Page 28 of The Court of Venus

“Was that what you intended?” Prospero asked.

I nodded shyly.

“Clever girl. When and where were you born?”

I told him the date and the time. I told him it was here, in this very inn, that my mother had bled out from the trauma of my birth. That the first thing I ever felt inside another person’s mind was my father’s grief.

“And what am I feeling at this very moment?” he asked.

No one had ever asked me before. I explained how emotions reminded me of portraits, rich in color and texture. Right now, he was eager and curious, but there was also a swatch of impatience inside of him, too. Was he running late?

He smiled. He was indeed days late to see the king, he said.

“With proper training, I hope you will be capable of even more. You may be able to transform yourself into any creature. To step into memory. To grasp hold of emotion and change it. Do you know a magician aligned with the Moon has never been recorded? Only in legends. That’s her magic in your veins.” He murmured, “Moon eyes and hair. Maiden fair.”

I shook my head as he pulled out a worn book and began flipping through the pages. The illustrations were peculiar, even slightly grotesque. An old man beneath a full Moon, transforming himself into a wolf, into a falcon, into a youth.

“She is the closest celestial body in the sky,” he continued, his gaze shining with new hunger. “Her face always shifting. There is an entire side to her we’ll never see, and I suspect the same is true for you. I’d like to bring you to court. You will make my councilors very afraid.”

“How do I know for sure you are who you say?” I asked.

He chuckled. “I’d be honored to give you a memory.”

“I’d like one with the king.”

And I saw it inside his mind as if it were a hand extended. He knelt beside the king in a private chapel. Beside him was a lanky boy with pink hair and a sour smirk and a slightly younger boy with the chiseled looks of the king, the same gray eyes. The pink-haired boy was struggling to keep his eyes closed, kept peering at the other one and fidgeting.

“Prospero,” the king said softly. Light filtered through the stained glass, the rays falling before his feet. “What shall I pray for if I already have everything?”

After that, Prospero took me away.

After that, I didn’t know what to pray for either. For years, I had everything I ever wanted. And then I lost it all.

A blurry head was hovering over me, peering down. All at once, I was wet and ice cold, a woman again. My leg was throbbing, the wound bleeding through the wrappings, so deep I could still see a sliver of bone.

Edward Guildford’s long, thin face came into focus. “Apologies,” he stuttered, glancing away from my chest.

I was in a strange bed, and there was a weight on the end of it. Roland waved a dismissive hand. “Ed, fetch her fresh bandages, please.”

Edward bowed and scurried off.

When Roland set my ruined thigh in his lap, I tried to pull it away. “Hold still. I’m working on it bit by bit.” I watched as his dawn-colored magic flowed forward, a tide of light, and knit another inch of the wound.

“It still hurts.”

“Yes, well, it looks nicer. You’ll be in pain for days, I’m sure.”

There was a bowl of bloody water on the table and a stack of cloth on the floor. He had been at this for hours, it seemed. “How did you do it?” I asked.

“Do what?”

“The bear.”

Roland frowned at the bedspread. “Oh, that. She was a mother. Desperate for her two cubs.” He bit the inside of his cheek, then released it. “To a Venusborn, there is no bond stronger, or more enduring, than the one between a parent and child. I stitched us together, made her believe I was hers. Another cub. It was a terrible trick to play on her. I don’t feel very good about it, but what else was I to do? I use that particular talent sparingly. Today, I had no other choice.”

For a moment we sat together in silence, listening to rain strike against the palace windows, the wind shaking the trees. He sensed I yearned to know more.

“Venusborn magic can be monstrous,” he explained. “I could step inside your mind right now and make you desire me, or Ed, or—” A slight grimace. “Well, anyone at all. I could tie other bonds, too. Ed could be your child. You’d sing him a lullaby and rock him to sleep. That would be a sight. Or he could be your closest, most cherished friend. You would never doubt his loyalty.” He set my thigh down gently, throwing the cloth in the bowl, and turned his attention to my arm. “In Lionesse, I was taught things about magic even Prospero would shrink from.”