Except the Queen Read Free Page B

piece of cold iron and slipped it around me with such precision that I was now naked to the elements. And so I entered the new world raw, unprotected, veins open to the earth, sky, and all about, and
that
was the worst pain of all.
    *   *   *
    I AWOKE ON A GRAY table in a gray hall, covered by a gray sheet. There were low lights and a buzz of voices.
    And the smell. Oh, sweet Mab, the smell.
    It was as if all the meat of the world had spoiled, and I along with it.
    I turned over on my side and did something I had never done before in my long life. I let what was in my stomach empty out onto the gray floor.
    “Oh for fuck’s sake,” I heard a voice say. “These street people. Look what the cat’s thrown up now. Jenny—get the mop.”
    *   *   *
    W HEN I WOKE AGAIN , I was starving. My stomach felt scraped and my throat was raw. My shoulder, where the Queen’s wand had struck, ached down to the bone. I was wrapped in some sort of winding sheet that smelled ever so slightly of flaxseed. It was as gray as the room.
    I tried to call out, but my voice sounded scratchy, and as ancient as the great holm oak that sits atop our green hill. But someone must have heard me, for an unhandsome woman ran in. She had a shock of black hair that had strange white roots, as if she had put a glamour on that had worn off raggedly.
    She glanced at me, pulled a long silver needle from a pocket in her gray coverall, and then attempted to shove the needle into my upper arm.
    I screamed and sat up—who wouldn’t? Any fey knows that poison loves the needle. In the same movement, I unwound the top part of the sheet and tore my arm from her grasp. Then I slapped her. My fingerprints blossomed on her cheek. I stood, despite the best attempt of the bottom part of the sheet to keep me down, spoke a curse, and waved my hand to turn her into a toad. She looked at me with a mouth slightly awry, not at all toadlike. I stood there like a gob, staring at her unchanged shape as she grabbed up my arm again and this time shoved the needle straight in.
    It stung, but far less than I had expected. There was a sudden sweet flavor in my mouth, not quite nectar, but not far off from it, which was odd because I had had no drink at all.
    As I fell back hazily onto the bed, I noticed my arm and hand for the first time. Or at least what should havebeen my arm and hand. Where was my alabaster skin, the agile wrist, the tapering pink nails? What was this long, plump protuberance covered with fine, dark, curling hairs? These fingers as thick as cow dugs? What lines were these across the back of my hand, like folds? And why was the fat, horrible hand clutching a piece of silk the color of a summer rose?
    Whose arm is this,
I thought, for surely it was not mine, no matter that it seemed firmly attached to my shoulder.
    A dream,
I thought.
    A nightmare,
I corrected.
    And then I thought:
The Queen’s spell.
    Knowing I was right at last, I let the nectar take me into sleep where I stayed through day and night and into the following morning.

6

Meteora Runs Away
    W ord was spreading fast from court as I searched the Greenwood for Serana. But there was no sign of her. All I found was Will the hob, shaking with fear, tucked in between two rocks.
    “Where is she?” I whispered.
    “Gone,” he answered, his eyes rimmed white.
    “Gone where?” I demanded.
    “Wherever the Queen has sent her. Quick-like in a shout.” He squeezed out from between the rocks and bolted into the dense bracken.
    Those words, how they stabbed me to the heart.
Serana gone!
I knew she had no time, no chance to reason with the Queen. With naught on her back, she had disappeared and only the Queen knew where.
    And I was next. I was sure of it. Fleeing to our quarters, I arrived at my room unseen through the mouse holes we had built as a secret passageway to the little springs where we liked to bathe. Frantically, I gathered up beloved things: a silver dove, milky crystals, a lozenge of