Briar Queen_ A Night and Nothing Novel - Katherine Harbour Page 0,97
the door. “You did well not to eat the Goblin fruit. It would have made you believe everything I told you.”
“What does she want from me?”
“A favor only a queen killer can grant her.” The door shut behind him.
Finn stared at the tangerine, the Goblin fruit, as it slowly unfurled, puffed out, and became a toadstool shaded a poisonous orange.
She jumped up and ran to the door, grabbed the handle, yanked. She braced herself and pulled with a mighty effort. She slammed herself against the wood, banged her fists against it, kicked it. The room had no windows. She wanted to claw at the walls.
She sank against the door and huddled there. They had taken her coat, her backpack, her friends.
AFTER WHAT SEEMED AN ETERNITY LATER, a girl in a porcelain mask came for Finn and led her down a hallway to another decaying chamber. “There are new clothes on the bed. Make yourself presentable.”
Finn brushed past her. “Thanks. Go away.”
“Don’t you want to know what’s going to happen to you—”
Finn turned and slammed the door in her face.
She wandered around what had once been a pretty room. It had the same pale, ancient colors as the rest of the hotel, but kudzu tumbled through the windows and the giant bed was hazed with cobwebs and dust. There was a bird’s nest in the fireplace and an electric lamp that flickered unreliably. She grimaced when she saw what had been laid out for her on the bed.
She put on the dress of crumpled, parchment-thin cotton the color of fresh blood, but kept her Doc Martens and tossed the red shoes out the window. She brushed the leaves from her hair in front of a tarnished mirror and scowled at the makeup left for her in a glass case. She grimly applied the lip stain and eye shadow. Her hands shook, but there was a core of ice within her that made her suspect the elixir had done more than change her scent. She would play their game, if only to convince them they’d broken her.
She searched for a weapon, found only a shard of glass. She flung it away and walked to a window, leaned out of it, saw a starlit tangle of garden, far below.
A familiar head stuck out of the window below hers.
“Sylv!” Finn gripped the sill. There was no sane way to climb down.
Sylvie leaned farther out, clutching the window frame, her dark hair swirling in the wind. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” Finn lied. “Are you really Sylvie?”
“Oh, Finn. What’re they doing to you?”
Moth leaned out beside Sylvie. Finn smiled to see him back in human form. He said, “Are you all right? I’m coming up.”
“No—”
But he gripped the window frame below and hauled himself onto a narrow molding that Finn hadn’t even considered as a foothold. She watched anxiously as he pushed himself up, as he clambered over the sill. His white, button-down shirt, silver tie, and trousers were smudged with dust. He looked disapprovingly around the room. “I don’t know what they’re dressing us up for.”
“You said they were ghouls.”
“Yes.” He prowled around, tried the door. “And they’re all bat-shit crazy.” He held up one wrist banded by what looked like barbed wire. “This keeps me from changing. The witch put it on me.”
“The . . . witch?”
“Amaranthus Mockingbird. An old thing.” Moth sat on the windowsill and glanced down. “This is my fault. Because I wronged Sionnach Ri. I wonder how many people I’ve done awful things to?” He looked up with a sudden smile that startled Finn. “I didn’t know I was so popular here.”
“Do you remember what you did? To Sionnach?”
His smile faded. “Now I do. A while ago, Lot gave me back my mortal shape and sent me after Sionnach Ri and a witch called Dragonfly. He wanted me to steal something from each of them.”
Finn waited and he continued softly, “The heart of a fox knight and the heart of a witch are powerful things. Fatas who grow hearts make them into objects of power, which they hide, because such objects can be used to drain a Fata’s power, or kill them.”
“I know,” Finn whispered.
“I didn’t. When I learned, I tried to steal the hearts back. Lot turned me into a moth until your sister kissed me.”
Finn sat on the windowsill beside him. She glanced down at Sylvie, who was perched on the sill below and gazing anxiously up. “It’s me the Mockingbirds want, Moth. If you get the chance, take