Page 93 of A Court Bright and Broken

“Of course I am. I thought I’d found my eternal bond-mate. She seemed perfect for me. I might have been dangerously wrong, so I’m also mourning the loss of my own common sense. Yesterday was simultaneously one of the best and worst days of my life.”

Giving his head a little shake, he started moving toward the bedroom door.

“I must go. I’m supposed to be going to the dungeon to question thetwohuman women who were apprehended on the grounds last night. I’ll be back soon with something to eat for you. Just be quiet and remember—don’t open the door for anyone.”

Stellon might plan to return with food, but I had just lost my appetite. He was going to talk to Sorcha.

There was nothing I could do about it. It wouldn’t make sense for me to beg him not to.

My only solace was that the Earthwifethoughtshe was getting what she wanted so she had no motivation to confess the truth to him. Yet.

She had given me two weeks, until the end of the Assemblage, to kill Stellon and his family.

As far as she knew, everything was going according to plan.

Chapter 24

First Order of Business

Stellon

Within a matter of hours, everyone in the palace had been questioned, including the jailer, who, for now, was holding his peace about Raewyn.

Two soldiers who’d been assigned to the gate last night said they’d witnessed a fine carriage and team of horses parked outside metamorphosize into a hay wagon and a pair of tired plow horses, just as the clock struck midnight.

The men said they’d been reluctant to mention it right away, worried they’d be suspected of drinking Nymphian water on the job, which they had, in fact, been doing.

They’dbothseen the phenomenon though, and at this point, I was willing to keep an open mind. It was the only clue so far that hadn’t been run into the ground.

If it hadnotbeen a shared drunken delusion, it meant that magic was afoot. And where there was magic, there were Earthwives.

For the most part, we left the old crones alone. They warded the human villages against us, but we had little interest in spending time in them anyway.

If we really wanted to get in—around tithe time for instance—there were ways of circumventing the warding spells.

Butthiswas a different story. Earthwives had knowledge of herbs and all manner of plant life. They used it to heal the humans of their various ailments.

But plants could also be poison.

It seemed too coincidental that vials of poison, of the sort that was particularly toxic to Fae folk, had been found on the grounds at around the same time this carriage had magically transformed.

There was also an old woman in the dungeon who’d been captured inside the palace last night.

She was my first order of business.

She didn’t look like an assassin on first sight. Small and stooped, she hardly seemed capable of killing a cockroach. As I approached her cell, she shuffled forward.

“Your Highness,” she said, dropping into a curtsy.

“You may rise. What is your name?”

“I am Wilda, a washwoman and loyal subject.”

“Loyal, eh? How’d you wind up in here last night?”

“I’m very sorry, Your Highness,” she said with her head still bowed. “I snuck in during the commotion. I thought the ball might provide enough distraction for me to take some spare food from the kitchens without being noticed.”

Her hands wrung each other in anxiety.

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