Page 12 of A Court of Sugar and Spice
I give him a merry smile. “Such a joy to see your frowning face again, Your Irritableness.”
“You’d be irritable too if you were stuck under a curse,” Clara says. “We need to get through this door, Nutcracker, but there’s a strange lock.”
Stiffly he leans toward it, narrowing his eyes. “An iron lock, so Fae can’t touch it. It can only be opened by the application of mortal blood. And it might be spelled to work with Drosselmeyer’s blood specifically.”
“Let’s hope not.” I squeeze my finger harder, forcing more red drops to well out through the slit in the skin. “Why is there so much blood involved with magic?”
“Blood is life,” says the Nutcracker simply. “And it contains salt, as well as trace amounts of iron—not in a form that can harm a Fae, but potent enough to serve as a catalyst for spellwork or a disrupter for curses.”
“So the more of my blood I splatter on you, the more Fae you’d become?” I dab several drops onto the iron lock.
“My physical body would be increasingly restored, yes, but the effect would not be permanent, nor would I regain my powers,” says the Nutcracker. “That can only happen when I bathe in the Unending Pool, the original source of Fae magic and the only place where the most powerful curses can be dispelled.”
“What if youdrankmy blood?”
“Ugh, Louisa.” Clara winces.
“Just a question.” I smear more crimson onto the lock, and it responds by vibrating abruptly. Gears whirr inside, and something clicks. When I try the door handle, it moves, and the door swings open.
“You can answer that question later,” I tell the Nutcracker. “Right now we need to hurry. Drosselmeyer suspects that we’re up to something. He had a sort of eye-to-eye conversation with my sister.”
The Nutcracker glances at Clara.
“There were no actual words,” she says apologetically. “I just got this feeling, like an understanding passed between us.”
“Hm.” He keeps looking down at her as we move down the third-floor hall. He seems better able to walk this time, perhaps because of the extra blood I gave him. “Your name is Clara?”
“Yes.”
Something in the way he says her name, and the soft tone of her response, and the way they’re looking at each other with such interest—it irks me. I push between them, forging ahead.
“I seem to remember saying we need to hurry,” I say brightly. “Let’s hunt for this portal to Faerie. What does it look like?”
“As I told your sister, it looks like a door to nowhere,” says the Nutcracker.
“That’s so helpful. Could you be a bit more specific?”
“You’ll know it when you see it.”
I round on him, incensed. “We’re trying to help you.”
“And I—” His wooden face flinches as if he smells something rancid. “I am—grateful. Thank you.”
“That looked like it hurt. Not used to expressing gratitude, are we?”
“Not used to needing anyone’s help,” he says, low.
“I’m sure you had guards and servants and advisors helping you all the time. You probably never noticed. Typical for a careless, spoiled prince.”
“Louisa!” Clara catches my arm and pulls me ahead, dropping her voice. “Why are you being so mean to him?”
“He annoys me. A stuck-up royal expecting us to be grateful that we get to put our home and our future at risk to help him.” I snort and jerk away from her. “Oh, look—more doors. Perhaps His Monarchial Goodliness can help us open a few and look for this mysterious portal.”
But the instant the Nutcracker touches a door handle, he gasps and recoils. “More iron. Drosselmeyer must have been afraid one of the cursed automatons would regain their faculties and find a way up here. He doesn’t want any of his trophies escaping.”
“Fine, we’ll do it ourselves.” I sigh. “Clara, you take the doors on the right. I’ll check the ones on the left.”
A couple of the doors are locked—prosaically so, no blood required. But halfway down the corridor we encounter two doors facing each other, each with iron locks like the one at the top of the stairs. I bite my finger again and paint each lock with my blood, and they both unlatch with a grating rasp.
