Red Hood's Revenge

“I’m not sure. This doesn’t feel right.”
    She crawled on, extinguishing the light from her mirrors as they neared the end of the pipe. Metal bars blocked the end, but the pipe was so old and cracked that Danielle was able to yank them loose.
    “Another ghost.” Danielle handed her own waterskin to Snow.
    Snow did her best to repeat the spell she had used before. It took longer this time, and she turned away to keep Danielle from noticing the pain. Not that it helped.
    “You need to rest.”
    “Sure.” Snow wiped her face. “You think Zestan will agree to wait until we’ve napped to use Talia against Lakhim?” She finished the soul jar and shoved it back to Danielle. “Throw this at the ghost.”
    Danielle did so, then crawled out into the moonlight. “I think it worked.”
    Snow followed, finding herself in a broad, circular pool, long since dried. Old tiles clung to the sides. The edges of the pool were flat and broad, designed to be used as benches. Snow picked up the dribbling waterskin and tied it shut.
    “This is beautiful,” Danielle said.
    “Yes.” Snow frowned as she looked around. “And that’s bad.”
    No mortal had ever possessed a garden like this. Pink-leaved trees bordered meandering paths of green moss. Lavender buds hung from the branches like strings of tiny bells. Deep blue flowers rose like sweet-scented stalagmites to meet them. This place made Rajil’s garden look like a patch of weeds beside the road.
    The walls of the garden rose several stories all around them, the balconies curtained in flowers that reminded her of roses with blossoms the size of a man’s head. Arched walkways passed overhead, a web of vines stretched between them.
    Petals and fallen leaves blanketed the ground. Blue-green moss sank beneath her feet as she walked to pick up a leaf. She rubbed it between her fingers. The leaf left a golden residue on her skin. “This makes no sense.”
    She wiped her hand on her robe, then sat on the edge of the pool and grabbed a mirror. She waited impatiently for Trittibar to respond.
    His voice sounded distant. He was in the royal library, with several books laid out on the table in front of him. “Theodore is talking to Lakhim. I know you’re in a hurry, but you have to give me time to—”
    “I think Zestan-e-Jheg is a peri.”
    Silence. Snow watched Trittibar set aside the book he had been reading. He approached the mirror, which was hidden in the back of a sconce near the door. “I don’t understand.”
    “Look through the mirror.” Snow turned slowly, giving him a good view of the garden. “Remember Volume Three of Penkleflop’s Histories ? ‘Round him grew blossoms of every shape and color. Pleasing perfumes eased his troubles. Here the peri gathered to anoint their champion.’ ”
    “Lots of fairies have gardens,” Trittibar said. “The fairy queen—”
    “The fairy queen isn’t deev. The deev preferred the darkness of their caves. But the peri needed their gardens. ‘They took neither food nor drink, subsisting only on the sweet scents of the world.’ We know Zestan is powerful enough to command the Wild Hunt. When the Kha’iida studied the curse Zestan laid on Faziya, they couldn’t identify it. It wasn’t deev magic, but something similar. It was peri, not deev.”
    “Why would a peri take Talia?” Danielle asked. “I thought they were the ones who protected Arathea.”
    The howling seemed to come from nowhere, making Snow jump. She squinted at the mirror, trying to make out the windows behind Trittibar. Was there an orange tint to the glass?
    “What’s happening?” Trittibar asked.
    “It’s dawn there, isn’t it?” Dawn in Arathea came later than in Lorindar. About one hour later. The Wild Hunt ended their ride each night an hour before dawn, and it sounded like the rest were coming home.
     
    Two hunters brought Roudette to what had once been the palace library. Most of the contents had been looted or destroyed long ago, judging from the sand and dust covering the empty stone shelves. What books remained were torn and damaged, though the desert air had preserved them better than Roudette would have expected. Broken statues lay on the floor, as if they too had fallen asleep when Talia’s curse struck.
    Roudette was dropped roughly against the wall. The impact jarred the arrows in her body, making her cry out. She tried to stand, to fight and force them to kill her, but the hunters had already vanished, and her leg