He stared back at her and felt the world start to wobble again, because he had a terrible suspicion about what had just happened and it struck at the foundations of everything he knew.
“When you wore the moonstone,” he said, his voice sounding a little scraped, as if he had been screaming. “When it touched your skin. It stole my power. It stole my magic, and fed all of it to you.”
Amalie dropped her hand and didn’t say anything. Cammon leveled an accusing stare at Valri.
“This is what you have been hiding, all this time,” he said. “She’s a mystic.”
“Amalie is-”
He didn’t let her finish. “A mystic. But not just any mystic. She has thieving magic. If there is a goddess who watches over her, it’s the goddess who only knows how to rob from others-the moon goddess, who takes light from the sun.” He pointed across the room. “That’s why she can wear a moonstone and it doesn’t burn her skin. It’s not stealing from her, it’s stealing from any other mystic in the room.”
“I never heard anyone say that moonstones steal a mystic’s power,” Valri said. “Only that they burn a mystic’s skin.”
He pushed himself to his feet, feeling shaky, feeling betrayed, feeling stupid. The others stood when he did, but they just watched him as he took a few clumsy steps away and began pacing. “I don’t think anyone ever realized why the moonstones burned us,” he said, trying to think it through. “And I’ve touched moonstones before and never had a reaction like that.” He gave Amalie one quick, hard look, but she didn’t meet his gaze. Her eyes were downcast and her face was shuttered. “Maybe moonstones themselves don’t have much power. They’re like-like-leeches that bite our skin and try to feed on our energy. But they’re not truly harmful to us unless we touch them in the presence of someone who can use them. Who can reach through them as if they were portals and try to drain us of every drop of magic we possess.”
Amalie spoke to the floor. “I didn’t try to do that. I’ve never held a moonstone before. I didn’t know what would happen.”
“I suppose most people who wear moonstones are just ordinary folks, and they can’t use the jewels against us,” Cammon said. “But someone with thief magic-” He abruptly halted in his pacing. “Coralinda Gisseltess,” he whispered.
“Are you saying she is a mystic?” Valri asked in an acid voice. “I’ve never heard that before.”
“She must be,” he said, resuming his pacing as his agitation increased. Senneth! he called, a single almost witless cry. He needed her to help him sort this out. “She’s the one who is covered with moonstones. She’s the one who wants them handed out all over Gillengaria. She’s using them to draw away our power. And feed it to herself.” He stumbled against a chair, so blind with sudden knowledge that he couldn’t properly navigate the room. “This changes everything we know about Coralinda Gisseltess.”
Neither of them replied to that, and neither did Senneth, to whom he sent another pleading message. He was halfway around the room now, and he whirled around to face them across the intervening distance.
“But you,” he said, and he knew that his confusion and his sense of hurt were naked on his face. “Both of you. You have known this awful secret for years now, and you didn’t even tell me, tell us, the people who were there to keep you safe. Don’t you think we should have known? Last summer when we were at every House in Gillengaria? Don’t you think that we might have needed this information in order to protect the princess?”
“And don’t you think that this is the most terrible secret anyone in the kingdom can possibly know?” Valri shot back. Amalie just stood there looking miserable and stricken, her hands in fists at her sides. “Don’t you think it has cost me something every day to conceal it? I have kept it to myself too long to be offering it up to every random acquaintance, whether mystic or king’s guard! Who can be trusted? The heir to the kingdom is a mystic! Surely that would bring war down on us if nothing else would! And you wanted me to tell you? I have been afraid you would discover Amalie’s secret from the day you first met her! And now that you know, I’m even more afraid!”
It was deliberately unkind. Cammon stood straighter, trying to make his expression stern, not wounded. “Who else knows?” he asked in a dignified way.
“No one,” Valri said. “Except the king.”
“Not even her uncle?”
“No,” Valri said, and Amalie shook her head.
“I find that hard to believe,” Cammon replied. “She told me she spent months at his house when she was a child. Surely he noticed something then.”
Finally Amalie looked at him, and her expression was lost and sad. “No,” she said. “My mother and my grandmother were always there, and they kept my magic in check. And they were always very secretive about their own powers. I’m not sure he ever realized what they were capable of.”
“Pella was a mystic, too? Like this?” Senneth had been right in her speculations-though neither of them had suspected the whole truth.
Amalie made a small hopeless gesture. “She didn’t have much power, not nearly as much as my grandmother did. And my grandmother never considered it magic-at least, she didn’t talk about it that way. I don’t think my mother actually realized that she was a mystic until she came to Ghosenhall and began to understand what magic was, and how much people hated it.”
“So what could she do?” Cammon asked.
Amalie shrugged. “Small things. It’s hard to explain. Mostly she could learn quickly. Like you said, it’s a thieving kind of magic. It puts on other people’s colors. The funniest thing my mother could do was learn accents. She could spend five minutes with someone and perfectly copy his patterns of speech. When I was a little girl, I loved to hear her talk like the maid from Fortunalt or the lord from Brassenthwaite. She could imitate anyone.”
“And what can you do?” he asked in a rather hostile voice.
She lifted her eyes, huge and brown and pleading, and for a moment he felt cruel. That shocked him, because he was never cruel. But he crossed his arms and awaited her answer, for it was desperately important to know.
“I don’t think you have the right to question the princess in that tone of voice,” Valri said.
But Amalie answered. “I’m a mockingbird,” she said. “I can repeat magic. From Valri, I learned how to control the raelynx. From you I’ve learned how to communicate without words. I haven’t been around Kirra and Donnal enough to learn shape-shifting, but watch-” Her face screwed up in concentration, and suddenly her red-gold hair turned a dull and listless brown. Valri’s exclamation of distress led Cammon to believe this was the first time the queen had witnessed that particular trick. “I can’t call fire, though,” Amalie added, allowing her hair to revert to its normal color. “Maybe Senneth is too strong for me-she resists without even knowing it.”
“Maybe if you wore that moonstone necklace you’d be able to steal anything you wanted,” Cammon said, still in a hard voice. He had to admit part of him was impressed, though. What a versatile skill! Justin and Tayse would already be figuring out how to turn it into a fine weapon. “What about ordinary people? Can you steal from them?”
Amalie flinched a little at the word, even though she had used it herself just a moment ago. “I think so, yes. Janni and Wen told me today how quickly I was learning self-defense-although perhaps they were just praising me because I’m the princess-”
“No, you seemed to be catching on faster than most people would,” Cammon admitted. “Although, who knows? Maybe there’s a god of war who watches over gifted fighters. Justin says he’s starting to believe it, anyway. You may have been imitating more magic, you just didn’t realize it.”