Page 66 of The Stolen Heir
“No longer,” I remind her.
“Always,” she says.
But my thoughts are on Oak, on the power I have over Lady Nore, and on how my death might be worth Madoc’s life.
“I don’t understand—why did she send those creatures against us if Oak was doing as she asked?”
Bogdana grins. “The message was sent to the High Queen, not to Oak. By the time the prince began his quest, Lady Nore had become frustrated, waiting. You need to wake up to the danger you’re in.”
“You mean from someone other than you?” I ask.
“I am going to tell you a story,” Bogdana says, ignoring my words. “Would that I could say more, but certain constraints on me prevent it.”
I blink at her, but I find it hard to concentrate on what she’s saying, when her accusations toward Oak hang heavily in the air.
“It’s a fairy tale of sorts,” the storm hag begins. “Once upon a time, there was a queen who desperately wanted a child. She was the third bride of a king who’d murdered the two before her when they failed to conceive, so she knew her fate if she could not give him an heir. His need for a child was different than that of most monarchs in fairy tales—he planned for his issue to be his means of betraying the High Court—but his desire was as acute as any stemming from family feeling. And so the queen consulted alchemists, diviners, and witches. Being magical herself, she wove spells and brought she and her husband together on propitious nights, on a bed spread with herbs. And yet no child quickened in the queen’s womb.”
No one had ever spoken to me of my birth before, nor of the danger Lady Nore had been in from Lord Jarel. I had heard none of this, and my skin prickles all over with the premonition that whatever comes next, I won’t like it.
Bogdana points a clawed finger at me. Behind her in the sky, I see a strike of lightning. “In time, they sought out a wise old hag. And she told them that she could give them the child that they’d wanted, but that they would have to do exactly what she said. They promised her any reward, and she only smiled, for her memory was long.”
“What did you—” I start, but she holds up her finger in warning, and I close my mouth on the question.
“The wise old hag told them to gather up snow and form it into the shape of a daughter.
“They did this. The girl they made was delicate in form, with eyes of stone, and lips of frozen rose petals, and the sharply pointed ears of their people. When they finished sculpting her, they smiled at each other, captivated by her beauty.
“The hag smiled, too, for other reasons.”
This seems like a bad jest. I am not made of snow. I am not some being who was sculpted just as Lord Jarel and Lady Nore wished. I never captivated them with my beauty.
And yet, Bogdana is telling me this story for a reason.Sluagh.Is that what I am? A soul given a body, one of the half-dead Folk that wail outside houses or promise doom in mirrors.
“Now we must give her life, the hag told them.For this, she needs a drop of blood, for she is to be your child. Second, she needs my magic.
“The first was easy to supply. The king and queen pricked their fingers and let their blood stain the snow.
“The second was easy for them as well because I gave it willingly. When my breath blew across the girl, the spark of life lit within her, and they could see her eyelashes twitch, her tresses shiver. The child began to move. Her little limbs were slender and nearly as pale a blue as the reflection of the sky on the snow she’d been made from. Her hair, a deeper blue, like the flowers that grew nearby. Her eyes, that of the lichen that clung to rocks. Her lips, the red of that fresh-spilled blood.
“You will be our daughter, the king and queen told her.And you will give us Elfhame.
“But when the girl opened her mouth and spoke for the first time, they were afraid of the thing that they had made.”
I shake my head. “That can’t be true. That can’t be how I was born.”
I don’t want to be acreature, shaped by their hands and quickened with their blood. Something made like a doll, from snow and sticks. An assemblage of parts, stranger even than the sluagh.
“Why tell me this now?” I ask her, trying to keep my voice even. “Why tell me this at all?”
“Because I need you,” says Bogdana. “Lady Nore is not the only one who can seize power. There is myself as well. Myself, to whom you owe your life far more than you owe it to her. Forsake the others. Come with me, and we can take everything for ourselves.”
I think of the Thistlewitch and the tale she told of Mab and Mellith’s heart. CouldBogdanahave been the hag who slaughtered her own daughter? Perhaps it is only that I heard the story days before, but Lady Nore must have been told about the bones fromsomeonewho remembered what had happened, who knew their true value.
And if Bogdana was that hag, then her belief that I owe her my life puts me in greater danger than ever. She murdered her own child, and even though it was by accident, I can only imagine what she’d be willing to do to something like me.
My ability to command Lady Nore is more curse than blessing. Anyone who wants Mab’s bones will find me the easiest means to get them.
“You spoke of constraints,” I say. “What are they?”