"Are you still with me, girl?"

That soft voice sends shivers down my spine. I stare into that loathsome face, her eyes wrinkled with concern. I hate it when she talks to me. I hate that her concern is genuine. She crosses the room towards me, a bowl in her hands. I catch a brief glance, through the open stone door, of shelves filled with books.

I flinch away, as she reaches out to stroke my damp hair and close my eyes when she leans over to kiss my brow. The touch of her lips sends my skin crawling. I feel sick. She pulls back and stares into my eyes, her face inches from mine.

"It's all for your own good," she says, with that soft, maternal voice. "It's to make you better. You want to get better, don't you?"

I can't help it. I can't bear the thought of more pain, so I play out the charade, like we do every day. I nod my head slightly, my eyes warm and liquid.

Senelle gives me a hug, careful to avoid the tender parts of my flesh. She places the bowl on the table next to me and pulls out a damp cloth. Gently, but efficiently, she cools and cleans the brands on my body. Though the water is cool, the touch of the cloth leaves me throbbing with pain. I can't help but cry out. Senelle shushes me, telling me it will all be over soon. I try to shut away my mind, to go away. Anywhere but here, but the brandings are too painful. All I can feel it the touch of her fingers as they brush against my skin.

The rattling of the chains on my chest sends my eyes springing open again. Senelle is unlocking the restraints. Slowly, they fall away. I try to sit up. To escape. Anything to get away from this torment, but I'm too weak. My arms aren't even strong enough to lift me up. Each breath hurts.

"Careful, girl. You'll hurt yourself. Here, let me get you."

Senelle pulls me towards her, her strong hands supporting my back. I can feel the darkness trying to rise within me, but that only makes the marks on my body start to bleed. Senelle clucks and slips a thin black shift over me. Once she has dressed me, she picks me up with ease, holding me tightly against her body. I can smell her sweat and cloying perfume. The sickly smell makes my stomach churn.

Senelle carries me through the open door and into the library. She sets me down at a desk by the open window, brushing my hair lightly with her hands. I stare at the smooth polished surface of the desk, my face reflected back in the burnished wood. My eyes are two dark pits in the emaciated sharp angles of my face, my hair is limp and pale, speckled with dried blood. Inside, I can feel a burning black inferno. An old anger and fear. Rage against the world that has left me here as little more than a doll for this creature.

Senelle steps away from me, leaving me at the desk by myself. I try to lift myself, but my arms are too wasted. I struggle for a long moment, but give up exhausted. Every day is the same. Black. Burning. Useless. With only hatred to survive. Sometimes, it gets through. I can tell when it does. I can make her hurt. Hurt her, like she does to me. I'm not always there on those days. I like the other days more. The days when I float away free. I get to be all sorts of people. When I dream, I go all over the castle, with the guards and servants. Once I even got to be the Queen.

My favourite is the tearaway. She's a prisoner, like me. They won't let her go, but she's brave and smart. I like to follow her through the tunnels, lit only by luminescent flowers. I hold my breath as she breathes the flowers into life, digging. Dirt under her nails. Always digging her way out. I wish I were like her. I live for the joy she feels, running into the forest. Free. Alive. It breaks my heart when they bring her back. Then I come back too. Back to being me. Broken. Used. Dead.

I try to stare out of the window, hoping to catch a glimpse of the tree tops of the forest that I know is out there, but it's too high. All I can see is the sky and a falcon, dark against the sun. I close my eyes, and for a moment, I can feel the thud of the falcon's heart against its avian breast; the thrill of the hunt and the light from a thousand colours. Then my brand begins to throb and my world turns grey once more.

I hear footsteps on the rushes of the floor. I turn my dull eyes towards Senelle, watching with dispassionate disgust, as she places a bowl of soup in front of me.

"Come, girl," Senelle places a hand possessively on my neck, "You'll feel much better, once you've been fed."

I try to snarl, baring my sharp canines at her, but the effort is too exhausting. My head slumps against her arm. Senelle grips my head with one hand, holding me upright, and begins to feed me with the other. I hate myself for giving in. I hate that there is nothing I can do to stop her. I hate that I crave the food, anything to fill the empty void inside me. I hate that part of me is grateful. Grateful for the care that she gives me. Grateful for the contact with another person. Grateful for not being alone. That is my greatest fear. Being left alone in the night, with nothing but the blackness within to consume me.

I can't stand it. I won't be like this. I reach out with my mind. I can feel them all. Everyone in the castle, and the woods beyond. I can feel all their wants, their desires. Their loves and their hates. I can feel their lives. Their thoughts.

What if?

I can feel their thoughts; each thread of their lives stretched out, like a tapestry, each thread woven around memories. What if I were to change them?

Nearby, I can feel Senelle's thoughts, a tangled oily mess. The very touch of her mind leaves me boiling with hatred.

With a grim smile, I reach out and shred the tapestry to ribbons.

He couldn't stand the not knowing. The ineptitude. He was supposed to be in charge of this castle, this kingdom, and yet he had managed to lose two of the heirs to the throne. He still had no idea how it had happened and his only lead was as mad as a box of frogs. On top of that, the Queen herself seemed to have descended into paranoia. Yesterday, she had fled the guard barracks and locked herself in her chambers, refusing to see anyone. They had been due to return to the capital this morning, yet Jorsin couldn't see that happening. He had received several insistent requests from the Crochan Ambassador for an audience, along with a number of letters from the Steward in Doranelle and the Council of State, demanding to know what was happening. Reports were coming in from outposts and army commanders of suspicious activity in the mountains and he had been informed of a series of brutal murders in the outlying villages.

Jorsin's gut was telling him that something big was going on. It had all the hallmarks of an imminent coup against the crown. As a precaution, he had sent out half the guard, under Captain Erla, to escort Princess Mab to the nearest army garrison at Honfleur. With the Queen incapacitated, it would be unwise to keep the remaining members of the Royal Family in one place. If he could, Jorsin would already have sent the Queen away from the castle. It was clear that his adversaries were able to get past locked doors and, if the number of dead guards were any indication, no one was safe here. All his instincts were telling him to order the evacuation, but he couldn't shake the feeling that he would be abandoning the princesses if he did.

Princess Mora's bedroom was untouched since he had left it, apart from the removal of the bodies; though the dried bloodstains indicated where they had lain. The assassin had to have entered the room somehow, without the guards at the door or on the balcony knowing. Even if they had killed them and left through the main entrance, the wyrdmark under the princess's bed showed that the room had been entered secretly earlier the evening the princess disappeared. Such a mark would almost certainly have been noticed earlier in the day by the maids and none of the princess's staff had recognised it.

"Pull apart the furniture," Jorsin ordered his guards. "I want every corner of this room laid bare."

There were of course secret passages throughout the castle. Jorsin had thought he had known them all. If the secret room in Maeve's chambers was any indication, though, that wasn't the case. The whole castle was likely compromised. If the Queen didn't leave freely by the end of today, he would have to have her forcibly removed and packed off to the capital, even if the news of what had happened here was going to cause a panic.

The guards began tearing down tapestries and hacking apart the intricately carved furnishings. They smashed apart delicate ornaments, toys, books and the princess's personal artifacts with their weapons, piling the debris in the centre of the room. Jorsin himself shifted into a falcon and sat in the rafters, surveying the organised destruction with the eyes of a hunter. From this vantage point, he assessed the room with a defensive eye. A secret passage had to be hidden, making use of gaps and crawl spaces that no one would notice. With the corridor to one side and a room in front and behind, the only logical space would be the outside wall. Like all exterior walls of the castle, it was extra thick to withstand fire from incendiaries. The perfect space to hide hidden passages and an escape tunnel.

In his bird form, Jorsin hopped along the rafters towards the outside wall, knocking tufts of dust down towards the destruction his fae were wreaking upon Mora's bedchamber. With the tapestries and furniture removed, the wall was bare stone and mortar. Though there were cracks here and there, Jorsin couldn't see anything resembling a passage or opening. He hopped closer to the wall, focusing his eyes hard. Perhaps he had been wrong. Perhaps the passage was in the floor. There were, afterall, large spaces between stories that no one would think to notice.

A speck of dust between his talons caught his eye. The dust next to his foot had been disturbed. There, on the beam where he was standing, was a black streak of wood where something or someone had lain, quite recently since no dust had settled again. Jorsin's eyes followed the streak along the rafter, until it was over where the princess's bed had been. There were scratch marks in the wood, like claw marks from tiny hands. There was a faint whiff of magic in the air too. Strange. Alien. Very different to his own. He had smelt it before, just a few days ago when looking for Princess Maeve at the lake.

Jorsin flew to the floor and shifted back to fae, feeling a slight weariness from the transformation.

"Captain Treille."

The captain ran over.

"I can confirm that the princess was abducted. I want you to take the Queen to Doranelle immediately. Nowhere in Mistwatch is safe. I want you to double the watch at the city and to set up protective wards. Before you go, I send a rider to General Lucienne at Honfleur to do the same. No one in or out. Understood?"

The captain looked stricken.

"What is it, Lord General? Are we at war?"

"There is faerie magic at play here, captain. I need you to take the Queen away. If she won't come willingly, break the door down and drag her. Keep her away from any temples or holy sites or anywhere rich in the old magic. Is that understood?"

"Yessir. What are we facing?"

"That I can't tell you yet, Treille, but I will continue to search for the missing princesses. I will send word when I know more."

With that, the captain saluted Jorsin and dashed out the room.

If faeries had abducted the princesses, it would mean a breach of the peace that had existed for thousands of years. There wasn't enough evidence yet to jump to conclusions, but the danger was too high for Jorsin to do nothing and risk something happening to the Queen. It was vital that he got to the bottom of this soon, before it got any worse. He called over two guards.

"I need you to go to the room above and to check under the floorboards for crawl spaces or holes that anything could get in or out of. Mouse holes, cracks, whatever. Anything that leads down into this room."

The guards dashed off out of the room after Treille.

Jorsin shifted back into a falcon and returned to the rafters. If a faerie had been in the room, it could have got in through any number of ways. It made the search much more complicated. They were crafty and mischievous. A faerie also didn't explain the whole picture. Though they were territorial and could be aggressive, they mostly kept to themselves, often defending as a group when threatened. Jorsin had never heard of a group being able to kill seven fae in such a brutal fashion, let alone a single faerie. As individuals, faeries weren't much threat to a fae. There was an exception, which was the reason most fae chose not to interfere with faeries, for fear of causing offence and suffering a curse.

Jorsin followed the line of disturbed dust to the end of the rafter. There, where it met the wall, there stone support stepped away from the wall. From the ground, it was obstructed by the wooden beam and just looked like a part of the ceiling. From the rafters, Jorsin could just make out a tiny crawl space behind. Not large enough for an adult fae, but large enough for a child or faerie.

He hopped inside. It was too confined for him to use his wings. The dark cobwebby space irritated his eyes, causing him to ruffle his feathers irritably. He could barely see. It wasn't a proper secret passageway, rather an insulating cavity between the outer and inner walls. Most of the castle didn't have cavity walls, as it was built for defence, not comfort. However, the royal apartments had been refurbished, when the Queen had adopted Mistwatch as her royal retreat.

There was no floor to walk upon in the space. Instead, the edges of the roofbeams continued between the plasterwork and into the outer wall, forming steps. Unable to fly, Jorsin was forced to hop from beam to beam.

Like in the bedroom, it was clear that the dust in here had been disturbed recently. From the size of the trail, whoever it had been was much larger than a faerie, though there was still that whiff of faerie magic that he could sense, even in his falcon form. Further away from the entrance, the space became near pitch black, forcing Jorsin to rely upon his sense of smell to find his way. Several times, he nearly stumbled with his footing. It was a long drop down. In this confined space, he would be unable fly or shift back to fae to save himself.

The trail seemed to be looping around the curved wall of the edge of the tower. After several long minutes of exhausting hopping, Jorsin bumped into a wall. He was at the edge of the cavity wall. The apartments beyond didn't have an insulating wall. It was a dead end. Jorsin pecked at the stone with his beak. They couldn't have just stopped here. There had to be further to go. He continued to peck, trying to get a sense of the space.

Suddenly, his beak met open air. With a surprised squawk, he found himself tumbling into space. He landed in a tumble of feathers and bruises. He had fallen several feet. His wing began to ache where it had struck the stone wall. He seemed to be lying in a pile of chipped plaster. Someone appeared to have deliberately knocked a hole through the cavity wall and into the crawlspace under the floorboards of another room. Judging by the smell, he must be near a garderobe. If the kidnapper were a faerie, this would make sense. An adult wouldn't be able to get through the small hole and into the castle. But a faerie could easily and no one would look twice at the comings and goings of a garderobe.

Underneath the stench of the garderobe and the smell of faerie, Jorsin could sense another scent. The scent of a fae. A fae child had been here recently. And there was an older scent as well. He couldn't make it out very well, due to his dull falcon senses. A fae child had used this space, even before the kidnapping.

If he had been in his fae form, he would have smiled. He could guess which of the princesses had probably knocked a hole in the wall. He could well picture Princess Maeve escaping the castle through a garderobe on one of her many truancies. The more recent smell seemed to lead away, though. Deeper into the castle.

Pushing through the dirty space, Jorsin found himself emerging into what seemed to be a gutter. The castle had several internal reservoirs to collect rainwater for cooking and cleaning and drinking. This gutter must be a part of the castle's plumbing. Jorsin stepped out onto the gutter. Far above, he could make out the sky through a metal grill. Running along the edge of the spiralling gutter, was a line of spiders, all scuttling down.

Jorsin's eyes tightened in puzzlement at this bizarre sight, before following the spiders down.