Someone you trust has already betrayed you.
“How did you get in?” I ask. My key turned, met resistance. The tumblers moved. I have been taught the humble art of lock picking, and though I am no prodigy, I can at least tell when a door is locked in the first place.
“Oh,” Taryn says, and laughs. “I posed as you and got a copy of your key.”
I want to kick a wall. Surely everyone knows I have a twin sister. Surely everyone knows mortals can lie. Ought someone not have at least asked a question she might find tricky to answer before handing over access to palace rooms? To be fair, though, I have myself lied again and again and gotten away with it. I can hardly begrudge Taryn for doing the same.
It’s my bad luck that tonight is when she chooses to barge in, with Cardan’s clothing scattered over my rug and a heap of his bloody bandages still on a low table.
“I persuaded Madoc to gift the remainder of Tatterfell’s debt to you,” Taryn announces. “And I’ve brought you all your coats and dresses and jewels.”
I look into the imp’s inkdrop eyes. “You mean Madoc has her spying for him.”
Tatterfell’s lip curls, and I am reminded how sharply she pinches. “Aren’t you a sly and suspicious girl? You ought to be ashamed, saying such a thing.”
“I am grateful for the times you were kind,” I say. “If Madoc has given your debt to me, consider it paid long ago.”
Tatterfell frowns unhappily. “Madoc spared my lover’s life when he could have taken it by right. I pledged him a hundred years of my service, and that time is nearly up. Do not dishonor my vow by thinking it can be dismissed with a wave of your hand.”
I am stung by her words. “Are you sorry he sent you?”
“Not yet,” she says, and goes back to work.
I head toward my bedroom, picking up Cardan’s bloody rags before Tatterfell can. As I pass the hearth, I toss them into the flames. The fire flares up.
“So,” I ask my sister, “what did you bring me?”
She points to my bed, where she has spread my old things on my newly rumpled sheets. It’s odd to see the clothes and jewels I haven’t had in months, the things Madoc bought for me, the things Oriana approved. Tunics, gowns, fighting gear, doublets. Taryn even brought the homespun I used to sneak around Hollow Hall and the clothes we wore when we snuck to the mortal world.
When I look at it all, I see a person who is both me and not. A kid who went to classes and didn’t think the stuff she was learning would be all that important. A girl who wanted to impress the only dad she knew, who wanted a place in the Court, who still believed in honor.
I am not sure I fit in these clothes anymore.
Still, I hang them in my closet, beside my two black doublets and a single pair of high boots.
I open a box of my jewels. Earrings given to me for birthdays, a golden cuff, three rings—one with a ruby that Madoc gave me on a blood moon revel, one with his crest that I don’t even remember receiving, and a thin gold one that was a present from Oriana. Necklaces of carved moonstone, chunks of quartz, carved bone. I slide the ruby ring onto my left hand.
“And I brought some sketches,” she says, taking out a pad of paper and sitting cross-legged on my bed. Neither of us are great artists, but her drawings of clothing are easy to understand. “I want to take them to my tailor.”