Page 50 of The Blood Queen

I look up and meet its many eyes.

“The loom is ours.”

I look down at it, still not willing to touch it. “Do you mean it belongs to you and the rest of the spiders?” I ask.

“It is mine and hers.”

I kneel down, examining the loom even closer. Is this something both the giant spider and the Faerie Queen used? Magic radiates off it, but that’s not unusual. Everything in this whole damned realm is magical.

“The plaid,” Samson says.

Because the cloth being woven on this loom isn’t just regular cloth. It’s plaid, of a design I’ve never seen before. The base is black, but the white threads form crosses over the material, the black fading to gray and then contrasted with vivid red. I’ve never seen a plaid like this, so stark and harsh.

Weavers throughout Scotland have their own plaid designs, and you can generally tell where someone’s from by the unique pattern they wear. These colors are common enough, but not in this style. Perhaps this is the plaid of the fae?

Distantly, I’m aware of the Damhan-Allaidh watching us, but now that our attention is focused on the loom, the enormous spider seems satisfied to let us examine it, as long as we don’t meddle.

I can almost imagine the Faerie Queen weaving on this lap loom while the members of court bustled around her. I glance at the Damhan-Allaidh, who watches me.

Waiting.

“There should be more,” I mutter, looking down.

“More?” Samson asks.

“All looms need a shuttle, a comb, maybe a needle,” I mutter. Something to pull the weft threads through the warp, something to tamp them down into the woven cloth.

Something like the needle the Red Caps made that almost killed Queen Mary. A simple tool, corrupted by death and dark magic.

It doesn’t take me long to find a wooden shuttle and a wide-toothed comb, cast to the side of the throne, as if they’d been carelessly dropped there.

I reach for the shuttle, but the Damhan-Allaidh rears up on four of its hind legs, hissing.

“Is…” Samson starts, looking from the wooden tool to me to the Damhan-Allaidh. “Is this the Red Cap weapon? It’s glowing like one.”

Hidden in plain sight.

“We are not sure,” the Damhan-Allaidh says mournfully. “Our queen was weaving, and then…”

“She died,” Samson says, bowing his head respectfully.

“She didn’t die,” the Damhan-Allaidh snaps. Die, die, die. “A thread snapped. She dissssappeared. The loom fell. She was gone.”

Not dead. Gone.

“Otherssss have tried to find out what happened to our queen,” the giant spider continues. “They are not to touch the loom.”

The Damhan-Allaidh raises her two front legs as if in joy or praise, but then I realize she’s indicating the cocooned bodies of the fae.

The question, of course, is whether the fae spider put these courtiers in stasis to protect them from a Red Cap weapon or to prevent them from touching a magical item belonging to the queen.

“What is it that you wish to do?” the Damhan-Allaidh asks, her voice softer now.

“Stop the High Blade,” I say immediately.

“You do not wish to bring back our queen?”

I almost shrug but then decide that would be disrespectful. “I do not know how to save her,” I say instead.