Treacherous Witch

Queen Shikra stoops over a fallen Drakonian soldier like a bird of prey, sceptre in one hand and a glowing sword in the other. She plunges the blade into the man’s heart—

*

Disoriented, Valerie stared at the slab of wood obscuring her field of vision, then realised belatedly that she was looking down at the trestle table in the greenhouse. Reeling upright, she stumbled backwards and almost tripped over a plant pot.

Titus caught her. “Valerie! Are you okay?”

She righted herself. “Sorry—yeah.”

“I thought you were about to faint. What happened?”

Something flashed at the corner of her vision. She blinked, focusing, and then did a double take as she turned to face Titus.

His wrist was glowing.

“What’s that?”

He frowned. “What’s what?”

“Your hand. Show me.”

She pulled back his sleeve, revealing a shimmering glyph that pulsed under the surface of his skin. Lines and circles bled together like ink on paper, constantly shifting and merging, but always returning to the same basic shape: a sort of stick figure. Her fingertips touched the mark. And like a knot unfurling, the glyph’s meaning revealed itself.

Vessel.

Titus snatched his hand away. “What are you doing?”

“Titus, you…” She looked up at him. “You’ve been enchanted.”

“What? No, I haven’t. What are you talking about?”

But a wild light had entered his eyes, and she remembered what Shikra had told her, that he was a traitor. She had to tread carefully.

“It’s a tracking spell,” she lied. “I see the mark on your skin. Did the queen ever tell you that she tracked her Messengers?”

He lifted his wrist and stared at it. “No, I… I don’t see anything. And she never said anything either. You’re telling me that the queen bewitched us?”

She stepped out of his reach. “That’s what it looks like. I’m sorry.”

For a moment, he didn’t speak. She watched him carefully, the frown lines on his face, the way he stared at his own wrist like a foreign object. He showed no sign of disbelieving her. So he really didn’t know about the glyph.

Had the queen put it there? For what purpose?

“I…” He looked up, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Well, thank you for telling me. That’s not the revelation I was expecting, but… Thinking back, it doesn’t surprise me. Her Majesty never did trust those of us who ventured beyond our realm. If you give me the blessing, do you think I can remove it?”

“Maybe,” she said, “but I can’t do that right now. This tree is too weak. It’s only a seedling; it needs time to grow before we can tap into its power.”

“Oh,” he said. “Can you remove it?”

“I’m sorry,” she said again. “It’s not my spell… I don’t know how. If it helps, no one else can track you with it, and it doesn’t work away from the silvertree anyway. So it won’t do you any harm.”

He frowned. “Right.”

She understood his concern. After all, she could make up any story she wanted and he would be none the wiser. But since he was lying to her, it was only fair to balance the scales.

“I should go,” she said gently. “I need to return before Lord Avon finds out I’m gone.”

He looked at her. “When will it be ready? The silvertree—how long does it need to grow?”

“I don’t know. But there are silvertrees still left in Maskamere. I can give you the blessing then, I just…”

“What?”

She hesitated. “I need to know I can trust you with it. There are so few of us left.”

No one but hedge witches and petty sorcerers, those who had learned to conceal their magic from the Empire. She might well be the last Maskamery priestess.

Valerie rested her hand on the trestle table, feeling the life in the smooth wood, the ripe tomato vines, and the tiny silvertree seedling beside her, the most precious living thing between here and the shores of her realm.

She missed home so, so much.

Meanwhile, Titus regarded her with a calculating look.

“You were taught not to give the blessing to people like me,” he said. “I understand. That’s something we’ll both have to move past.”

Over my dead body.

She didn’t consider that Shikra might have been lying about Titus. Why would the queen deceive her? It offered no benefit. No, Titus fit in perfectly here in Drakon. He was a snake through and through.

“Thank you for showing me this,” she said. “It means more than you know.”

“And thank you for being honest.” He gave a small smile. “That means a great deal to me too.”

She smiled back, wondering if he knew she hadn’t told him the truth.

As long as he didn’t call her out, it didn’t matter. And to her relief, Titus didn’t question her further. Rufus hadn’t yet turned up to collect her, but Valerie didn’t want to wait. Happily, Titus obliged her request for help, summoning one of his menservants to escort her back to the Emperor’s villa. They bade their farewells.

Alone in the carriage, Valerie contemplated what she had learned.

Titus was no true ally. That didn’t mean she couldn’t use him to escape Drakon. It only meant she had to be more careful about it.

The more disturbing revelation was the one she’d concealed from him. She’d felt it in the moment she had touched him. She could have passed through the glyph and occupied his body just as the queen had possessed hers. More than that, she could have wiped him clean, a blank slate ready and waiting for another soul to fill it.

A vessel.

The spell was surely of Shikra’s making. But why would she mark Titus of all people? He lived outside Maskamere, making the glyph useless. Unless she’d meant to possess him when he returned? To pose as an ally of the Empire?

It seemed far-fetched, but the queen hadn’t been forthcoming about her plans. Did she make a habit of possessing other people? She’d done it with Valerie, after all, but without a glyph it hadn’t gone so smoothly. Maybe Titus wasn’t the first person she had marked. Maybe Shikra regularly jumped bodies in the same way other people changed clothes.

Maybe she had no idea who the queen really was.

She shivered at the thought. How could she fight someone who wouldn’t stay dead, who wore bodies like gowns, who could literally reverse time itself? If only she were stronger! That fleeting glimpse of magic had lifted her spirits, but the dull dark of the carriage brought her mood right back down.

No, she thought. Focus on the positive.

Against all odds, she had engineered herself a way out. It didn’t matter what happened in the election. She’d struck a bargain with both contenders to take her home, and Shikra had promised not to possess her when she returned. Of course, she had no guarantee that Shikra would uphold her end of the bargain, but she hoped the queen’s hunger for knowledge would keep her at bay, at least for a time.

After all that, what stood in her way?

Time.

The clock was still ticking. If the silvertree at Bolebund had been destroyed, that cut off one avenue to the past. Two viable silvertrees remained: the tree in Enyr, which could take her back to her trip with Avon; and the tree at St. Maia, on the day of her blessing before the war began. If the Emperor ordered another purge before the election concluded, both trees could be lost and with that any chance of reversing her fortunes.

The Emperor, it seemed, presented the biggest obstacle to her success. Why had he invaded Maskamere? The Patriarch’s influence threatened him, yes, but surely not enough to drive him to war. What was she missing?

Maybe I’m overthinking it. It’s just greed, like Titus said. A larger power swallowing up a smaller one.

But that didn’t explain the timing of the attack—the precise series of events that had led to this particular decision at this particular time. Most likely several factors had influenced the outcome. Yet she found herself wanting one simple explanation or at least a catalyst that had tipped the scales. Something she could go back and change.

It’s easy to think that if only I could go back and change one thing, everything would be different. But maybe it’s not that simple.

After all, if it were that easy, Shikra would have already done it.

That thought stayed with her as the carriage pulled into the grounds of the Emperor’s villa. Valerie instructed the manservant not to escort her to the entrance. Instead, she jumped out and brushed off Captain Doryn’s suspicious questions about where she had been.

“Avon knows,” she told him, “and you’d do better not to ask. Tell no one I was gone.”

That shut him up. She couldn’t do much about the other guards who had seen her, but she sneaked in through the back entrance and hurried upstairs. Fortunately, she encountered no one else inside the villa except for one passing servant she quickly avoided.

Feeling rather pleased with herself about that, Valerie headed for Ophelia’s quarters expecting to find her friend or Priska waiting for her.

Instead, Lord Avon perched on the edge of her bed with the air of an ominous crow.

“Well,” he said. “Where have you been?”