“Hard luck,” I say, indicating the chair in front of my desk. The one to which, five long months ago, Cardan had been tied. “Come sit.”
I can see his face in hers. They share those ridiculous cheekbones, that soft mouth.
She sits, gaze turning sharply to me. “I have a powerful thirst.”
“Do you now?” the Roach asks, licking a corner of his lip with his black tongue. “Perhaps a cup of wine would restore you.”
“I am chilled, too,” she tells him. “Cold down to the bone. Cold as the sea.”
The Roach shares a look with me. “You tarry here with our own Shadow Queen, and I will see to the rest.”
I do not know what I did to deserve such an extravagant title and fear it has been bestowed upon me as one might bestow an enormous troll with the moniker “Tiny,” but it does seem to impress her.
The Roach steps out, leaving us alone. My gaze follows him for a moment, thinking of the Bomb and her secret. Then I turn to Lady Asha.
“You said you knew my mother,” I remind her, hoping to draw her out with that, until I can figure out how to move on to what I really must know.
Her expression is of slight surprise, as though she is so distracted by her surroundings that she forgot her reason for being here. “You resemble her very strongly.”
“Her secrets,” I prompt. “You said you knew secrets about her.”
Finally, she smiles. “Eva found it tedious to have to do without everything from her old life. Oh, it was fun for her at first to be in Faerieland—it always is—but eventually they get homesick. We used to sneak across the sea to be among mortals and take back little things she missed. Bars of waxy chocolate. Perfume. Pantyhose. That was before Justin, of course.”
Justin and Eva. Eva and Justin. My mother and my father. My stomach lurches at the thought of their being two people Asha knew better than I ever did.
“Of course,” I echo anyway.
She leans forward, across the desk. “You look like her. You look like them both.”
And you look like him, I think but do not say.
“You’ve heard the story, I’ll wager,” Asha says. “How one or both of them killed a woman and burned the body to hide your mother’s disappearance from Madoc. I could tell you about that. I could tell you how it happened.”
“I brought you here so you could do just that,” I tell her. “So you could tell me everything you know.”
“Then have me thrown back in the Tower? No. My information is worth a price.”
Before I can answer, the door opens, and the Roach comes in carrying a tray piled with cheese and brown bread and a steaming cup of spiced wine. He wears a cape over his shoulders, and after setting down the food, he sweeps it onto her like a blanket.