request, but he had given in to her insistence. He was right to be reluctant. With these spells, she might erase her mind completely. She could lock her memory against all probing, sealing her thoughts away forever, or locking them with a particular key.
For a long while, Ilse considered the spell and its implications. Once invoked, she would forget Raul Kosenmark and everything between them. His shadow court would be safe. She … she would be a mindless puppet. She could use the variation with a key. The right person with the right key could recover her self. But then she risked the key being lost or misunderstood.
Or understood by the wrong person altogether.
Not yet. Better to wait and see what Khandarr does next.
* * *
VALARA BAUSSAY LAY on her back, staring at the ceiling. A spider had begun a web in one corner, near the window. The web shook from an unseen breeze, a breeze so weak it did nothing to relieve the suffocating heat inside the prison. Nor the smell. The guards were late emptying the slop buckets today, and the air smelled ranker than usual.
In the weeks since her capture, she had come to know every detail of her cell. It measured four feet by five—an enormous, luxurious space. Other prisoners slept two or three together, their straw pallets crammed close along one wall, as far away from the slop buckets as possible. And hers had an actual window—just a foot-square opening, blocked with iron bars, but through it, Valara could see a patch of sky. If she stretched onto her toes, she could even make out a thumb-sized smidge of wall from some other part of the garrison. Once the summer storms came, the guards told her, she would get a bit of tarpaulin to keep out the rains.
Summer. She could hardly imagine a season hotter than this one.
In Morennioù, on the island Enzeloc, the lilies and orchids in the castle gardens would be ripe with new blooms. Outside the grounds, the trees in Louvain’s orchards would be shedding their blossoms. She loved riding with Jhen Aubévil through the blizzard of petals.
Not this year. This year, soldiers burned those orchards.
Her chest squeezed tight in grief and anger. She remembered—could not forget—that terrible first day of spring. The alarm bells, her running to find her father and his chief mage. Her confession about the jewel. Their panicked attempts to conceal Lir’s emerald, only to have the emerald awaken and change itself with its own magic. Valara absently rubbed the wooden ring on her finger and felt a dull prickle of the current, uninspired and nearly imperceptible. Once she had imagined the jewel spoke to her. Or was that a memory from old lives? An image from ordinary dreams from long ago?
The hour bells rang out, followed by a softer quarter bell.
Valara stirred, restless and hungry. It was two hours past the usual time for supper, but no guard had come with her meal. She heard one of the Károvín complaining to his cell mates. She understood them much better, six weeks later. At times, she practiced Károvín and Veraenen, whispering the words to herself. The languages had changed in the past three hundred years, but not beyond recognition. She had spoken both fluently in previous lives. She could do so in this one.
A loud crash brought her alert and to her feet. Six guards marched through the outer doors and down the corridor. One of them unlocked Valara’s cell door and seized the overflowing slop bucket, cursing at the mess. Another tossed her straw pallet to a companion. “What are you doing?” Valara demanded. Fear made her reckless. For a moment, she forgot she was only a prisoner and grabbed the guard’s arm. “What is happening?”
The guard shook her off. Before she could fling herself after him, another guard carrying a bucket of soapy water shoved her into a corner. He pinned her against the wall with one arm and scrubbed her face with a rag. “Finish yourself,” he said, dropping the bucket at her side. “And hurry.”
He slammed the door shut. Valara choked and spat out a mouthful of soap. All down the corridor the other prisoners shouted curses. The guards ignored them and continued to work at a feverish pace. Torches lit. Pallets and blankets taken away. A hasty scouring of the floors and prisoners. Something very strange was afoot. A visitor?
My message to the king. They finally delivered it.
She snatched up the rag from