Page 38 of Thornbound
“I did no such thing.” She bit out the words. “No matter how strongly I disapprove of your reckless, irresponsible choices—”
“Myirresponsible choices?”
“I would never condone such an indiscriminate attack.” At my look of open disbelief, she waved imperiously at my staring students and at her own younger cousin, who had paled and stepped backward, looking stricken. “Well? Do you see any injured or abducted young women amongtheirnumbers?”
“That was pure good fortune! If that creature had chosen any other bedroom to attack first...” I stumbled to a halt, my eyes widening.Of course!
True, those vines had tried to search Luton’s house for their target this morning when they’d been repelled by Thornfell’s own defenses. But when the fey who controlled them had been re-summoned within the walls of Thornfell itself, they had shot directly up to Annabel Renwick’s room...
And the bargain had been completed.
“It was never about Thornfell at all,” I said blankly. “You weren’t even thinking about meormy school...except as collateral damage to your own personal schemes.”
Lady Cosgrave’s nostrils flared. “I told you, no one else was going to be hurt—”
“Butmy schoolwould have been forced to close down due to the scandal if we hadn’t discovered the true culprit.Yourclever little bargain would have been taken as evidence thatIwasn’t providing a safe home for my students!”
I shook my head slowly as I looked at the master politician before me. “In other words...you would have accomplished two goals at once. You would have freed yourself from an inconvenient blackmailerandended the debate over women and magic...by participating in a forbidden magical rite that I wouldneverengage in myself. You hypocrite, Honoria Cosgrave! You weren’t trying to protect the innocent at all. Allyouwanted was to cover up your own personal indiscretions!”
“I—”
“Wait!” Amy stepped between us, her voice firm—and compassion shining in her eyes. “Cassandra, wait.” She looked past me to her former friend, who stood alone in the room. Everyone else had drawn their skirts away...even her cousin.
Amy, though, put one gentle hand on Lady Cosgrave’s stiff shoulder. “I remember,” she said, “those walks we used to take together around the grounds of this estate, Honoria, and how we sometimes discussed the local fey traditions. Neither of us has ever known or cared much about magic—buteveryoneknows that a fey bargain must be sealed with a true sacrifice.
“And...” She gave a rueful smile. “I know you, Honoria Cosgrave—even if you no longer wish to know me. So Iknowyou would never wear such a plain piece of jewelry hidden around your neck for all these years if it didn’t hold a vital piece of your heart. You care more about the welfare of the women of this nation than any other politician I know. So why don’t you give in and simply tell us all now: whowereyou protecting with that fey bargain, to make such a terrible act worthwhile?”
Lady Cosgrave stayed silent for a long, frozen moment.
Then she said, very quietly, “It wasn’t that I didn’t wish to know you, Amy. I had no choice in the matter.”
Glowering, I opened my mouth for a hot retort—but my sister-in-law silenced me with a look.
“I do know,” she said to her former friend. “Annabel forced it, didn’t she?”
Lady Cosgrave moistened her lips with a quick flick of her tongue. “It is...painful to give up a friendship,” she murmured. “But some threats...some dangers are even worse. And some are even more vulnerable. Some women. In nations where men control everything.”
Elven writing.
Our former ambassadress.
“An elf?” I asked tentatively. “Is she a friend of yours? Or...?”
Her lips tightened, and I understood.
Morethan a friend.
Ohhhh.I blinked rapidly as agitated whispers rose from our crowded onlookers, all of us absorbing the revelation together.
Fey-human matches like the one that had borne Miss Birch might be considered shocking by small-minded people even now, in our supposedly enlightened era. But it was genuinely unheard of for any haughty elf and a mere human to conduct a liaison...and after the wars that had scarred our nation’s history, the thought even carried a faint, leftover whiff of treason.
Thatrevelation might well have sunk her political career for good, whether or not the affair had taken place before her sensible marriage to a gentleman magician—the sacrifice that she’d told her cousin every politician must simply accept.
Honoria, though, would never be the one to suffer most if the truth ever came out. In the hopelessly masculine elven kingdom, as she had reminded me this morning, ladies were considered the legal property of their husbands or male relatives. The punishments for any elven lady who flouted their archaic rules of ‘purity’ were known to be astonishingly brutal.
NowI knew why Honoria had railed so passionately about the horrors of their system—and why they had felt so fresh in her mind. What threats had Annabel been whispering in her ears for all these months?
“Annabel was going to tell the elves, too, wasn’t she?” I breathed. “If you didn’t do everything she told you—”
