Page 31 of The Huntsman's Heart
“Well what good will that do her now?” Corvin is pacing, his tasseled tail lashing behind him.
Raban only laughs. “Oh, look at you, fretting over the girl you didn’t want to take in. Who is soft-hearted now?”
Corvin stops and glares at Raban. “I said she’ll only bring trouble and look. I was right.”
“Well it doesn’t matter now. She’s come back to us. She stays,” he says.
My legs feel slightly less sore now, and I can breathe normally. “...can’t stay here forever,” I croak. “...something I must do.”
They all turn to me expectantly, and I try to talk more, but it comes out as a croak. Raban fetches me a goblet with cool water to wet my throat, and between coughs I choke out the story of my stepmother’s hatred, the attempted arranged marriages, my suspicion that she killed my father. And then I get to the part with Alaric.
“I cannot decide which one of them is worse.” I have to pause as a wracking pain clenches the muscles in my body. When it subsides I go on doggedly. “He follows her, does her bidding, panders to her every whim. But I never thought him capable of an outright attack.”
Raban frowns. “He stole away with you?”
“Into the woods. Tied me up, gagged me.” I shudder, not mentioning what else he did.
“He must have wanted you for himself.”
I scoff, but isn’t that what I have thought all along? And the way he forced himself on me seems to confirm it. “Then why did he leave me?”
The gargoyles are silent. After a while, Évandre kneels by the mattress. “Let’s take a look at your legs now.”
I whimper, but it feels no worse as he slowly lifts the blankets. He tugs on my boot, and though I feel pressure, the sharp pain is gone.
“As I thought. Already well on the way to being healed.”
Surprised, I attempt to sit, and this time I manage it. I stare down at my legs in astonishment. The limbs which hours ago hung limply from my body look firm and whole. Everything is facing the right way. My toes point up. When I bend each knee the leg moves—stiffly, but it moves.
“How is this possible?”
“It was strong magic that made you.” Raban gives a decisive nod.
“Made me?”
“Into what you are now,” says Évandre. “Raban is right. Whoever turned you knew what he was doing.”
“But who? And how?”
“Such magic is a mystery to me,” Évandre says.
“And me,” chorus the others.
“How were you made?” I ask, suddenly curious.
Évandre shrugs. “Our master and mistress—the original ones—they hired a great magician to carve us and bring us to life when the castle was first built. We were the guardians of the royal family.”
That makes so much sense. And now they are eager to have another princess to serve. I feel bad that I cannot give that to them.
“So you think it was a magician who made me too?”
Évandre adjusts his wings and his expression tightens. “Or a sorcerer—a necromancer.”
I sound out the word, piecing together its meaning. “A mage of the dead?”
“A black magician.”
“Then what does that make me? Am I a monster now?”
