to cushion her fall.
“Junie?” she cried. “Where are you?”
“She’s right here,” I said. “Just rest a moment. She’s fine.”
“Lady?” Cora’s eyes fluttered back open and fixed on me. “What are you doing here? And where is here?”
She sat up more slowly this time, looking around as she distractedly brushed at the tea leaves that clung to her.
“What is that awful smell?” she asked. “Is Audrey here? It smells like that tea of hers—but much worse.”
“It is that tea of hers,” I said, with a sniffle. “And I think it just saved you.”
Quickly I sketched a rough outline of everything that had happened, skipping the part about my death because Juniper was watching me with wide, fascinated eyes. Cora’s wits returned quickly, her sharp gaze saying she knew I was holding something back.
When I swayed, she reached out to support me, our roles reversed.
“Lady…” she said softly.
“It’s not good,” I said in a grim whisper. “Don’t ask.”
She hesitated then nodded, switching topics.
“If Leander has been poisoning the whole kingdom’s water for years, then he must have a supply of it somewhere. And a way to make more. We need to find it and destroy it.”
I nodded. “And we need to find the enchanted object that he’s using to control me and all those other animals.”
Eagle honked loudly, in agreement or to remind us of her presence, I wasn’t sure.
“This place is a mess.” Cora surveyed the room with disgust. She would never countenance the haven falling into such a state.
“Yes, he doesn’t allow any servants inside, so I think it has been accumulating for years,” I said. “But we looked through a lot of it the other day, and I’m sure we didn’t miss anything as substantial as what he must need for the rivers. Leander mentioned experiments, and I think…” I paused and gulped. Inevitably, the search had brought me back here to the one place I didn’t want to go. “I think there’s another room.”
Chapter 27
I pointed at the door beside the tapestry. It no longer leaked smoke, but somehow it looked just as ominous. The same fear that had filled me the first time I saw it still lodged behind my ribs, but my certainty had only grown that whatever substance Leander used to put fear in the rivers of Talinos was brewed behind that door.
Wait. Fear. Of course I was so afraid of it! What better indication could there be that what we needed to find was behind that door? I leaned over and inhaled deeply over some of the discarded tea leaves. My desire to avoid the door was replaced with determination.
Cora gave me an odd look but said nothing. Scooping Juniper onto her hip, she strode over to pull the door open.
Instead of revealing a room, as I had expected, it opened onto a single flight of stairs. I gaped at them, looking sideways at the tapestry. It made sense, I supposed—the door going up and the door going down beside each other. And it explained why the Keep seemed taller than its top floor—there was an extra secret story.
Cora had already started up the stairs, so I tried to hurry behind her, the weakness in my legs making it hard to move with any speed. Eagle brought up the rear, waddling even more slowly than me. We made an odd procession, Juniper staring back over Cora’s shoulder at us, her eyes straying constantly to Eagle and seeming to get rounder every time.
“Her name is Eagle,” I told her.
She frowned. “But she’s a swan.”
I smiled, Juniper’s innocent confusion somehow breaking through the horror of the evening.
“Yes, she’s a swan, but her name is Eagle. She has the heart of an eagle.”
The swan honked her agreement, and Juniper giggled.
“Huh.” Cora sounded surprised, so I forced my legs up the final stairs, coming to a stop beside her.
The vast, open room before us could not have been more different from the one below. Pristine and tidy, nothing littered the floor here or crowded on the many long benches that lined the walls and ran down the middle of the room. Leander might give no effort to the room below, but this must be where he conducted his experiments and studied the godmother objects. I could only imagine how bemusing this aspect of his son must have been to the old lord—by all accounts a genial man but not a scholar.
How many of the items on the benches were enchanted in some way? My eyes latched onto several