Chapter 3

3: 3

3.

I made an excuse and slipped away.

I hurried back to the observatory tower.

Using the braided bracelet Mabel had given me the year we both crossed over as my medium, I cast three divinations in a row.

Every chart came back steeped in danger.

Every single one was a death sentence, the kind where the person dies and the lamp goes dark.

Just then, a faint rustling came from beyond the door.

I threw it open and rushed out.

"Who's there?"

A young woman in a pink palace gown was crouched behind the door.

The moment she saw it was me, she whispered.

"High Priestess, it's me. Consort Larissa."

I looked at that round, girlish face.

It took me a long moment of searching before it came back.

When Mabel and I had first arrived in this world, we'd saved a consort who'd nearly drowned by accident.

That was Consort Larissa.

She came from a modest background and had never found favor in the palace.

Ever since that day she'd been endlessly grateful to Mae.

She was trembling like a leaf, and she glanced back to make sure no one was around.

Only then did she draw a protective charm from inside her robe and press it into my hand with great care.

"Three days before the birth, the Queen gave me this protective charm."

"She said that when the High Priestess returned, I was to place it in your hands myself, no matter what."

My heart dropped, and in an instant I felt like I'd plunged into ice.

A month ago a great drought had struck the south.

I'd been summoned out of the palace to pray to the heavens for rain on behalf of the stricken people.

Once it was done I traveled day and night, and only made it back after Mabel had already given birth to the little princess.

While I was gone, something had happened in this palace. I was certain of it.

Mae had sensed the danger closing in and had no time to send word.

So she'd left it with Consort Larissa to wait for my return.

"Did she say anything else?"

"No. The Queen only said that once the charm reached the High Priestess's hands, you would understand."

After I'd seen Consort Larissa off, I lowered my eyes to the charm in my palm.

It was made of tribute paper, and Mae had inked the words herself.

I opened it and read it several times over, and found nothing out of the ordinary.

But Mae had gone out of her way to have it delivered. It had to be some important hint.

I turned it over and over, and then it hit me.

Before we crossed over, Mabel had loved horror movies.

In a lot of them there was a plot where the lead prays for a protective charm and disaster follows instead.

Back then she'd joked to me about it.

"This isn't a protective charm, it's a death warrant."

"Soon as you see the charm, you know it's time to pack your bags and run."

I gripped the charm in my hand, and the blood ran cold all through me.

This was a warning.

Mae wanted to tell me there was danger in this palace.

She was telling me to run, and fast.

Even at her most desperate hour, the thing she'd been thinking of was still my safety.

But Mabel was the Queen. Who in the inner palace could threaten her position?

The first person I thought of was Jasper Harding.

Yet everyone under heaven knew Jasper loved Mabel to the marrow.

At their wedding he had offered half his empire as the bride-price.

As emperor, at the rite of heaven, he had sworn an oath.

In this life he would have no wife but Mabel, or else the throne would pass to another and his head would be parted from his body.

And ever since, he truly had not touched another consort.

At the thought, grief welled up in me before I could stop it.

In the end, my Mae never did get to have me bring her home.

I allowed myself only the time it takes an incense stick to burn to grieve.

Then I got up at once and sealed every door and window of the observatory tower.

The most pressing thing now was not weeping.

If she lived, I would find her; if she was dead, I would find her body.

Whether the real Mabel was living or a ghost, wherever she was, I would find her.

I drew the dagger from my waist and, without hesitation, drove it into my heart.

Violent pain burst out from my chest.

I pressed my lips tight together and cupped the blood from my heart, letting it fall onto the braided bracelet Mae had given me.

Fighting through the pain, I lit three soul lanterns.

I offer ten years of my lifespan in sacrifice. The soul-burning rite to pierce the world of the dead.

A thread of black mist drifted out of the bracelet, following the winding corridors of the inner palace, and floated toward the northwest.