“What bargain?” Jonathan demanded. “You still haven’t told us anything!”
I gave an impatient shrug, directing my rapid explanation at the entire company. “Someone set out an altar in the library last night. It had all the usual sorts of illicit offerings to summon fey help, including blood to seal a very nasty bargain—and one silver ring, too, but none of us recognized it.”
“Yet youstilldidn’t summon me?” Amy sighed. “Never mind. Just tell me now: what did it look like?”
“Plain. Silver. Thin. Unremarkable.” I looked to Miss Birch. “Anything else?”
“I found a bit of hidden writing inside it this afternoon,” she told me. “It took a deal of poking and experimenting to bring it up, and I’d only just managed that before the creature arrived...but it looked like curly gibberish to me. I would have shown it to you if we still had it, but—”
“Hmm.” I frowned harder. Hidden writing masked in silver? “That sounds like—”
“Oh,no.” Amy’s face twisted with what looked like pain. Pressing her lips tightly together, she pulled her well-used silver pencil and commonplace book from a hidden pocket in her gown and started scribbling intently. A moment later, she held up the open book, angling it carefully so that only my housekeeper and I could see it. “Did it look anything like this, Miss Birch?”
Curving, elegant lines scrolled across the creamy paper, written in a language never seen by most people this far south of the elven kingdom...and my housekeeper’s eyes widened. “That it did! What is it, then?”
Hurrying footsteps sounded through the open doorway.
“Out of my way!” Lady Cosgrave’s voice rang out with the full force of her authority, sending my clustered students scattering before her.
I smiled grimly as the pieces all finally linked together. “Indeed,” I said, “let us invite the formerambassadress to the elven kingdomto join us, shall we? I believe we may have found something that belonged to her.”
* * *
With Annabel gone,Lady Cosgrave had been my only real suspect left. Even I knew I’d been contorting logic to an unreasonable extent, earlier, when I’d reasoned out all the ways that Annabel could still somehow have been our fey’s summoner.
But sick betrayal still coiled in my stomach as Lady Cosgrave stepped into the room and I met her familiar, commanding gaze.
Honoria Cosgrave had been a firm feature of my life ever since I’d been a child. She’d been a warm, familiar presence for years before this visit—a true friend of the family, if not of my own, and a woman I’d trusted toneverbreak the laws of our land in such a vicious fashion.
She might hate the very concept of my school. She might be furious at me. But how could she have developed such a festering hatred that she’d risk everything to end us?
None of my students had been close enough to see those elven lines written in Amy’s commonplace book, but I heard a hiss of indrawn breath from Miss Banks. That sound made me glance at her, catching her wince as she glanced from Lady Cosgrave to her own fiancée. Miss Fennell’s amber eyes were wide and wary. While her strong-boned face remained set in neutral lines, her intelligent gaze darted around the room, clearly searching for clues.
Poor Miss Fennell. Even through my blazing rage, I felt a sliver of pity as I saw how rigidly she held herself. She’d been balancing between two worlds for months, keeping everything she felt so carefully closed off from view that even her closest family and mentor couldn’t glimpse it. All of her secrets were finally coming to roost now, though—because all of her disagreements with her aunt had been kept private. To the outside world, she was known only as Lady Cosgrave’s brightest protégée. How could she not be caught up in the political fall-out once her aunt’s treachery was revealed?
Miss Stewart tucked a protective hand around Miss Banks’s arm and tugged her backward, setting clear battle lines as the two Boudiccate inspectors swept past. Miss Banks’s lips turned down unhappily...but she followed her new friend’s guidance.
“Don’t look away from me, Cassandra Harwood,” Lady Cosgrave snapped. “You know perfectly well that it’s explicitly forbidden to gather your students together without us when your school is under official inspection. Even more so when one of our own members has been kidnapped! If you’re trying to—”
“Honoria,” said Amy gently, “where has your necklace gone?”
Lady Cosgrave sucked in a quick breath, one hand flying to her throat...where her elaborate elven necklace from earlier still lay. That contradiction was enough to make me frown—but she swallowed visibly as she met Amy’s gaze.
“Every day since we first met,” Amy said, “you’ve worn a thin silver chain hidden beneath any other necklace...a chain with a plain silver ring that hung from it. Just once, that chain broke in front of me as you were propping up a fire. I picked up the ring from the hot stones near the fireplace where it had fallen.”
Aha.
Lady Cosgrave swallowed before drawing herself back up to her full height with a visible effort. “I don’t know—”
“Well, of course you don’t know where it is anymore.” I picked up the lead from my sister-in-law, who gave me a subtle nod of agreement. “It was claimed by your co-conspirator tonight, when your illegal fey bargain was fulfilled.” I shook my head, grim satisfaction battling with rising fury. “After all of your self-righteous lectures about the good of the nation and how determinedyouwere to protect young women, you set a powerful, malevolent fey to attack a whole school full of them!”
“I didnot!” High color flushed Honoria Cosgrave’s cheeks beneath her silk turban. “Even if you had a single shred of evidence that I hadeverbeen involved in any private fey bargaining—”
“Oh, Honoria.” Amy sighed, and Jonathan shifted to stand behind her, a silent wall of support. “Don’t make this even more painful.”
“I wouldneverput innocent young women at risk,” Lady Cosgrave finished. “Never!”
I let out an involuntary crack of laughter. “I beg your pardon? Youblood-bargained with a feyto attack our school—”
