Page 10 of The Hocus Pocus Handbook

I angle my hands, shielding them from the guards, and check to see if the boggart is paying attention. He’s slouched in his chair, perusing an illustrated book. He might understand what I’m saying, if he looked over, as the wild fae have learned to speak silently when we’re blocked from mind singing. But the jailor’s loyalties likely lie with the high fae, so I’d rather he didn’t catch us. This entire area is shielded, so I can’t touch Mudge’s mind with mine. Swiftly, I sign, I love you. Be careful.

Because his hands are bound and the guards are watching, Mudge only nods, his thickly lashed eyes watchful.

I turn to the guards. “Our deal has been honored. We can go.”

My attendants pick up the pace, making up for lost time, and we jog to the great hall, so I’m breathless when we reach the massive doors. They bang open with a grandiose clack, and like everything else in the Winter Palace, they are white etched with silver, and rivers of light glance off the glaring skull-white of the floors and walls, making it difficult to focus. Finally, my gaze settles on the crowd arranged in a semicircle before the thrones currently occupied by Lord Liskaal and Lady Valnevi.

It’s a little unnerving how much they resemble each other, but that’s by choice since the high fae can shift forms as I might change clothing. I can only surmise that their ideas of beauty are thin, as narrow as what fits through the eye of a needle. The oversize chairs should diminish them, but somehow they don’t; they appear to be carved out of actual ice, though I don’t think that’s the case, and within the semitranslucent crystal, there are flickers of faces with screaming mouths.

So. Unsettling.

Gradually, the whispers quiet, and there is no music to soften the tension. On happier occasions, where the wedding isn’t so much of a criminal sentence, there would be musicians and acrobats and scintillating displays of fae magic, like birds shaped from pure light and wintry crystalline flowers that bloom from smooth stone columns.

“We are gathered here today to put aside old wounds and grudges and usher in a new era of peace,” Lord Liskaal intones.

The guards step to the side, and I proceed with measured steps toward the center of the hall. My would-be spouse should be arriving soon.

I search the crowd for any familiar faces, and I recognize Lady Almira. She is dressed in a gown that resembles the one I refused, all diaphanous layers so fine, they could’ve been woven with spider silk. When she moves, her skin shimmers, hints of ocean pearl mirrored in the tiny shells she wears instead of gems, a nod to her family’s undine connections. I don’t recognize the lord beside her, but he is cloaked in white feathers, his suit a misty gray, the shoulders bedecked with crystalline thorns.

Shadows shift across their faces, and in the ebb and flow, their features are first austerely beautiful and then monstrously terrible with hints at feral natures covered by a deep, impermeable glamour. It’s impossible to know a high fae’s true appearance unless you’ve grown intimate with them. And I have no such relationships among the nobility.

Not even with those who have been recorded as my parents.

I’m not surprised Rain and Fen aren’t here. From what I know, they’ve been visiting their daughter in the mortal realm, bringing gifts and showering love. She’s their real child. I’m the changeling.

And while there are ways my birth family could contact me, so far they haven’t. I don’t know if I want them to. They didn’t even notice that I had been taken. Maybe I shouldn’t blame them, as the fae glamour the infant left behind to resemble the one taken, and as the magic fades, any lack of resemblance is attributed to a child’s natural changes.

Which leaves me in a strange state of in-between, belonging nowhere and sought only by the wild fae.

“Where is the delegation from the Summer Court?” Lady Valnevi asks.

A courier rushes into the room and flies like an arrow directly to her side, whispering with no small amount of agitation. When you don’t fit in, you acquire the ability to read the room and determine the prudent course. I don’t always act on that information, but I always possess it. Based on body language, there’s been a complication. That could be good for me, but not if it harms Da in any fashion.

Lady Valnevi clenches her jaw and speaks through her teeth. “Then find them. Who allowed them to wander our halls unescorted?”

“Yes, my lady. At once.”

“There will be a short delay,” Lord Liskaal says smoothly.

This may be what Erdene mentioned before, and I’ll pay tithe and tribute to the palace staff for the rest of my life if this is a distraction and they’re freeing Da. That’s the best I can hope for in this silly dress.

“In the meantime”—Lady Valnevi rises as she speaks, prowling toward me like a white serpent—“I would have you seal the marital agreement.”

“Seal?” I ask.

In answer, she produces a blade of pure ice—out of nowhere, or her body—and slices the tip of my finger. Before I can agree or protest, my bloody fingerprint joins another on an ornate vellum scroll that I haven’t been allowed to read. I lean closer, trying to skim some words, but Lady Valnevi draws back, as if she might be contaminated by my proximity.

“It is done,” she says.

Then the hall quakes with a subterranean shiver, and all the lights go out. Beneath my feet, I feel the continued vibrations, as though an immense beast lumbers in our direction. The palace brownies hastily kindle illumination, but foxfire? It’s whimsical and unreliable, ghosting around the hall. Something is making the lights very nervous. I get only the barest glimpse before I’m hit from behind, not so much blackjacked as trampled.

I pitch forward, and a court lady kicks my temple with her dainty, sparkly shoes, and that’s the last thing I see for a while.

6

Naked Blade

This piece is carved into the inside of a door, the outline of a sword with an emblem etched into the blade. The details of the emblem are vague, incomplete, so it’s impossible to discern what it’s meant to represent. And the blade itself is flawed, with lines indicating where it will, one day, break from that implicit fault. There is no hand present in the design to wield the blade, nor is there a sheath to shelter it. The blade is the focus, the beginning and the end.