A Rose of Blood and Binding (The Middlemist Trilogy #3)

Prologue

Twelve Years Ago

When Petra shook Mara awake, and Mara opened her eyes to the dark world, her first thought was one of relief, for her dream-addled mind, soaked in its own wild hopes, suggested that someone had finally come to kill her.

“It’s happening,” Petra whispered, her eyes twin fireflies in the candlelit shadows. “Get up.”

Petra’s voice trembled with fear, and excitement, and something feral that made Mara sit up, wide awake.

Since coming to the priory of Rosewarren weeks ago—no, since being taken to Rosewarren, since riding away from Ivyhill in the Warden’s black carriage, since hearing the sobs of her baby sister, Gemma, and her mother, Philippa, fade away on the wind—since then, Mara had spoken only to Petra.

At first, no one had made her talk at all; no one had made her do anything. So she had said nothing and done nothing, nothing but lie on her little cot in the barracks with eleven other new recruits, and listen idly to their chatter, and think of home.

Sometimes she woke from a troubled sleep, and for one panicky moment, she couldn’t remember what Ivyhill looked like, or the steady tone of Farrin’s voice, or what Gemma’s soft curls felt like against her cheek when she crawled into Mara’s bed after a nightmare, whispering tearfully about knives lodged deep in her bones.

Then Mara would remember everything in a rush of feeling that pummeled her like fists, and remembering was a relief, and remembering was awful, because what good is it to remember things that hurt you?

So she slept, and lay there, and refused to eat, and only when she started to feel faint would she take small sips from the cup of water on her bedside table that someone kept refilling.

Some instinct pushed her to sit up, to move her arm, to raise the little tin cup to her lips.

She imagined the Warden finding her starved corpse and smiled in grim satisfaction.

But after a few days, Mara could no longer ignore the pangs of her starving stomach.

She’d never felt such pain and thought she might be going mad.

Her thoughts were fevered, her dreams desperate.

She grabbed the sleeve of one of the girls rushing past her at the sound of the dinner bell—another girl who had been taken from her home, another daughter stolen in the name of the queen—and said, “Can you please bring me some food?”

The sleeve belonged to a girl named Petra, just one year younger than ten-year-old Mara, with ruddy skin and freckles and auburn hair that flew every which way.

Petra had the kind heart of a loyal hound.

She took one look at Mara, her mouth twisting, and nodded once, briskly, and a little while later she came back with a leg of roast chicken and a hot buttered roll wrapped in a napkin.

She sat next to Mara while Mara ate, reminding her to slow down or she would get sick, reminding her to drink water.

And then, once Mara’s hunger was diminished, her mind felt a little clearer, and her grief rose up in her like a wild animal finally let loose from its pen, and she cried.

She cried so hard and for so long that some of the other girls started to complain, but Petra hushed them with a fierce look and a few harsh words, and because she was kind and good, and well-loved for her humor and her speed with a knife during training, everyone obeyed.

Petra spent that night in Mara’s bed, holding her while she cried, and that became the way of things every night thereafter.

The two of them exchanged stories of home, and Petra told Mara about everything she missed.

Sometimes, when Mara couldn’t sleep, Petra wouldn’t either.

They would clasp each other’s hands and touch their foreheads together, and Mara would describe the vines of Ivyhill, how they coated the house in a glossy green carpet, and Petra would tell Mara about the rocky northeastern shores of her home, where the waves crashed against the cliffs and everything smelled of salt.

Petra even persuaded Mara to join the other girls for chores in the long hallways of Rosewarren, with their soft red carpets and soft dim lights, and outside in the stables and on the grounds, where everything shimmered silver from the nearby Middlemist. The first time Mara went outside, she squinted for a good five minutes.

She had forgotten what daylight felt like, and even the Mist-shrouded sun seemed to warm her inside and out.

But now Petra was climbing out of bed, hopping around on her right foot to pull on her left boot.

The other girls—northern and southern and from the heartlands and the Mistlands too, all eight, nine, ten, eleven years old—were scrambling from their beds and throwing on their cloaks, tugging on their stockings.

Mara watched for a moment, listening hard to the whispers darting through the room.

Initiation, they said. The trials. Some girls were ashen, wide-eyed; others were practically frothing at the mouth.

Finally, they said. It’s been long enough.

I thought it would never happen. I want to go home.

Don’t be a coward. Hurry. There’s no time to dress. They’re right outside! They’re waiting!

Petra held out her hand to Mara, her eyes grave but her voice gentle. “If you stay here, I don’t know what the Warden will do to you.”

“It might be funny to find out,” Mara said, but she took Petra’s hand anyway and stood to find her cloak.

Petra laughed and grabbed Mara’s boots. “You’re so odd. I think that’s why I like you.”

Odd? Mara thought. She didn’t feel odd. She felt very little, really.

Sometimes when Petra laughed, Mara felt a twinge of something that could have been gladness.

It came and went quickly, like a bird looking for a perch, but Mara’s branches were no good—brittle and bare—so the bird wheeled around and flew off.

That was what it felt like. A darting bright bird, gone too soon.

Mara let Petra lead her out of the barracks. A sea of whispers roiled against her skin as her fellow initiates pressed in on her from all sides. Her heart began to pound.

They were going to a lake, some of the girls were saying. They were going, at last, to the Old Country.

***

Two adult Roses, somber in hooded cloaks, their shadowed faces unreadable, led the girls through the priory, past alcoves and doorways where still more Roses gathered to watch them scurry by.

Then they were out on the grounds: two columns of six recruits in nightgowns and stockings, boots and cloaks, with the two hooded Roses in front.

The night was damp and cool, and the black trees stretched like a dark spider web across the silver sky.

The sun had set long ago, but the Mist had its own light, like that of a bright full moon that never waned.

They passed through a gate in the wall that surrounded the priory, and then into the wild woods, where the ground was lumpy with moss that swallowed all sound.

Here, the Mist slithered thickly. The milky air hissed and snapped like flames in a hearth, and one of the girls ahead of Mara choked out a scream.

Petra grabbed Mara’s hand. Her palm was clammy, and her fingers trembled. Mara had never seen Petra look afraid before.

Am I afraid? Mara examined her body piece by piece, as her father had taught her to do.

Her heartbeat was fast. Her jaw felt tense; she relaxed it and paid attention to her breathing until it was steady and deep.

Her skin was a bit prickly. She felt a little like she wanted to run, but in a good way, a strong way.

All her senses glinted bright as knives.

Even as the two hooded Roses led them into a greenway, and then another, and then another—twisting, violent passages through gnarled thickets and deep forests that reminded Mara, awfully, of home and all her mother’s ivy—even then, in that mire of hungry magic, Mara felt ready. Ready for what, she didn’t know.

But she did know that she wasn’t afraid.

Mara glanced at Petra, whose skin had gone pale and shiny, and then at the other girls.

Their faces told her everything: eyes glassy, lips tight and thin, every line of their bodies taut.

Someone retched; someone else stumbled and let out a soft, startled sob.

Greening magic, Mara knew, could disorient you if you weren’t used to it.

And not everyone came from Anointed families, as she did; not everyone could afford to hire wayfarers and travel through greenways as often and as simply as others used roads of stone and dirt.

And then there was the matter of her blood.

Her father’s voice echoed through her memory, strong and dear.

You are a sentinel, like me. We are warriors, Mara.

We are hunters. We do not feel pain as others do.

We do not become afraid as others do. But that doesn’t mean we cannot be hurt, and it doesn’t mean we should not sometimes fear.

He had told Mara that long ago, when she was four years old and had begun to train with him out on the grounds at Ivyhill—racing deer in the game park, smashing boulders with quick kicks of her small, booted feet, plunging into the ice-cold lake to see who could hold their breath longer.

At the time, Mara hadn’t understood what he’d meant.

She had only wanted to run faster, run farther, break more rocks, dive twenty, eighty, two hundred more times.

And anyway, how could someone not be afraid but also feel fear?

But she had said, “Yes, Father,” as patiently as she could manage, waiting breathlessly for him to suggest something else: let’s climb a mountain, let’s race to the top of that tree and then jump down, let’s run all the way to the capital and back.