“My Talent manifested when I was twelve. Mutti and Pappje were sick because of me. I came home with the pox and infected them both. I’d never cried before and we didn’t know what I was. I was so afraid they were going to die. I wished they’d never known me. I wished for their illnesses to end. And my very first tears granted those wishes. Pappje never woke. Oma told me Mutti died too, but that was another one of her lies.”

I was breathing too fast, remembering too much, burning, burning, burning, but I plunged on. “When I woke from my curse, Oma revealed that Mutti didn’t die from the pox. She’s alive somewhere, ignorant to the fact that I exist. That I’m hers.” I squeezed my eyes closed.

“Stop!” Anouk commanded. “Don’t you dare cry.” She said this through her own cracked voice.

I opened my eyes, dizzy, but forced ice into my heart. Don’t feel. Instead . . . anger. Oma did this. Oma robbed me of a relationship with my mother. She used me. Coralythe ruined my chances of making my own—or anyone else’s—life better, after I’d given her a wish!

“Good. Keep going, Myrthe.”

I laughed hollowly. “Keep turning to ice?”

“If that’s what it takes. You need to stay alive.”

Several deep breaths later, I was composed. My story told.

I looked into Anouk’s eyes and saw anger in them for the first time. “How dare Oma? And who is this mysterious woman who’s able to curse you and go her merry way? Revenge isn’t justice! She needs to reckon for her actions.”

“She was grieving. She didn’t strike me as one who went around cursing others. Besides, it doesn’t matter. Her sons are dead now. My own wish led her to me.” My Talent had turned against me, as though it knew I’d never used it for good. “Coralythe had every right to curse me.”

“Coralythe?” Anouk’s eyes searched the air before her, as though seeing invisible threads and connecting them with the needle of her vision. “She lives in the schloss! She’s on Mattias’s advisory council.”

Coralythe worked for the king? This must be the council member Bastiaan mentioned. “Does Mattias know she has a Bane?”

“Are you sure it’s a Bane, Myrthe? Not a Talent?”

I gestured to myself. “Cursed! To die! Talents don’t do that.” At least I didn’t think they did. “Coralythe told me herself it was a Bane when she first asked for a wish in the tent at markt.”

“Why would she reveal something like that?”

“She was distraught. She didn’t seem to care what she revealed as long as she got a wish.” Which I’d handed right over. It was hard to recall the compassion I’d felt for the woman after everything that had transpired since then.