards’ armor tended to announce their movements, I doubted their pursuit would flush him out. He’d hear them coming and give them the slip.

I might as well search it myself, because if I could discover something that had even the possibility of helping Elise, I had to do it. I stepped off the stone pathway and walked toe-to-heel toward the maze, making my steps as light and fluid as possible. Entering the deeper darkness of the close-growing hedges heightened my other senses. My breathing sounded loud to my ears, and the temperature of the air grew just a little colder. As I stalked through the darkness, I both heard and saw the guard that was searching the maze as he approached, a lighted torch in hand. I stepped onto an alternate path and hurried away from the light.

He passed me by without much difficulty on my part.

They would never find White searching that way, which made me think that this was exactly where he was hiding.

I continued to creep through the maze on quiet feet, not knowing how much time was passing, but it felt infinite. After I’d traversed the maze and found both the entrance and exit twice, I decided to look elsewhere.

I searched the main garden paths, sticking to the shadows as I ducked under flower-strewn arches and crossed a tiny decorative bridge over a narrow trickle of water. I climbed up into a tree in the orchard and sat, waiting for any noise or movement, then moved on to the rose garden, all the while hoping that White hadn’t snuck out of the grounds before the guards had set the perimeter.

25

Elise

I’d been closing my eyes, trying to focus inward, when the scrape of metal on metal caught my attention. I ignored it for a few moments more, but when an even deeper sense of unease crept in, I opened my eyes.

Daggon was no longer sitting in the middle of his cell. Instead, he crouched at the door, his arms stuck through the bars.

Saints. He was picking the lock.