The Snow Queen's Shadow

with flakes of jade. A high, silver collar followed the contours of her cheekbones. “I may be able to help you track him. Your son is marked, both by the human magic in his father’s bloodline, and by fairy magic.”
    “Thanks to your darklings.”
    “You still don’t know what he is, do you?” The Duchess laughed. “Danielle, do you think it normal that the animals obey your every wish? That your mother lived on after her death, that she watches you to this day, imprisoned in that magic blade you carry?”
    “She loved me.”
    “And your father did not? I don’t see you carrying his soul around in a sword.” The Duchess leaned closer. “My darklings did nothing but awaken the fairy magic already within your son’s blood. Judging by your mother’s trick with the hazel tree, I’d guess dryad magic, perhaps three or four generations removed. Your son is a rare creature indeed. One with the ability to manipulate both human and fairy magic. The only question was who would be first to sense that potential and try to steal it.”
    “Impossible.” The anger in her voice startled her, but she didn’t try to suppress it. The idea that her mother, that she herself carried fairy blood . . . “Jakob is human. Snow examined him many times after we escaped your cave, and she never found anything unnatural.”
    “What could be more natural than fairy magic?”
    Danielle shook her head. “I would have known.”
    “Is our kind so horrible? Rest your mind, Princess. You and your son are human in every way that matters. But, like your friend Talia, you’re also something more.”
    “You knew.”
    The Duchess spread her hands. “I suspected. Human blood dilutes our own. Even a fairy of the pure caste might not recognize one of our descendants after a few generations.”
    “Why did you never—?” Danielle backed away. There were many reasons to keep such secrets. A better question was why the Duchess was telling her now. Was it simply a way to keep Danielle off-balance? “What do you want?”
    “I can help you find Jakob. In exchange for that help, you will send him to me in Fairytown for six months of each year. I give you my word to raise him like my own son. He will be protected from all harm. Given everything you’ve said, he’ll be safer here than in your own palace.”
    “You can’t be serious,” Danielle breathed.
    “Isn’t this better than losing him altogether?” The Duchess softened her words, never losing her smile. “I can teach him to understand his fairy blood, to use his magic to protect himself.”
    For Jakob’s sake, Danielle refrained from telling the Duchess what she could do with her bargain. “Choose another price.”
    “Why ask me, Princess? Why not your friend Snow White?” Amusement danced in her eyes. “Could it be she has finally overreached herself, that she’s fallen prey to her own power?”
    The Duchess knew Snow was behind Jakob’s kidnapping. It shouldn’t have surprised her. Febblekeck was the obvious candidate for the spy, but by now word had likely spread.
    “As I understand the story,” the Duchess said, “Snow’s mother ordered her killed. She intended to dine upon her own daughter’s heart. Gruesome, but not unknown.”
    Danielle kept silent, unsure where the Duchess was leading.
    “Ancient wizards believed you could consume another’s magic in such ways. I hope whoever stole Jakob away doesn’t believe as Snow’s mother did. I hate to imagine him suffering such a fate because his own mother was too weak to protect him.”
    “I won’t save him from one evil only to give him to another.”
    “Very well.” The Duchess’ image began to fade. “When you change your mind, you know how to reach me.”
    Danielle’s blade rang against the floor where the Duchess’ face had mocked her only a moment before. Her strike cut the carpet and gouged the tile below. She relaxed her grip, allowing the sword to fall to the floor.
    The Duchess was fey; she would keep her word, protecting Jakob and raising him as her own son. Raising him to be fairy. Shaping him into God only knew what. Given the Duchess’ own magic, how difficult would it be to turn Jakob against his own kind?
    She stepped to the window. Tiny flecks of silver and iron were worked into each pane of glass. Fairy glass, said to protect against magic, though only the weakest of charms would be repelled by such. The Duchess had answered Danielle’s summons easily enough.
    A quiet squeak made