Free Bindings by Carla Jablonski

of me. If tears could restore you, then tears you would have—oceans of them.”
    She touched the vines again. “But tears will do nothing.” She felt the prick of the thorns on her fingertips and gazed down at the droplets of blood as they appeared. “It may be blood that must be shed for you. For us.”
    She began her slow walk again. Anger began to cut through her sadness. If it is blood you need, then blood it is , she thought. Blood of your murderer—blood of the man who was once my lover.
    Titania stopped walking. She could feel a presence forming behind her. It was time to have this out.
    â€œMilady,” Amadan said. “We two fools attend your pleasure.”
    Titania turned around to face them. The untrustworthy Fool and the man who had been her downfall. Tamlin.
    â€œI thank you, my Amadan, for fulfilling my request with such speed,” she said. “But do not speak to me of pleasure. Not here, not now.” She addressed Tamlin. “You see your handiwork, Falconer?” Titania gestured at the barren trees, the dried and parched riverbed.
    â€œI see it.”
    â€œAnd the sight gives you satisfaction?”
    â€œI’ve been satisfied once or twice in my life,” Tamlin answered evenly. It irked Titania to see him so calm. She wasn’t rousing a reaction in him.
    Tamlin sighed. “But that was long ago. This place was a paradise then, and you were—”
    â€œI am what I have always been,” Titania snapped. “But you…” She crossed her arms over her chest, her jeweled cuffs jangling as she brought them together. “Look at this creature, Amadan,” she said disdainfully. “He was not always thus, but see him now. Don’t let him fool you. He is not a man who takes pleasure in wearing a hawk’s wings. He’s a hawk who finds it useful to pretend he’s a man. What do you say to that, my lord raptor?”
    There. That should get a rise out of him . Her pain made her desperate to hurt him. Why was it not working?
    â€œI say that you mask your thoughts with your words,” Tamlin replied, “just as you concealed thetruth of this garden with spells of glamour.”
    Titania’s eyes flashed fury at this, but she was pleased to see the glint of anger in Tamlin’s brown eyes. He took a step closer to her.
    â€œWhy don’t you pick a peach from that beautiful tree, my lady?” He pointed to one of the few trees in the orchard that had not yet been overtaken by the blight. From Tamlin’s tone, Titania knew that the tree’s bounty was just illusion. “Take a big bite,” he sneered.
    Having broken through his implacability, his stone mask, Titania knew they would now speak to each other honestly. She wanted no witnesses for that. “Amadan, leave us.”
    The flitling hovered a moment, his eyes narrowed. Titania could see he resented being dismissed. He really is becoming far too arrogant for safety , Titania observed. She had leaned on him too long, too frequently, and too indiscriminately, particularly since she and Tamlin had grown so far apart. “Go,” she said to Amadan.
    He bowed in midair. “Yes, milady. What pleases milady, pleases me.”
    She fought the urge to swat Amadan for his insincerity. Did he think she did not see through him? But that problem would have to wait; she had other matters to deal with.
    She watched Amadan fly away. She kept herback to Tamlin; she didn’t want him to see her vulnerability, and she didn’t trust herself to be able to mask it. “Why, Tamlin?” she asked a little more piteously than she meant to. “Why have you made this gentle place a hell?” She tried to keep the desperate sadness from her voice but did not succeed.
    â€œLady, I did not create this desolation.”
    She whirled around. “I do not believe you.”
    â€œThe realm has been withering for centuries,” Tamlin shouted