But no, it could not be that. Taven had said she was bedridden. Ill. Beyond help. She shook off the curiosity for another day and ran the last few paces to the space that lay beneath her mother’s chambers. The queen’s room, by comparison, was dark. There was a faint flicker of what she guessed was a candle, but nothing like the light that had been coming from her own rooms.

Jinx immediately set to work with her vines, digging a small hole in the earth and dropping a seed inside to make her magic easier. The plant bloomed quickly, climbing fiercely up the wall like a warrior to battle. Aurora went up first, her hands and feet moving faster than they ever had.

She landed on her mother’s balcony with a heavy thud, but thunder rolled through the heavens a moment later, eclipsing the noise she and Jinx made. Aurora peeked through the curtains that lined the windows leading to the balcony, and she could see nothing inside the room except a lone candle by the bed, and a dark, huddled shape beneath the blankets. She rushed inside and went straight for the bed.

The first sight of her mother stole her breath and broke something inside her. Aurora had always known that her mother was aging. She’d had Aurora past her prime, and that had been eighteen years past. But Queen Aphra had always seemed so regal, powerful beyond measure—more like a goddess than a mother. Her silver-gray hair had never seemed a sign of her age so much as her power. But the woman lying in that bed looked old and frail. The skin of her face sagged as if she were in pain, even in her sleep. Her fingers clutched at the top of her blankets, knuckles wrinkled like prunes. She looked more than breakable. She looked as if she’d been broken, and no one had been able to put her together again quite how she used to be.

Aurora held one hand to her mouth in horror, and the other she reached out toward her mother. She touched a hand—the skin felt thin and too soft.

“Mother?” she whispered.

When no reply came, she tried again, “Ma?”

Carefully she held her mother’s shoulder and shook. “Wake up. It’s me. Aurora. I’m home.”

Her mother did not move. Aurora shook her a little harder. Still no reaction. Jinx came around the bed then, and she took over with an emotionless efficiency that Aurora could not match. The witch touched Aphra’s skin and checked her pulse and lifted her closed eyelids. Then her lips drew down in a heavy frown.

“What? What is it?”

“She’s been drugged,” Jinx answered. “My guess is heavily and for a long time.”