Cobweb Forest (Cobweb Bride Trilogy) by Vera Nazarian

such a foul state merely for a lark?”
    The Duke stared at both of them, glancing from one to the other with thoughtful severity, then relented. “No, I suppose not. Knowing the two of you, I must regretfully admit the possibility of what you say. But only so far! Give me something more, something tangible the Emperor can put to practical military use—”
    “You require strategic information?” Lady Amaryllis said with intensity. “Well, Your Grace, here is one—our former dearest friend, the Lady Ignacia Chitain is a Balmue spy of the Domain, and has been, it appears, for years on end.”
    “We are aware of it,” the Duke replied calmly.
    “What? You knew? ” The expression on the lady’s face was outrage.
    “We have learned it recently,” the Duke continued. “In fact, just as our suspicions on her behalf were supported by observation, the three of you happened to disappear shortly afterward, so for a while there it did not look good for all three of you.”
    “What?” This time it was Nathan who exclaimed. “But we’d been captured by Chidair! We had gone to play at Cobweb Brides—an idiot adventure, I admit—but it all ended in the Chidair Keep with dead soldiers taking us, locking us up, and feeding us pig slop. Amaryllis and I here had nothing to do with any of Ignacia’s treason!”
    “Yes, we also know that now.”
    “Ignacia has betrayed us , and our friendship as much as she betrayed the Imperial Realm,” Amaryllis said with cold fury. “She had turned on us and gone over to Duke Hoarfrost’s side, with promises of some kind of beastly Alliance with the Sovereign—who incidentally is immortal—”
    “What?” Duke Claude Rovait stopped Amaryllis’s tirade with a raised hand. “What did you say about the Sovereign? She is immortal? ”
    “Well, yes. She is the Grecian Goddess Persephone who has apparently lost her mind—or whatever it is that goddesses possess up there in the cranial region—and it has made her commit supposed atrocities.”
    “Well now, this is indeed interesting news; this we did not know,” Duke Claude Rovait mused. “If what you say about Rumanar Avalais is true, then it explains some things remarkably, including her uncanny charismatic influence upon so many, despite her cruelties. She has indeed been pursuing a political course of action that had no apparent logical pattern to it, and not a solid hint as to motives. Indeed, the gradual brewing of hostility between the Realm and the Domain was observed by us over the years with much puzzlement, and more and more it became a mystery tied to her person . We suspected sorcery and the dark arts. But now—with the cessation of death, with potions of the land completely disappearing, chaos and unrest and soon-to be universal hunger, as our meager food supply dwindles—”
    “Now you have a mad goddess on your hands,” Nathan concluded with an exasperated sigh. “So, when can we expect her to besiege the Silver Court?”
    The Duke watched them both with a closed expression. “That is the strangest thing,” he said. “She and the Trovadii army have come . . . and gone . They came upon us the night before last, arriving in the late evening from the direction of Morphaea, and they did not stop. . . . Instead of surrounding the Imperial citadel, they simply passed around us, the undead multitudes streaming outside the walls, and then continued onward, north, and into Lethe. It was as if the Sovereign did not consider the Emperor a threat at all, to such an insulting degree that she did not bother to pause and make war with us!”
    “Oh, I am certain I know where she is headed,” Amaryllis said. “If what Hades said is true, then she seeks Death’s Keep and plans to take her armies and enter the Underworld—how or why, I have not the faintest notion. As for our own mortal world—I fear we are in for some very bad times.”
    “Well, my dears,” said the Duke, “it appears that you will have your