Gran nodded. “The more powerful the magic, the higher the price. And I knew exactly what price your mother would have to pay.”
Emory popped into my mind, and I wondered if she knew about this. She’d probably find this conversation fascinating, viewing it from a historical perspective. I only found it disturbing.
“You took an innocent child,” I continued.
“I took what was owed after they stripped me of everything,” Gran snapped.
Rain slid down my face, and I blinked away the water, a chill seeping into my skin, my bones. “What does that mean?”
“A child for a child,” she said. “It means the sky king killed my baby, and so I returned the favor.” She met my gaze. “Except I couldn’t kill you. Not when you reminded me so much of my own daughter.”
Loch and I shot each other unsure looks, and I was having a hard time following.
“Start from the beginning,” I said.
Gran lips flattened into a thin line. Now I knew why she hated being bossed around so much. Of course she did. She’d spent half her life as a queen.
Finally, she tipped her head in acceptance. “This story starts long before the Shadow War. You have to understand that each of the courts operate differently, even if we’d all like to believe we’re the same.” She shook her head. “We’re not. We never were. We’re different because the spirits we worship were different.” She flung out a hand. “The frost court is the most secretive, distant, of the courts because that’s howSpirit Frost was. The fire court is the most aggressive. They like their weapons, just like Spirit Fire. And the shadow court, well, we were always the most curious. We never went along with what everyone else said, much like our leader, Spirit Shadow.”
I wondered where she was going with this, what any of this had to do with kidnapping me. But Gran always made a point with her stories, no matter how long and wandering they might seem.
“We didn’t like that the other courts dictated how we could use our magic,” Gran said, her face severe.
“You mean you didn’t like that you weren’t allowed to rip away people’s shadows?” Loch asked.
Her sharp eyes snapped to his face, and to his credit, he didn’t flinch, just held that hard stare of hers that I’d been subject to so many times over the years. “Some people don’t deserve to have shadows,” she said. “It would be like those of us in the shadow court telling you water elementals that you’re not allowed to use water as a weapon.”
“Taking someone’s shadow is a little different,” I said, thinking of Loch, of the blue lines dipping ever closer to his heart.
“Be that as it may, it’s part of us. Part of the magic we wield and no one else can dictate how we use it. At least that’s what I thought back then.”
“So you started a war over it,” I guessed.
She nodded. “We did. My husband, the king, and I decided we would fight for our right to use our magic as we pleased. We wouldn’t just go along with everyone else like silent little sheep.” She swallowed. “But there was something else. We didn’t just want to wage war. We wanted to show our power. That we were a force to be reckoned with.”
I didn’t like where this was going, not at all. “What did you do?” I asked, gripping Loch’s hand tighter.
“Unbeknownst to the other courts, we’d found Spirit Shadow’s hidden weapon.”
I gasped. “His dagger? You were going to use it in the war?”
She let out a harsh laugh. “Oh no, dear girl. Our aspirations were much, much bigger than that.”
Loch and I shot each other confused looks.
“I don’t understand. What . . .”
“We were going to use the dagger to set Spirit Shadow free.”
The ground rocked underneath me, my head growing woozy and light. “That’s not possible,” I said. “The spirits disappeared of their own accord. Descended to the Spirit World, where they rule from afar.”
I thought of Emory’s theory, that the spirits had actually been trapped.
Gran waved her hand. “Bah. I taught you better than this, girl. I taught you to be a leader, not a follower.”
“She is a leader,” Loch said, voice hard.
Gran’s gaze snapped to him yet again, but this time, instead of anger, she was sizing him up, seeing him in a new light. “No, girl, the spirits didn’t leave—they were trapped, something one of the scholars in the shadow court discovered in an ancient journal that has since been destroyed. We also discovered the only way to free them was to use their own weapons.” Her features darkened. “At the time, we realized we’d stumbled onto something huge, something that could give us leverage over the other courts, make them realize we would not be told how to use our magic. So our plan was to set Spirit Shadow free and ask for his aid in our war.”
