“Little one,” said the voice. Grace couldn’t tell where the man was standing, how close or how far, ahead of her or to her side. His voice seemed to be everywhere at once. “I’ve come to give you a great gift. The gift your mother asked for you. Power over the minds of men. Power to cloud their thoughts. Power to influence their opinions. Power to make them feel what you wish them to feel.”

Hands were suddenly at her temples, only they were not human hands, they were burning-hot pokers. Grace started in pain and alarm. “What—”

The world turned white, and then pure black, and Grace awoke with a shriek, disoriented, in her own bed, as if from a dream of falling. Light shone through the dingy lace curtains, casting yellow stripes on the coverlet, and she was even more disoriented until she realized that she must have slept the whole night and it was now the next day.

Shakily, she emerged from bed and found her slippers. There was no way to call for her mother; their bedrooms were too far apart and the walls too thick for her mother to hear such a call. So she padded through the stone halls of the manor in her dressing gown, feeling the wet draft chill her ankles and wishing Jesse were there to talk to. But of course he wouldn’t appear until the sun set again.

“You seem to have come through all right,” her mother said, when Grace found her in the old office, studying a parchment with a magnifying lens. She looked at Grace appraisingly. “None the worse for your new gift.”

Grace wouldn’t dare argue otherwise; she only said, “What is the gift, Mama?”

“You have been given power over men,” Tatiana said. “You have the power to make them do whatever you ask, only to please you. To fall in love with you, if that is your desire.”

Grace had never given much thought to love—not that kind of love, anyway. She understood that grown-ups fell in love, and even people as young as Jesse had. (But Jesse had never been in love, and now he was dead, and never would be.) “But if I can get them to do what I want regardless,” Grace said, “why would I require them to love me?”

“I forget how little you know,” her mother said thoughtfully. “I have kept you here to protect you, and it is good that you’ve encountered so little of the wickedness that pervades the world outside this house.” She sighed. “My child, as a woman, you will be at a disadvantage in this cruel world. If you marry, your husband will own everything and you nothing. Your very name will go away, in favor of his. See how my brothers flourish, where we crouch in penury. See how the word of Will Herondale is taken as more credible than the word of Tatiana Blackthorn.”