Page 61 of A Court of Hearts and Hunger
“Much safer.”
“And Fin…” I clasp his hand and rub my thumb over the pulse point on his wrist. His heartbeat quickens at my touch, and I smile a little, despite the gravity of what I’m about to say. “If we see a chance to end the Queen, we’ll take it.”
His pulse jumps a little faster, but he nods. “I agree. Whatever the Unseelie may be, they don’t deserve this willful ruination.”
A shuddering howl skewers the quiet of the night, and Fin places a hand against the small of my back, urging me toward the tower.
As we approach, the black vines lash more wildly, snaking out toward us. Each one is lined with scarlet-tipped thorns. Fin and I draw our knives, fending off the oncoming tendrils. One of them wraps around my arm, and I scream as thorns pierce my skin in several places.
Fin yells, charging to my defense, but more vines wind around his waist and forearms, twisting, forcing him to drop his weapons. One vine cinches around his throat, jerking his chin up at a strange angle. His golden eyes flare wide as thorns pierce his neck. He chokes, blood glistening on his lips.
With a sudden, horrible drop of my stomach, I remember the Rat King choking Fin just like this, with his shadows.
A thicker vine splits wide, splaying into half a dozen toothed sections, with a sucking mouth in the center. It rears back, then lunges for his face.
But I’ve managed to saw myself free, and I leap forward with a scream, hacking at the carnivorous plant. “Let him go!” I shriek, knives flashing through coils of vine.
Fin tumbles free, crashing to his hands and knees. Blood drips from his neck. But these aren’t wounds from the Heartless; he will heal.
“Inside,” he rasps. “Get inside!”
Even as he says it, the door to the tower opens, admitting a flood of orange light.
Fin and I throw ourselves through the entrance, and someone closes the door behind us.
“I’m disappointed, Sugarplum,” says a thin, ethereal voice. “You let a little plant get the best of you. How soft you’ve grown.”
17
I push myself up to a sitting position on the floor of the tower, gingerly touching the thorn-wounds on my neck. The plant’s aggression took me by surprise. I thought it wanted Clara, but apparently it was more eager to devour me for some reason.
“It eats magic,” says a voice—a female voice I remember all too well. Delicate, filmy and dark—like a shadow transformed into sound.
The last time I heard that voice, it was shrill with desperate rage. Pleading for my tormentors to have mercy on me, then raining curses upon them, screaming the vilest words known to our kind as she tried to fight them off.
I look up at her, my throat choked with an emotion I cannot name.
Ygraine is brown-skinned and tiny, shorter than Clara, with a flatter chest. She wears her hair like she did three years ago, bunched in two curly black clouds on either side of her head, beneath the brim of a pink top hat decorated with wishbones and lizard skeletons. Her eyes bulge with a kind of fearful curiosity—they’re dark eyes, striped with glowing green. She’s clad in a silk blouse, a tight vest, and voluminous short skirts that show off her stockinged legs—one striped, the other spotted.
My gaze drops to where her slim brown fingers used to be.
Her hands are gone. From her blunted wrists protrude spidery mechanical hands, delicately crafted. Gleaming coppery fingers whirr and click as she plucks at the black lace on her bunched-up skirts.
“Ygraine,” I whisper. “What did they do to you?”
“The vines—they seek out the strongest source of magic and attempt to devour it,” she says. “The Eater of Hearts has an affinity for carnivorous plants—not the usual species, but a more virulent kind. Many of them have spread beyond her gardens, grown roots beneath the walls of Mallaithe, and crept into the world. They will creep into your world too, my lovely boy, into your pretty Seelie gardens and your silken beds. They will thrust into your holes and make you bleed magic.”
“Ygraine.” I climb to my feet quickly. “What happened to your hands? Did Magda do this to you?”
“Yes, oh yes.” She lifts her arms, turning her metal hands back and forth. “Cut off my hands on that night—you know which one. Capped the ends in iron so I couldn’t heal, until it was too late, until my body couldn’t repair the damage, until it was permanent. Then they let me go.”
“I thought you were dead.” I can barely force the words out. Seeing her is like taking a dagger to the gut—a hot blade that twists sickeningly in my soul. “If I’d known you were alive I would have tried to get to you, to help you—”
“I hated you, Sugar-boy,” she says softly. “For a while, I really did. Maybe I still do—my head flickers, you know, and sometimes I can’t tell. I think I hate you for leaving me. For being weak, then and now. But there are things I hate more. Things that howl, and tear, and crush. Things that smile cruelly, and paint their lips with heart’s-blood.”
She darts over to Clara, who has been standing quietly nearby, holding her wounded arm.
“You’re the human, aren’t you?” Ygraine sniffs Clara’s neck, then puts out a purple tongue and licks upward along her cheek. “You smell Fae, you look Fae—you even taste Fae. He’s very good with glamours, isn’t he? Pretty little thing, tender sweet morsel, I’m going to dress you for the court, turn you out and take you in. Would you like a hat? I’ll make one just for you. You’ll give me a memory in exchange.”
