“Cécile.” Sabine’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “Sing that song again.”

“Why?” I asked at the same time the Queen said, “You are not part of this negotiation, girl.”

It was the first time she’d so much as acknowledged Sabine’s presence, and that, more than the dismissiveness of her tone, made me wary.

“Please.”

As strange as the request was, she wouldn’t ask without reason. So I drew in a deep breath and… nothing came out. I couldn’t remember the words. I couldn’t remember ever even knowing them. It was as though the song had been… taken from me. Stripped from my thoughts. And if she could take a song, how hard would it be to take something like a name.

Silently thanking Sabine, I turned back to the Queen. “He made me promise never to use it,” I lied. “He may well agree to a meeting, but I’ll have to ask him in person.”

The Queen went very still. Could she tell I was lying? “We’ll go straight away,” I said, bobbing a quick curtsey and then inching toward the door after Sabine. “It was a pleasure meeting you, and you really were most helpful.” I was babbling. “He’ll be wondering where I am. We really should get back.”

“I think not,” the Queen said, and wind whipped through the room, little bits of ice flying through the air and biting at my skin. Walls of packed snow formed, blocking our exit. The lupine creatures watching from her winter palace crept closer to the tear, snarls filling the air.

“Call him here,” she ordered, the mist forming her ebony hair rising and falling on the blizzard of her own making.

If she wanted Tristan here so badly, it could only be to our detriment. “No.”

The pupils of her eyes elongated like a cat’s, then snapped back into a round, human shape. And before I could think to move, her misty outline solidified and she snatched hold of my arm. Cold unlike anything I’d felt before burned through my skin, my muscle, and into my bone. I screamed, the sound like a rabbit caught in a trap.

Then my ears rang with a loud report, and it was the Queen screaming. She let go of my arm and I scrambled back, my eyes going to Sabine, who had a firm grip on Anushka’s still smoking pistol. The ice coating everything in the room exploded, and the ground shook as the icy palace collapsed around us. The world shuddered. Everywhere I looked I saw layers of the same. A dozen sofas. A hundred Sabines. I lost my balance and fell, my empty stomach heaving.

The fairy hissed at us once, then staggered through the opening between worlds, the tear gone as quickly as it had appeared.