The Golden Yarn (Mirrorworld 3)

Amalie still hadn’t turned around. She just looked at Donnersmarck in the glass of the mirror. There was something else in her face now beside the familiar lostness, and he couldn’t tell what it was.

“The wet nurse was supposed to have brought him already. I should never have hired her. She’s useless!” Amalie touched her golden hair as though it were that of a stranger. “My mother was right. These peasants are even dumber than their cattle, and servants are no smarter than the pots in my kitchens.”

Donnersmarck avoided the maid’s eyes, though she was probably used to her mistress’s insults. He was tempted to ask, “What about the soldiers? Are they as dumb as their uniforms? And the workers in the factories? As dumb as the coal they shovel into the furnaces?” Amalie wouldn’t even have noticed the irony. She had just sent her husband’s troops to put an end to a workers’ strike. Without Kami’en’s approval. A child in the woods. A child with an army.

“I don’t believe it was the nursemaid’s fault. Your son was not in his crib this morning.”

The violet eyes went wide. Amalie pushed away the maid’s fingers. But she was still looking into the mirror as if she had to read her own face to understand what she was feeling.

“What do you mean? Where is he?”

Donnersmarck lowered his head. The truth and nothing but the truth. No matter how dark.

“My men are searching for him right now. But the crib and the pillows were splattered with blood. Your Highness.”

One of the maids began to sob. The others just stared at Donnersmarck with open mouths. And Amalie sat and stared at her reflection, until the silence grew louder than the nursemaid’s screams.

“So he is dead.” She was the first to say what everybody thought.

“We don’t know that. Maybe—”

“He is dead!” she cut off Donnersmarck. “And you know who killed him. She’s always been jealous of my son because she can’t have one herself. But she only dared to do something about it once Kami’en was out of the city.”

Amalie pressed her hand to her perfect mouth. The violet pupils swam in tears as she turned around.

“Bring her to me!” she ordered as she got to her feet. “To the throne room.”

The maids stared at Donnersmarck with a mixture of horror and pity. They’d been told by the kitchen girls that the Dark Fairy had them boil snakes to give her skin the luster of their scales. The servants whispered that anyone whose shoes even so much as brushed the hem of her dress died immediately. The coachmen swore that anyone touched by her shadow died immediately. The gardeners insisted that anyone who stepped into the footprints she left on her nightly walks died immediately. And yet they were all still alive.

Why should she have done anything to that child? She was the reason he’d been born at all.

“Your husband has many enemies. Maybe—”

“It was she! Bring her to me! She’s murdered my son!” Her rage was different from her mother’s. There was no logic in it.

Donnersmarck bowed his head in silence and turned around. Bring her to me. Amalie might as well have ordered him to bring her the oceans. For a moment he considered taking the entire palace guard with him, just to reinforce the invitation. But the more men he brought, the greater the affront would be, and the greater the temptation for the Dark Fairy to demonstrate how silly any threat of force was against her magic. The two soldiers who’d brought the nursemaid to him could not hide their terror when he told them that only they were to accompany him.

Donnersmarck had ordered the nursemaid to be locked in her room, but the bad news had already spread through the entire palace. The faces he passed showed not only shock but also relief. The Moonstone Prince had the face of an angel, but the child had seemed like a bad omen to many, Goyl as well as human. Had, Leo? You’re already thinking of him in the past tense. Yes. Because he’d seen the crib.

After the announcement of Amalie’s pregnancy, the Dark Fairy had moved into a pavilion in the palace gardens. The Fairy had supposedly picked the place herself, Kami’en had it remodeled for her, and it was guarded by Kami’en’s personal guards. Nobody could tell who they were supposed to protect her from. The loves

truck men who kept falling under her spell after a fleeting glance as she drove through the city? The supporters of the old Empress, who kept smearing death to the goyl or death to the fairy on the houses of Vena? Or the anarchists who painted their death to all rulers on the same walls? “Nonsense! The Stone King is not protecting the Fairy. He is protecting his subjects from his lover.” So said the flyers that could be found on park benches and train platforms every morning. After all, nobody doubted that the Dark Fairy could have held her own against the combined armies of Lotharaine and Albion.

“Bring her to me.”

As the glassy gables of the Fairy’s pavilion appeared behind the trees, Donnersmarck caught himself hoping she might be out on one of her drives, which could sometimes last for days. The stable boys whispered that the horses pulling her carriage were actually enchanted toads and the coachman was a spider to whom she’d given human form. But the Dark Fairy was home—if that’s what she called this place. Or any other place.

Kami’en’s guards let Donnersmarck pass—a jasper and a moonstone Goyl. Unlike Amalie, the Fairy did not insist that all her guards have Kami’en’s stone skin. The two soldiers with Donnersmarck, however, could not pass. Donnersmarck did not protest. If the Fairy wanted to kill him, then no human would stop her. So far he’d only ever seen her from afar, alone, or by Kami’en’s side at balls, state receptions; the last time had been at the celebrations for the birth of the Moonstone Prince. She hadn’t brought a present—her gift had been the skin that kept the child alive.

And there she was.

No servants, no maids, just her.

Her beauty took one’s breath away, like a sudden pain. Unlike Amalie, there was nothing of the child in the Dark One. She’d never been a child.

Kami’en had put a glass roof on her pavilion to let in light for the trees that the Fairy had planted among the marble tiles. The saplings were only a few months old, but their branches already touched the glass roof, and the walls had disappeared under blossoming vines. The Fairy’s presence made them grow as though she were the source of life itself. Even the bright green dress she wore looked like it had been sewn from their leaves.

“That is a very dark mark you have on your chest, Donnersmarck. Has the stag stirred yet?” She saw what he was trying to hide from everyone. Donnersmarck longed to hide between the trees. Her shadow tinged the marble as dark as the forest floor around the child-eater’s hovel.