Page 85 of A Treachery of Swans

Panic seizes me. “But that’s what I want! I want to destroy the crown so my father can’t use it, so I can free you and bring magic back.”

But why?Morgane demands. Her hand stretches wider and wider, as though to catch me.Why do all this?

“I want to become a sorcier!”

Colder,she sings.

“I want to be powerful!”

Glacial.

I grit my teeth, my eyes pricking. “I want to feel like I’m worthy.”

Ah. Warmer.

“I’m scared that if I’m not worthy, if—if I don’t prove myself, I will end up alone again.” The admission pours out of me in a flood. Tears slip from my eyes, mingling with the water around me. They are, I realize hazily, gold.

Morgane’s hand recoils from me.Little owl, little owl, looking for a nest. No one’s daughter, no one’s prize, whenever shall you rest?

“What do you want from me?” I sob, furiously brushing the tears from my eyes.

Morgane stares at me, unmoving.I want to tell you a story.

“Thentellit,” I snarl. “Or let me drown.”

So eager to self-destruct,Morgane remarks.But very well. The story goes thus, little owl, little liar: Once upon a time, an ambitious king and his doubly ambitious advisor sought to steal magic from its protectors and unleash it lawlessly upon the world. So they took the collar that had once restrained a beast and reforged it into a crown. They were of two powerful bloodlines—but you have heard this part of the tale. You have heard how they trapped me.

What you do not know is how they tricked me. In my own shrine, my own home. They came to me as eager as young gods themselves, saying they had a great gift: a body for me to inhabit, to walk the mortal plane with, to transform not only with my magic but also with my hands. With it, I could taste the magic of my sisters. I could create and destroy as only humans can do.

My sisters always said I was too curious about humans, too kind to them. They said I should have never given that little saint my gift of golden blood. And perhaps I shouldn’t have, for it was turned against me. But I did not know that until I had put on the crown they gifted me, and I only had enough time to cast a curse of vengeance upon them, condemning them to face their worst fears:the King, to lose the control he so craved; the sorcier, to lose the magic that never seemed to satiate him.

She sounds pleased with herself, as though the curses were some clever accomplishment, and I resist the urge to scoff. Then she finishes, mournful:That is all I could do. The next thing I knew, I was trapped in a deep, drowning darkness, not unlike this one.

“So how do I free you?” I ask, my head spinning.

Little owl,she says kindly.Little lost one, looking to atone.

Little owl, little sorcier, always on your own.

“Enough with the rhymes!” I grit out.

Enough with the rhymes?Morgane echoes petulantly.Very well, if that is what you ask.

And she begins to sink back into the deep.

“No!” I shout, despair filling me. “No, wait, I’m sorry. Please, you have to help me,please.”

The statue’s full lips stretch into a stony smile, revealing teeth sharp as needles.

That which gives the most strength can also be the greatest weakness.

“Wait!” I try to shout again, but all that escapes my mouth is a gurgle. I choke, water searing my sinuses, clogging my throat. My body convulses, once, twice; my vision fogs and darkens.

Alone again in the dark, I finally drown.

I jolt upright, coughing violently, and immediately double over. My hands scrabble for my chest as I try and fail to force up lake-water, over and over again, though my mouth is dry and there is no lake at all.

“Odile?” I’m too panicked to identify the voice calling my name. I press my palms to the dusty floor, taking wheezing, desperate gasps. Reality trickles in slowly, leaving me only more disorientated, only more uncertain.

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