Chapter 24
The cold slammed into me like a giant frigid fist, but the wind was worse—so strong and howling that if I’d been anyone else, it would have blown both Gareth and me off the cliffs and into the sea. Not even my father could have kept his footing.
I plowed through the snow, which reached just past my knees, and kept a close watch on the ground.
My eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness, but even my keen sentinel vision kept taking us too close to the cliffs.
The shrieking wind tried to push me off course, and the shivering weight of Gareth in my arms made me cold with terror.
I couldn’t look down at him. I couldn’t, or I would see the blood darkening his neck and lose my nerve.
Finally I came to a creaking wooden dock piled high with snow.
I thought it was the same one we’d arrived at before, but I couldn’t be certain.
The snow hid everything except for my ragged tracks and the vague looming shape of the Cloisters up on the hill, far behind us.
Squinting across the water, I thought the dark island in the distance looked familiar, but in truth it could have been any other island in the world.
There was no time for doubt. Gently I lay Gareth in the snow, still not looking at him.
He’d gone deathly still, a fact I chose to ignore as I kicked through the drifts around the dock, looking for a boat.
Any boat, even if it had holes in the hull.
I could row fast enough to get us to that island before it sank.
My foot hit something hard and hollow-sounding.
I dug through the snow with my bare hands, heedless of the stinging cold, and unearthed a rickety dinghy.
I didn’t even take the time to sound it; oars lay inside it, and that was enough.
I tromped back through the snow to retrieve Gareth—still not looking at him, I would not look at him—and put him in the boat, wrenched it out of its snowbank, grabbed the frozen oars with my frozen hands, and rowed.
The wind was worse out on the water, but my power warmed me, and I pushed through the gale as fast as I could move the oars through the rough black sea.
Waves sloshed over my feet and sprayed me in the face, and by the time we reached the island I’d been aiming for, I was breathing hard, every muscle in my body screaming in pain.
I drove the boat hard into the shore, jumped out into the freezing water, and gathered Gareth into my arms once more.
My traitor eyes glanced down at him, saw his white face, the ice crusting his wet hair, the blood soaking my makeshift bandage.
I gritted my teeth, turned into the wind, and began to pray—angry prayers in an angry rhythm. He will not die. Do not let him die. If he dies, I will hate you forever. He will not die.
As I prayed, my mother’s face came into my mind. The image made me even angrier, gave me a boost of energy. If he dies, I will hate you forever.
There was a little town on this island, far off to my right through the whirling snow—a cluster of dark buildings and a few warmly lit windows—but I didn’t trust it. Someone there might be loyal to Errik or to Kilraith. They might have helped murder the Blessed Abbot.
I turned away from the town and kept pushing through the snow until I found another dock on the far side of the island and several fishing boats laden with nets and crates.
I chose the sturdiest-looking one and threw its gear into the water to lighten the load, then settled Gareth against the hull’s shallow wall, climbed in, and started rowing.
With each pull of the oars through the water, I repeated my angry prayers, but the distance between this island and the next one was longer, the water choppier.
By the time we reached the shore, my fingers and toes were burning from the cold and my prayers had become wordless bursts of desperate feeling.
When I lifted Gareth’s still body into my arms, I bent to kiss his frozen head, a sob trapped in my throat.
I began to lose all sense of where I was, how many islands I’d rowed to and trudged across and rowed away from.
I could no longer feel my burning fingers and toes, which frightened me—I’d seen frostbite before, and I already had one maimed hand—but I couldn’t allow myself to think of that.
I had to get us to the mainland and then find shelter, a fire, a healer.
I had to save Gareth. I would save Gareth.
That was all I knew. And even when I finally lost my footing and pitched forward, my mind was calm, and my thoughts came slowly.
You’re going to fall. Then you’re going to get back up and keep going.
But I didn’t fall; something warm and solid caught me. Golden eyes flashed at me from beneath a furred hood, and a voice I knew said, “Give him to me.” Then another voice—deeper, also familiar—said, “Mara, my girl,” and I saw my father’s face through the snow.
I clutched Gareth to my chest and stumbled backward.
I was hallucinating. “Who are you?” I demanded.
My tired mind made quick calculations. I’d have to drop Gareth into the snow, hope the landing was soft enough, then dispatch whoever this was with a roundhouse kick and a swift blow to the head.
I wouldn’t hold back. I drew myself up, summoning every scrap of power I could find.
“He’ll die if we don’t hurry,” said the first voice. “Only revenants can resurrect the dead. And if it comes to that, he will not be the same man he is now. He will be like your friend Nesset—half alive, half rotten. A walking corpse.”
I blinked hard, willing my vision to clear. But the woman was still there.
“Mother?” I said sharply.
She came closer and touched my arm. Her hands were so warm I wanted to cry. I caught her scent—mint and rosemary, one of the few lingering scent memories from my childhood—and nearly relented. But I had to be sure.
I stepped back from her. “What did I whisper to you on that day the Warden took me to Rosewarren?”
“That you had taken my emerald brooch, not Gemma. It was hidden on your shelf behind your favorite book, The Secret of the Willow Tree.” She hesitated, gave me a sad smile. “That you weren’t angry with me. That what was happening wasn’t my fault.”
It was one of the clearest memories I had of home: putting my lips to my mother’s ear and comforting her as she wept.
“I lied,” I told her. My voice was hoarse, exhausted. “I was angry with you. With both of you. You especially. You cried, but I didn’t. I stayed strong. You didn’t.”
“I know,” she said, holding out her arms. Her blue-and-gold eyes were full of sorrow. Blue like Gemma’s. Gold like a god’s. “Let me carry him now. We must hurry.”
If there was still a chance to save Gareth, I had to take it. I placed him gently in her arms, and without his weight against me, reassuring me that I hadn’t lost him, I felt untethered. My knees buckled. I couldn’t feel my fingers.
Before I could fall, strong arms came around me, and someone lifted me off the ground. I glimpsed a hood, a beard, brown eyes like Farrin’s. Like mine.
“Hold on to me,” said my father, his voice steely and his grip like iron. “You’re safe now.”
And for a moment, I did feel safe. Like I was a child again, and I’d had a nightmare, and my parents were going to soothe me back to sleep. Whatever monsters I’d dreamed up were not real, and they couldn’t hurt me.
I slumped against my father’s chest, and as he ran, his long sentinel strides carrying me quickly through the snow, I found my earlier prayer and recited it under my breath, too exhausted to pray but too terrified not to.
Gareth would not die. I would not let him.
He would not die. He would live. My mother would save him.
If she couldn’t, I would kill her. It was her fault we were all in this mess in the first place.
If she and the other gods had been more careful, if they hadn’t destroyed themselves to create the Middlemist, if they’d built a better Middlemist, none of this would have happened.
I pressed my fists into my father’s chest, willing away my exhaustion.
We traveled like lightning, the dark snowy world peeling away at the touch of my mother’s gliding footfalls until everything turned white, and so cold that the air burned my skin.
I could no longer feel my father’s arms or see where we were going, but a great force was pulling at me, like I was being swept away down a river.
I sensed that we were still moving, faster now than my eyes could comprehend.
Through the brilliant glare I caught a glimpse of a golden-eyed woman wearing platinum armor. Her dark hair shone with jewels.
Kerezen.
My mother.
Suddenly the river stopped, and I blinked like a shocked newborn as Father gently deposited me onto my feet.
The world around us was soft and green, and warm with sunlight: Wardwell.
My mother’s private sanctuary, hidden deep in the northern forests of Gallinor and protected by layers of godly magic.
No one could enter unless she allowed it.
They could walk right past it or even through it and not see what was truly here.
The world we had left behind was a blizzard; here, it was mild summer.
This made me irrationally angry. That Mother could hide up here in her endless peaceful summer while the rest of the world stormed and fought and died felt so unfair that I saw red.
I pushed away my father’s offered hand and forced myself to move, following Mother through the flowering clover and into her little house with its thatched roof and smoking chimney.
My legs were jelly, my whole body burned from cold and shock, and the remnants of whatever power had gripped us left me queasy.
But all I could focus on was Gareth.
Here in Wardwell, he looked even worse than he had in the storm. The only real color left to him was the blood staining his neck and torso. He looked naked and vulnerable without his glasses; absurdly, that frightened me most of all.
“How did you find us?” I managed to say, my teeth still chattering.
“I heard your prayers,” Mother replied wryly. “They were quite loud.”
“Really?”
“And we were already en route to Falkeron,” she added. “While at Rosewarren, I learned where you were.”
“Rosewarren?” Alarm bells clamored in my mind. “Why were you there? Please tell me you didn’t reveal yourself to anyone.”
“You think so little of me. Rest assured, daughter, that my visit was completely covert. Clear the table,” Mother commanded, her voice sharpening, and only then did I realize we were not alone in the house.
Gemma and Farrin were there, and Talan, and Ryder, and they all moved quickly to make space for Gareth on the small kitchen table.
He was too tall for it—when Mother laid him down, his legs dangled off the side—but then Talan dragged over a small sideboard, and Gemma gently laid Gareth’s legs atop it.
Mother sat in a chair by Gareth’s head and took his face in her hands.
Her expression was grim but resolute. “Ryder, boil a pot of water,” she said.
“Gideon, bring my kit. It’s in the cabinet under the stairs.
Farrin, take Mara to a bedroom upstairs and check her fingers and toes for frostbite.
Gemma, get her warm. Make sure she eats and rests. ”
I stood beside the table, staring down at Gareth’s face. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing. I felt like I was drifting through a world I did not know, no longer attached to my body. Not even the surprise of seeing my sisters could rattle me.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said.
“You can’t help him,” Mother replied. “Only I can. And you don’t want to see what I have to do.”
Farrin touched my arm; I jerked away from her. “I won’t leave him.”
“Don’t make me drag you upstairs.” Mother glanced up at me, the air around her shimmering with heat and light.
She was my mother, but she was also Kerezen, goddess of the body, and she would not suffer defiance.
“You’re strong, but I’m stronger. And the longer you delay me, the more likely it is that he’ll die. ”
I held her gaze for only a moment before I had to look away, blinking back furious tears.
Gemma murmured my name, and I turned toward her and let her and Farrin lead me upstairs.
They gave me food and drink, which I forced myself to consume even though every bite made me want to retch.
They moved me about like a doll who had no will of her own, checking me for injuries, massaging my hands and feet with an acrid balm.
Farrin built a fire; Gemma helped me into a fresh linen shirt and trousers and then crawled into bed beside me.
I observed them as if from a great distance, cataloging their movements with a soldier’s precision. But beyond the instincts of my training, my mind was numb, my blood cold and quiet.
It wasn’t until I lay sandwiched between my sisters, warmed by their bodies and the heavy quilts they’d pulled around us, that Gareth began to scream.
The sound broke through my stupor and stabbed me between the ribs.
I drew in a shuddering breath and squeezed my eyes shut and buried my face in Gemma’s neck.
She held me to her, and Farrin scooted closer to my back, singing softly into my hair.
But not even Farrin’s power could drive the sound of Gareth’s screams from my mind. I burrowed between my sisters, counting my breaths—three beats in, six beats out—and hoping that whatever horrible godly thing my mother was doing downstairs would be enough to save him.