Chapter 28
CHAPTER 28
Caspian
I t’s been weeks since I’ve spoken with the Nightingale alone. Not many things surprise me, but finding my adopted sister here, lurking about Castletree, is one of them. I can only imagine she’s shocked to see me too.
She shouldn’t be here, doing whatever she’s doing. Spying, sneaking, plotting. For all her skills as an assassin, this is bold. Too bold.
My briars lift me up to the side of the castle to one of the great branches that flows out through the turrets. Like the rest of it, Castletree’s roof is a mixture of the canopy of a tree and the stonework of a building. There are still leaves this high up, though dark lines of rot shoot through the wood. I felt someone using my briar pathways and came up to investigate.
Birdy sits on the edge of the branch, which is thick as a rampart, and swings her legs in the air. Dusk is setting, and the Briar is painted in strokes of brilliant pink and purple. Fear and protectiveness war within me at the sight of her at Castletree, clad in her iridescent armor. Where did she come from? Cryptgarden? Hadria?
“What are you doing here?” I ask. “Did Mother send you to spy? Castletree isn’t safe for the likes of us. You’re in danger.”
She doesn’t say anything. I sit beside her. Her eyes shimmer, the dusky rays playing across her face. She’s not wearing her usual mask, the absence of it making her look younger. Innocent, even.
I tuck a short strand of hair behind her softly pointed ear. “You look beautiful like this,” I murmur.
“Shut up,” she says.
“I mean it.” My voice is soft. “What are you really doing here, Birdy? Spying on them? Spying on me?”
“I’ve been watching you,” she spits. “Would you like to explain what you’re doing playing nice with the enemy?”
I sigh. Farron’s words from earlier sit heavy in my chest. “I know you won’t believe this, but it’s true. I’m trying to keep you safe.”
She quickly wipes the edges of her eyes. Has she been … crying? “You’re right. I don’t believe you. I know how things work for people like us, Cas. We look out for ourselves. We have to.”
I smooth a wrinkle in my pant leg. “I’m going to look out for you. We’re family.”
She scoffs and shakes her head. “We’re family ? What, you want us to act like the little, perfect, happy family they’re pretending to be in there?” She gestures down, toward the castle. “They make me sick . Imagine giving someone that much control over your life!”
“I don’t think it’s so much giving control to one another but trusting in someone else. Having faith that someone will do right by you—”
“Listen to yourself!” Birdy stands and glares down at me. “What, next you’ll be telling me you want to join their delusional little cult.”
I jump to my feet. With Castletree’s branches and the Briars in the distance, Birdy is bordered by dark beauty. Her short hair whips in the breeze, and that mouth I rarely get to see is set in a frown. I wish more than ever I could see it in a genuine smile. “Birdy.”
She takes in a breath. “No, Cas. Don’t say it.”
“Birdy.”
Tears fill her eyes. “Don’t tell me you’re joining them.”
“I’ve only ever stayed for you, Birdy. You know that. I would have run away twenty-five years ago if it weren’t for you.”
She grabs my shirt jacket and wrings her hands around it, voice a broken rasp. “Fine! Then run! Just don’t join them, Cas, don’t do it.” She buries her head in my chest. “Don’t make me kill you.”
I wrap my arms around my sister’s back and hold her tight to me. “I have to do this. You know what will happen to me if I don’t. Sira will bring about the destruction of everything we know, and I’ll be the blade she uses to do it.”
“Better to go down in flames than to submit,” Birdy growls to my chest.
I close my eyes, pain striking my heart. Still, after everything Sira’s done to her, she won’t accept that she’s always been a tool.
“Come with me,” I whisper.
Birdy pulls back. “What?”
“Leave Sira. Put away the Nightingale and forget about your plots. I’ll keep you safe. You don’t need Mother or your metal dog. I’ll look out for you, I promise—”
“Ugh!” She shoves away from me and stalks to the very edge of the branch, right where it starts to thin. “Stop it. Just shut up, okay? It’s so great for you that this little crew of rabid idiots accepts you. Where would I go? Do you think they’d just open up a room for me in this creepy zoo? ‘Oh, great, let’s let the Nightingale stay!’ No! I’d be thrown out again.”
“I would never leave you—” I reach for her, but she tears out of my grip.
Pink light shines across her nose, and as she stares up at me, she looks so much like she did as a little girl, forced to grow up in the dark. “You’re leaving me right now.”
A sharp pang pierces through my chest. Everything I’ve done, all the secrets I’ve kept, has been to protect her. My sister, who didn’t deserve to be beaten and screamed at and abused in the depths throughout her life. My sister, who loves glittery things and accidentally snorts when she laughs but can also slit a man’s throat without a single thought. My sister, who’s never understood just how loved she is.
“Come with me,” I say again. “Help me rescue Queen Aurelia.”
Birdy practically hisses, then curls away, hugging herself and shaking. “How could you do that? You’re abandoning me. It’s all happening again.”
“Birdy,” I whisper, my own voice broken with a sob. Anguish wells up inside of me, mingling with a profound sense of betrayal. But I know I have to do this. Farron is right.
Either choice is suicide. At least this option gives Rosalina a chance. Gives Birdy a chance.
Light-footed, I walk out on the edge of the branch and wrap my arms around her. She sobs loudly, desperately. There’s nothing I can do but hold her.
“We don’t know the truth about the Queen,” I whisper.
Birdy takes a steadying breath. “I don’t care, Cas. Even if I wanted to join you, I couldn’t.”
“That’s your fear talking.” I narrow my eyes. What ties her to the Below? She doesn’t have the sickness like me. Loyalty to my mother, of course, but it’s something else. Something deeper.
Kairyn?
The scent of salt and nectarines lingers on Birdy’s hair. She must have just come from Hadria. Reporting to the so-called Emperor? Or visiting him ?
She sinks her nails into my forearm, holding on as if for dear life. “You don’t know everything, as much as you’d like to think so.”
“I know this is what I have to do.”
Birdy turns in my arms so she’s facing me. A few leaves tremble from the tree and adorn her dark hair.
“So, are you going to tell your new friends my plan, then?”
I raise an eyebrow. “Are you going to tell Mother mine?”
We stare at each other for a long moment. Then she sighs. “Let the best child win, I suppose. I’ll keep your secret, and you keep mine.”
“Deal. You’re playing a dangerous game. You can’t pull this off forever.”
“I don’t need to do it forever. Just until the Summer Realm is mine.”
An uneasy alliance with my sister. Another secret to keep from Rosalina. Oh well. She’ll figure it out soon enough. “We’ll both be traitors to Mother in our own way.”
Birdy looks out over the Briar. “She wouldn’t expect anything less.”
I drink her in for a moment. No army, no armor, no swords. Just a girl in the sunlight.
“You should go,” she says. “You don’t want your little friends to see you with me.”
I turn, unable to say the words I wish I could. Goodbye, little sister. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to do right by you.
“Caspian?”
I look back. “Hmm?”
Birdy doesn’t meet my gaze. Instead, she wrings her hands in her skirt. “Are you still in love with the Winter Prince?”
“Unfortunately.”
She looks down. “What does it feel like?”
A breeze rustles through my hair. I cast a gaze to the side of Castletree that houses the Winter Wing, the wood blue with frost. “It’s like being stuck in the eye of a storm you can’t escape. It’s suffocating, consuming. It’s waking up every day with a weight on your chest, wondering if today will be the day it crushes you entirely. Love is continuing to drink poison because it’s also the only antidote. For me, it is a battle that if he wins, I lose, and if I win, somehow, I still lose. Love is the only reason I still choose to draw breath.”
Birdy is silent and still. “Oh,” she finally says. “I was afraid you’d say something like that.”
I stay there watching her in the dying light for a moment more, hating the world for turning my sister into a monster. Hating the world for making her fall in love with one.