And yet the room didn’t look like a jail cell. There were screw holes on the wall where a chalkboard had once hung, and bits of old posters taped to the wall. He felt a muzzy sense of recognition, but it wasn’t until he found a blue crayon wedged into the baseboard and a scrap of faded paper reading PPIANS 2:12 that he realized he was trapped in an old Sunday school classroom.
The irony startled a laugh out of him, but he quickly sobered at the thought of what it meant. The Blackwing brothers must have found a way into the hostel during the night-whining pathetically at the door in their dog forms maybe, or just posing as human travelers and waiting for the attendant to invite them in. They’d put a spell on Timothy while he slept, and brought him here to Sanctuary-or at least he assumed it was Sanctuary; how many abandoned churches could the Empress’s people own?
Not that it mattered. He had to get out of here and find Linden. Timothy paced around the room, inspecting every corner for an escape route, or a key, or a weapon. But he found nothing but a few crumbs of plaster, and when he rapped on the wall, no one answered.
He sidled over and crouched in front of the door, shifting uncomfortably as the cement chilled his bare feet, and examined the lock. If only he had something to pick it with All at once the door swung inward, smacking him in the face. He was clutching his nose and swearing fervently in Luganda when an amused voice said from the doorway, “Welcome back to Sanctuary, Timothy Sinclair. I trust you slept well? You should feel honored: I wove that dream for you myself.”
It was Veronica.
The floor of Linden’s cage glowed with fiery heat, and when she tried to cling to the bars they burned her fingers. She fluttered helplessly in midair, wing muscles aching with the effort, knowing that she could not hover much longer before her strength gave out-and that the moment it did, she would die.
“Tell me, little one,” said the Empress softly. Linden had imagined the Empress would be tall, dark, and arrogant-looking like Jasmine, but she could not have been more wrong: This woman was almost childlike, with delicate features and hair the color of dandelion wine curling about her shoulders. In fact she looked so sweet that it was hard to believe she could be evil-or so Linden had thought, until her torture began. “Why did you and the human boy go to Wales?”
“We were-trying-to get away-from you!” gasped Linden. Her wings were failing now, and with every breath she sank a little closer to the floor. She could feel the heat beating up at her, searing her skin and crisping the ends of her hair; even the tears that streaked her face were hot.
“You know what will happen if you fall,” the Empress told her. “This is your last chance to confess before you burn to ashes, and I am forced to interrogate the human in your stead. For I will have the truth,” and with a flick of her fingers she set the cage swinging on its chain. Linden shrieked as the hot bars brushed her arm, scorching through the sleeve of her tunic in an instant; panicked, she wove back and forth in midair, trying to avoid another collision.
“We went-to find more faeries!” she cried as the cage spun dizzily around her. “Ones who would help my people, give us back our magic-but I couldn’t.” A sob ripped at her lungs. “I couldn’t!”
The Empress put out a languid hand and stopped the cage; the heat radiating from its metal bars seemed to bother her not at all. “You see?” she said. “So much easier. Do you wish me to put out the fire?”
“P-please,” whimpered Linden. The hem of her skirt was smoking, and blisters had broken out on the soles of her feet.
“Then it is done,” said the Empress, and instantly the cage was cool again. Linden collapsed to the floor, faint with relief.
When she had caught her breath, she sat up slowly and looked at the room around her. It was eerily similar to the Gospel Hall she and Timothy had visited in Aberystwyth: The high, peaked ceiling and narrow windows, the platform over which her cage hung suspended, were the same. Yet this hall was webbed in sinister shadows, with only a few candles to light it, and the only furniture was a single throne in the center of the platform, facing the empty floor.
The Empress walked to the throne and sat upon it, smoothing her silken skirts. “No wonder my servants caught you so easily,” she mused. “For your quest had failed, and in your hearts you had already given up.” She ran one finger across her lips. “Tell me more about your people. No magic, you say? How did that come about?”
Linden wiped her tear-smudged face on her sleeve-and only then did she realize that there were no scorch marks on the cloth anywhere, just as there were no burns on her skin. The cage had never been hot at alclass="underline" The whole ordeal had been a glamour, a cunning illusion.
“We were betrayed,” she said shakily. “By a faery named Jasmine. She stole our magic and used it to change our bodies against our will-all because she wanted to keep us from having anything to do with humans.”
“And rightly so,” said the Empress with approval. “Or at least the intent was noble, even if the execution was shortsighted. What happened to her then, this Jasmine?”
“She became our Queen, for a while,” said Linden. “But then a faery she’d forgotten about came back to the Oak-Amaryllis. She’d been away when Jasmine cast her spell, so she still had all her wits and magic about her, and when she learned what Jasmine had done to the other Oakenfolk, she challenged her to a duel.”
The Empress’s eyes widened, like a wondering child’s. “How exciting! Go on.”
“Jasmine lost,” Linden said. “And Amaryllis wanted to punish her properly for what she’d done. So she took away all her magic, turned her into a human, and banished her from the Oak forever. That’s all I know about her.”
The Empress let out a sorrowful breath. “So cruel a fate for such a heroine! It is a pity. Had I only known, I would have sought out this Jasmine and taken her into my court. How long ago was this?”
“It’s been nearly two hundred years,” Linden told her, adding with a flash of private satisfaction, “She’s long dead by now.”
“And all that time your people have been without magic. Living like prisoners, I am told, inside that Oak of yours, struggling for every mouthful, and hardly daring to set outside lest some predator swoop down upon you. You replace yourselves with eggs when you die, but bear no children, and now fewer than fifty of you are left. Is that not so?”
Linden was taken aback. Where was the Empress getting all this information? Surely the Blackwings hadn’t observed all that from one brief flight over the Oakenwyld…but there was only one other possibility, and her mind balked from the thought.
“What a wretched existence,” remarked the Empress, flicking dust off the arm of her carved throne. “If it were not for your willful attachment to humans in spite of all Jasmine’s attempts to enlighten you, I should feel quite sorry for you all. But as it is…”
“Why?” Linden burst out. “Why do you hate humans? When you depend on them for so much-”
“I do not hate them,” said the Empress coolly. “Any more than you hate the sparrows and rabbits you eat for your dinner. But I do not befriend my dinner, either. And it does not please me to see my subjects degrading themselves by keeping company with humans, telling them our secrets, and encouraging them to waste their creativity on their own kind, when those talents would be so much better used by us. And speaking of which…”
She murmured a word Linden could not hear and made a beckoning gesture. Immediately Rob stepped out of the shadows, his guitar slung across his back. He bowed to the Empress, then sat down at her feet and began to play, paying no attention to Linden at all.
“My court musician,” said the Empress fondly, looking down at him. “And my most loyal subject-are you not, my Robin?”