Glittering Shadows (22 page)

Tears pricked at Nan’s eyes and clogged her throat. When Sigi walked into their bedroom, she couldn’t speak until she had swallowed them down.

“I spoke to Ingrid,” she said.

“What happened?”

Nan’s voice was surprisingly calm as she explained what she knew, even as her heart rode on the waves of a stormy sea. “If I fix the enchantment, it means Thea’s life will
never be the same, and there’s nothing I can do. Even if the revolution is a success, I can’t give her back her hand.”

“That means all the men, too, and Sebastian? They’re all crippled?”

“She said it was only Sebastian’s inner circle, but how could she have done this to even one person?”

“Nan, can you get control of the magic somehow?” Sigi asked. “Instead of her?”

“I don’t think so. It’s like Yggdrasil’s magic is hers now.” Nan spread her palms on the wool blanket spread across her bed. The itchy fabric helped ground her.
“I don’t understand what Ingrid is doing, and maybe I need to stop trying. When Sebastian comes back, I’m going to try to break the spell on him.”

T
hea swallowed back a lump in her throat as she rushed up the stairs looking for Nan, still keeping her injured arm concealed. Downstairs, the men
were dragging in cold air along with crate after crate of firearms stolen from the arsenal. The upper floors were almost abandoned—except for Sigi and Nan’s voices, coming softly from
their bedroom.

They went silent when they saw her. “Thea,” Nan said, with such gravity that Thea wondered if she somehow already knew.

Thea’s voice left her. She couldn’t describe that moment in the guard station. Instead, she opened her bag and dropped the wooden hand onto her bed. The thin roots had turned
reddish-brown with drying blood. Sigi jumped at the sight of it, but Nan only echoed the grief in Thea’s own eyes.

“You figured it out,” Nan said. “I know what Ingrid did to you. When you left, I confronted her.”

Thea shut her eyes and hugged her concealed arm. “Can she fix it?”

She already knew what the answer would be, and Nan’s heavy pause confirmed it. “No…and there are others.”

Thea wanted to scream. Throw things. Find Ingrid and choke the life out of her—but even the thought of two hands wrapped around Ingrid’s neck reminded her of her loss. “What
can we do?”

“We should start by approaching Sebastian,” Nan said. “He’s the leader.”

“Sebastian…” Thea remembered dancing in his arms, like it had been a dream. A dream where they both struggled to speak and could not. And yet, she still remembered how safe
she felt in Sebastian’s arms. Was he really missing a hand? A foot? What if it was worse? She couldn’t imagine him ever being as vulnerable as she felt right now.

“Her influence isn’t easy to break,” Thea said, gesturing to the wooden hand on the bed. “I had to shoot the hand to break the spell.”

“Is Sebastian downstairs?” Nan asked.

“Yes. They’re bringing in the supplies now, and last I saw he was directing.”

“Maybe if we show him this—” Nan grabbed the hand. “Seeing it might snap him out of it. We need to hurry. Ingrid can sense things through the enchantment.”

“I could keep an eye on Ingrid for you,” Sigi offered. “Try and distract her if she starts to follow you.”

“Perfect,” Nan said. “Thea, are you able to do this? Or do you want me to try to explain on my own?”

Although Thea still didn’t want to speak of her hand, she did want Ingrid’s power to be known. She didn’t want to spend even one moment alone, waiting, wondering. “I can
do it.”

On the ground floor, Sebastian was supervising the movement of crates into the basement and holding his ubiquitous cup of coffee. Thea found herself noticing his hands in a new way, wondering if
they were real, wondering if they would pull his hand free and find ink stains on wooden fingers.

Nan approached him boldly while Thea watched, thankful she had Nan on her side. She couldn’t imagine handling this on her own. “I need to talk to you,” Nan said.
“Urgently. Can someone else take over for you?”

“I think it’s under control, really. I’m just being bossy.” He raised his eyebrows. “Did something happen?”

“Yes. There is another traitor in your ranks.”

The word “traitor” snatched his attention. He motioned them to his office, and didn’t ask questions until they were behind closed doors. “What happened?”

Nan jumped right in. “When Thea’s hand was shot, Ingrid amputated her hand and replaced it with one formed from the wood of Yggdrasil.”

He looked at Thea. His expression was the same as it had been when they danced—like words were trapped behind his eyes. She didn’t want him to see her this way—a girl with a
missing piece, with shattered confidence. She forced herself to speak. “I couldn’t seem to think of my parents. I practically abandoned my mother. Deep down, I knew she
had—
crippled
me—but I could only think of Yggdrasil.”

“The injury must have been more serious than you realized,” Sebastian said, speaking calmly, as if he didn’t quite comprehend what she was saying. She could imagine that his
mind must be working much as hers had, whispering in his ear to ignore the truth. “Ingrid would never harm someone unnecessarily.”

“I’ve had trouble remembering, too,” Thea said. “Some moments I knew the truth, then I couldn’t seem to speak. Sebastian, I know you have those moments, too, when
you remember your own mind.”

Sebastian’s face was turning ashen. “She’s a Norn,” he said. “She knows how things should be. She told me—” He smacked his hand against the edge of the
desk. “What are you trying to do to us?” He leaned forward, muscles tense, looking like he was battling a physical pain. “She made choices out of a dire need. She had no allies,
no one she could trust, and the only way to build the force she needed was to make this pact. She heals an injured man, and they swear their loyalty.”

“You’re repeating her words,” Nan said. “A part of you belongs to her.”

He looked like he was struggling to speak. Thea glanced at Nan quickly. She didn’t want Nan to do anything yet. “You have to fight her off,” Thea said. “She’s told
you things you wanted to hear. She’s helped you forget terrible memories, told you about the power you could have…”

“Ingrid isn’t evil,” he said. “She has to make hard choices. Leaders always do.”

Thea opened her bag and took out the wooden hand. She didn’t say anything, just thrust it at him; the hand itself, with the hole shot through it, and the dangling bloodstained roots, told
the story.

“I—” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I’m sure she’s done this for a reason.”

“She’s not the Ingrid I knew,” Nan said. “And the reason is misguided. You can’t have her guiding the thoughts of your people. Did you make a pact with her? Freddy
said she healed your leg after you lost it. I’ve never heard of a healer who can regenerate legs.”

He looked furious. “What you’re asking is something I cannot ask of these men. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Why should I listen to you? You weren’t
there when Yggdrasil was destroyed.”

“Sebastian, please,” Thea said. “The magic is making you say these things. You have to fight her off.”

Her pleas only seemed to send him into a panic. He made a move to the door, and Nan grabbed his jacket. Thea scrambled to help her, hooking her arm around his. He shoved her back easily.

“We can’t fight him, either. He’s protected by Yggdrasil,” Thea said.

Nan grabbed the hand he was holding the coffee cup with and splashed the liquid in his face.

“Guh!” He wiped his eyes, and she tackled him, knocking him onto the floor. He kicked her back.

Thea looked around wildly. She spotted the walking stick he’d been using to point at maps earlier. It was an antique with a finely worked silver ram’s head handle. Sebastian lunged
to grab it when he saw it swing toward him. “Not that!”

Thea whipped the stick out of his grasp and then swept it sideways, full force, toward his head. Maybe he was protected, but he obviously didn’t want her breaking his possessions against
his own head.

He ducked. Nan jumped on top of him and pushed his face into the floor. “Thea, hold him!”

Thea sat awkwardly on his legs. “Nan I don’t know how to get his leg off.” Her left arm, still buttoned under her coat, itched to be free and useful, but without a hand, an arm
wasn’t good for much.

Meanwhile, Sebastian was rocking beneath them, trying to throw off their weight. “Ingrid!” he shouted.

Nan slapped her hand over his mouth. She grabbed a fistful of his hair and pulled his head up. “I don’t want to be violent with you. Please. Fight her off.”

“Mmf!”

“Look, I—ow!” Nan withdrew her hand, bitten. Sebastian reached back and shoved her sideways, and with another heave managed to get out from under them, even as Nan tried to
drag him back down again.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said, holding up his hands. “You need to back off.”

“Thea, give me that cane.” Nan whacked his right shin with the cane and it cracked in two. The only pain in Sebastian’s face seemed to come from what she’d done to a
well-crafted object.

“Right one, then?” Nan said.

“I will not allow you to have it,” Sebastian said. He glanced at the door, obviously wondering if Ingrid or anyone was ever going to hear all this scuffling and intervene.

With a trembling hand, Thea worked open the buttons of her coat. She flinched, not from pain but from a mix of shame and horror, as she pulled the bandage away. Maybe she shouldn’t be vain
at such a time, but at this moment what hurt the most was the loss of the sheer beauty of her hand.

She lifted her left arm toward him. “Look at me. Max shot my hand under Ingrid’s orders. That’s why he was so upset when you questioned him. The other day, when he came back
from chasing Roger, he started to cry. He tried to tell me that Ingrid took his hands. He’s your man. You need to take responsibility for him and for me. For all of your men. If I can fight
this, you can, too.”

Sebastian had gone very pale. She saw the weight settle into his eyes, understood all too well the pain of accepting the truth. A part of her wanted to stop him. She didn’t want to see him
without a leg any more than she wanted to see herself without a hand. His mouth set, as he seemed to muster his resolve. “Help me…do it.”

“We will,” Thea said. “Sit down.”

“Hurry,” Nan said. “I can’t believe Ingrid hasn’t come. She
must
know.”

Sebastian sat in his desk chair and rolled up the right leg of his pants. Nan quickly grabbed his leg with both arms and pulled. The illusion briefly broke, revealing the wood, but it
didn’t give. Sebastian winced. Thea grabbed his hand, worried they might lose him again.

“Let me…” Nan put her hands on his leg more gently, and she began to chant. Thea remembered the wyrdsong from Ingrid. It sounded softer from Nan, which was strange when she
had never thought of Nan as soft. The illusion vanished again and the leg broke free just below Sebastian’s knee, leaving a clean stump with spots of blood where the leg had rooted, just like
the end of her arm.

Nan stopped chanting and dropped it like a hot stone. The little roots that had sunk their way into his mind and soul were longer and deeper than on Thea’s hand, although some of them
seemed withered and stunted, as if they represented the part of Sebastian’s mind that had fought against Ingrid.

Thea shuddered.

Sebastian gripped the desk, his eyes squinting shut with the stinging pain of the torn roots. The pain of Thea’s own wounds sharpened with sympathy. “Oh
no
,” he said.
“Now I do remember everything.”

“What do you remember?” Thea asked, trying to sound gentle, although her stomach was tied in a knot. She felt like she’d broken him.

“Something inside me knew the truth all along—that every time we approached a wounded man and offered him help, he was giving up his freedom to choose his own fate. I’ve known
that
I
was trapped, that my choices weren’t always my own either, but I couldn’t seem to fight it off. And look, I can live without a leg. Some of those men will have a harder
time.”

“They should be able to choose, at least,” Thea said. “I watched my mother lose her mind from bound-sickness over the course of years. I’d rather give up my hand than my
thoughts.”

“If they want to stick with her by choice, maybe there’s nothing we can do,” Nan said. “But then you shouldn’t be able to trust them either.”

“What do I have to fight with now?”

“Ingrid said your inner circle was affected,” Nan said. “How many?”

“Perhaps fifty men,” Sebastian said.

“You still have plenty of healthy men without their numbers. And the ones who are injured can surely still do something,” Thea said, although maybe this was her own wishful
thinking.

“You were raised a prince,” Nan said. “You learned a few things about running a country that Ingrid could never have taught you. The military strategy: She didn’t have
anything to do with that.”

“No, she didn’t,” he agreed. “All of my education was founded around learning how to rule.”