Chapter Eleven
I wake to the familiar sound of Albert’s wailing cry. I leap from my bed, expecting my sheets, my uniform, my hair to all bear signs of the bloodbath I took in the fountain the night before, but it’s as though it never happened. My hair is clean and dry, my sheets without stain, my uniform like new. A vague memory of Will wading into the pond, washing the blood from my hair, turns my stomach to water.
Did he change my clothes, too?
A different memory surfaces just as my cheeks grow hot. Liv and the other pixies pulling the blood-soaked uniform over my head, and Will keeping his back turned away from them as they worked to dress me near the old oak tree in the conservatory. And then, Will placing me gently on my bed, covering me with a blanket.
Another cry stirs me from my thoughts, and I race down the hall to find Mother and Father consoling Albert in his bed. Sunlight pools on the floor, where Charlie is kneeling by Albert’s bedside. When Charlie dips his head in greeting, he doesn’t appear to have any memory of pulling me out of the fountain or the collar we discovered or Will’s golden eyes.
“But I saw him,” Albert sobs, burying his head in Mother’s chest. “I saw Owen!”
“Hush, now,” Mother croons, smoothing his hair. “It was just a dream.”
Father looks up at me, the wrinkles near his eyes more pronounced than they’ve ever been. “It’s time,” he says. “I’m going to ask Lord Bludgrave for a break this afternoon.”
I nod, my throat tightening. At sea, under normal circumstances, we would have already observed Owen’s burial rites. Something within me hoped we never would. Maybe if we didn’t, I wouldn’t have to accept that he’s really gone. But Father’s right—it’s time. Time to put Owen to rest.
Time to let go.
The morning passes in a fog. After lunch, when the eight of us meet on a grassy knoll overlooking a vibrant tangle of wildflowers, I feel as if I’m watching us from afar. Throughout the ceremony, my gaze remains fixed on a sprawling oak, where a raven perches on the highest branch, looking down on us with shrewd interest. Owen once told me that if he could be anything, he’d be a bird. A sad, twisted smile tugs at my lips. Perhaps he finally got his wish.
Lewis has sewn a small replica of the Lightbringer ’s flag—canary yellow, emblazoned with nine silver stars. He presents it to Mother as she recites from memory a passage out of Captain Gregory’s Psalter.
“May the waves prove monument to a life bravely endured,” Mother says, concluding the ceremony, her solemn eyes wet with tears.
“And may the Stars proclaim its glory,” we all murmur in response. Traditionally, we would have fired our pistols into the air—twenty-one shots to represent the years Owen spent on this earth—but since we have none, we kiss the tips of two fingers and point them at the sky, our thumbs extended. This, along with the rest of the ceremony, seems to put the others at ease. Margaret and Lewis embrace; Charlie lifts Albert onto his shoulders, and Father carries Elsie on his back as my family parades down the hill toward the house. Only Mother lingers, her eyes fixed on the horizon as tears spill onto her weathered cheeks.
“You didn’t have your trinket when your sisters’ and brothers’ were taken,” she rasps, her voice barely above a whisper. “William took them, didn’t he?”
My fingers brush the band of braided leather that belonged to Owen. Mother made them herself when I was still a child, choosing braided leather to represent the tightly woven bond among us. According to the Creed, if a pirate is killed in battle, their trinket should be received by the clan member who witnessed their death. Even enemy clans will provide a truce to ensure that the rite of trinkets is honored after the battle has been fought.
“Yes,” I say quietly.
Her eyes narrow. “He kept yours.”
I’m not sure how she knows the difference between my bracelet and my brother’s—I could hardly tell, aside from the slight fraying of Owen’s compared with my own. I dip my head. “He did.”
Since it was Will who found me that morning, just after Owen died, it seems only fitting that my bracelet remains in his possession. After all, Aster Oberon, fearsome pirate of the Western Sea, died the moment the Lightbringer ’s masts sank below the waves. Will may not be a member of the Oberon clan, but he witnessed that death. In a way, the trinket belongs to him.
I start back down the hill before she can ask any more questions I don’t have the heart to answer. If I’m to stay here, I have to let go of more than just Owen, and the Lightbringer , and our life before. I have to let go of me, too. And I’m not sure I’m ready to do that.
Owen is gone, but his trinket will always remind me of who he was. That he was here. That he existed. That he fought bravely until the last. And as my family moves on, as they put Owen’s memory to rest, my trinket belongs to someone who will always remember that I was a pirate before I was a kitchen maid. That I remain here only out of loyalty. That despite our new life on land, the sea claimed two Oberon children that day.
“Aster?” a voice murmurs from behind a cluster of rosebushes as I pass. I halt. My hand searches instinctively for the hilt of a dagger at my hip but finds nothing.
Will steps into the open, his pale face flushed pink. “I didn’t mean to startle you,” he says, rubbing the nape of his neck. With a rumpled white linen shirt and his knees caked with dirt, he looks less like a lord and more like one of the groundskeepers. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was merely human—enough to make me forget that just last night he looked at a fountain of blood as if it were a spring of cool water and he was dying of thirst.
“You didn’t,” I lie, taking a step back.
Understanding registers in his eyes, and he strokes his jaw. “You have every reason to feel the way you do.” He sighs, taking a single white lily from his chest pocket. “If you wish never to speak to me again—”
“I don’t,” I blurt out, my cheeks hot. “And I don’t know what I feel.”
Guilt coils around my stomach, squeezing tight. We only just said goodbye to Owen, and rather than grieve my brother, I find myself torn between my hate for Nightweavers—for what they did to Owen, for what they’ve done to my people—and hating myself for this odd and fervent desire to be close to Will.
He takes a step toward me, but I stand my ground. His dark green eyes bore into mine with a deep regret I can’t begin to fathom. “What I did last night—what I said to my family about us being alone together—I did to protect you. If anyone knew we were so”—he wets his lips, knits his brows—“involved…”
“What makes you think I need protecting?”
“I don’t.” He glances down at the lily, his expression nettled. “You remember what I told you about the humans who choose to fight alongside the Underlings?”
I nod. He frowns.
“They call themselves the Guild of Shadows,” he says, his jaw tightening. “They serve the Underlings’ Sylk queen, Morana.” The name causes him to grimace, and he runs a hand through his hair as if to calm himself.
“Morana?” I echo, the name sending shivers down my spine.
He nods, his brows pinched. “Before the Fall—before our kind was banished from Elysia—she was imprisoned in Havok, the realm below, but when your people created the Burning Lands, she was set free. No one knows where she is now—or if she’s ever chosen a host to possess—but there has been speculation for centuries that she remains in the Burning Lands, waiting for Nightweavers and humans to destroy each other so that she can claim this realm for her own.”
He glances over his shoulder before turning back to me, his expression softening.
“The Sylk that killed your brother knows that you can see it,” he goes on, lowering his voice. “That’s the reason it followed you here—the reason it’s still toying with you. The reason it sent a Gore to terrorize Bludgrave last night. Morana’s army, the Guild, is always looking to recruit someone with your ability, lest you use it against them. And they do so by stripping away everything that makes you human, including everyone you know and love.” He takes another step toward me, close enough that if I had a dagger, I could plunge it into his heart before he had the chance to blink. “Mr. and Mrs. Hackney were like family to me, but if the Guild wanted to send a more effective message, that could have just as easily been your mother’s and father’s heads we found last night.”
He slips the lily into my apron, and my stomach leaps at the proximity of his hand.
“I meant what I said,” he murmurs, his eyes lingering on the flower peeking out from my apron pocket. When he looks up at me, his thick eyelashes cast shadows on his freckled face. “If you still want my help, meet me at the stables tonight after everyone’s gone to sleep.”
I take a step back, wanting for breath. “Why the lily?” I ask, remembering what he said last night about the secret language of flowers.
He looks past me, toward where Mother is beginning her descent down the hill, knee-deep in wildflowers. “They represent sympathy for that which has come to an end,” he says, his eyes glittering. “And new beginnings—the hope for what’s to come.”
New beginnings , I think, my fingers brushing the soft petals. As I watch Mother, the vibrant earth undulating like waves, the wildflowers a sea of color at her feet, I feel as if I’m seeing her for the first time. If Mother can begin again—if she can let go of her past, of who she was before—then so can I. At least, I have to try.
Just not yet.
If I’m to have any chance of putting my past behind me, I have to put Owen to rest, once and for all. Not with psalms or flags or mock salutes. If I’m to let go—truly let go—I have to find the Sylk, and Will is going to help me do it.