Chapter 35
The next morning, my passage through the greenway to Rosewarren knocked a constellation of fresh bruises into my skin.
I’d been expecting this violence. With the unstable Mist pushing farther south every day, all the southern greenways were being pounded with turbulence that the wayfarers who’d designed them never could have anticipated.
Still, I felt unduly shaken in both body and mind when the greenway deposited me onto the grounds of Rosewarren.
True winter had descended onto the priory; a thick blanket of snow cast an eerie hush over the nearby woods.
I heard no birdsong, no rustling bare branches, not even the whispers of the Mist roiling just outside the priory walls.
The wards had held, I was glad to see. The air around Rosewarren was crisp and clear, a stark contrast to the hissing gray world beyond it.
I took the long way around, through the stables and training yards and across the vast sloping lawn. I told myself it was because I wanted to make a quick inspection of the grounds before going inside, but my bones knew the truth: I was afraid.
The house was quiet, warm, entirely ordinary.
A soft bustle of noise floated up from the kitchens; it was nearly breakfast time.
From the direction of the barracks came the faintest sounds of girls laughing, chatting, bathing, snoring.
The night patrols would have just settled in for a few hours of sleep, the morning patrols were already gone, and everyone else was likely preparing for their daily assignments: training, feeding their familiars, grooming the horses, cleaning weapons.
If I didn’t know better, I would have never guessed that chaos had so recently flooded these halls.
All morning, since I’d woken at Gareth’s side and slipped quietly out of bed, memories of that day had been tearing through my mind: all the littles possessed by the violence of a demon; the arrow that had pierced Berthel’s neck; Gareth reigning over the horrific scene in the Warden’s office with a smile that was not his own.
But that wasn’t so very recent, was it? I heard the Warden’s voice in my head; I’d been hearing it all morning. And it was right. The truth was that I’d been gone for three long weeks.
For the first time since I’d arrived at Rosewarren as a ten-year-old child, I felt like a stranger in my own home.
Footsteps were coming down the barrack stairs, and I turned toward them with a jolt of happiness. I knew that gait; the sound of it loosened the knot in my stomach.
A few seconds later, Brigid emerged from the stairwell, yawning and sleep-rumpled, her cropped blond hair only haphazardly brushed. She looked in dire need of her favorite breakfast: coffee and a sausage roll. Recalling that silly, small detail lifted my spirits. I hadn’t forgotten everything.
But as soon as she saw me, Brigid’s eyes went wide and her face paled, and suddenly that knot in my stomach pulled even tighter.
She hurried toward me, not for an embrace but to grip my arms hard in both hands.
“Whatever you’ve been doing,” she said in a rush, “wherever you’ve been, go back. She’ll kill you, Mara.”
Her words turned me so cold that I could hardly breathe. “What?” I said, stupid with shock. “Who?”
My answer came with an icy rush of air, a swirl of darkness, and a sharp knock to the back of my head. I gasped for breath, my vision flickering. Someone was dragging me by my collar; the fabric bunched tightly under my chin.
Then whoever it was dropped me onto the floor.
There was a rug under me, cold and stiff, caked with mud.
Our rugs always needed cleaning in the winter, with so many feet tracking snow inside.
I knew this particular rug, those dark swirls of midnight blue and brick red—I’d walked across them every day. I was in the entrance hall.
And I knew who it was looming above me too, though my mind refused to believe it, scrambling for some other possibility it couldn’t find.
I forced myself to look up and meet her eyes.
The Warden stared back at me, fury etched into the new lines of exhaustion on her face. I’d never seen her look so haggard. She prided herself on meticulous discipline even when it came to her looks, seldom letting us see her with even a hair out of place.
Haggard. Only yesterday I’d teased Gareth with that very word. The thought made me want to cry.
“How dare you,” the Warden said. Normally her voice was smooth, unreadable.
Now it vibrated with anger so thick I could taste it.
“I sent you away with him to keep him safe, to keep you happy, to give us all a chance to recover in peace from the violence he allowed into our home. And instead of returning once your mission was complete, you left. For weeks. No word from you, no request for aid. You could have been dead, for all we knew. But you weren’t, were you?
” She took a step closer, pinning me in place with her eyes. “You were with him.”
I tried to find the right words, my heart pounding at the back of my throat. “Madam, we weren’t alone, we were working with my sisters to—”
Her hand met my face like a lash of fire. She struck me again and again, each blow harder than the last, until I could no longer hold myself up. I lay trembling on the rug, the world spinning and full of stars.
“It is not your decision where you go and what you do,” the Warden hissed. “I decide that. You go where I tell you to go. You undertake the missions I assign.”
I swallowed, tasting blood, and made myself look back up at her.
It was then that I saw we weren’t alone.
Dozens of Roses peered at us from the shadows of the room, the mouths of nearby hallways, the mezzanines of the upper floors.
Cira was tearfully trying to usher away a passel of gaping littles.
Danesh, Caralind, and two others whose faces I couldn’t see were holding Brigid back at the edge of the room, trying to cover her mouth.
Rage twisted Brigid’s face; if she managed to get free, she would launch herself at us, and the Warden would kill her.
I knew this with bone-chilling certainty: in this state, the Warden would not shy away from murder.
My horrified mind searched in vain for the right thing to say. But I’d seen her like this only once before: when she had beaten Posey nearly to death. And the only thing that had stopped her that day was me. Killing Posey myself had shocked the Warden back into sanity.
Now I was the sole object of her ire, and in my terror, I couldn’t think of how to stop her.
“Madam,” I began, “our mission to Falkeron was an abject failure. The Blessed Abbot—”
“I know all about what happened to the Blessed Abbot, and I know about that traitorous fool Errik and his deranged followers. I know everything, Mara.”
She didn’t know everything; she couldn’t. She didn’t know about Mother or Wardwell. She didn’t know what I was, what my sisters were.
And yet that mocking glint in her eyes cut me like a blade.
“There was a girl at Falkeron,” I said, desperate to change the subject. “Serra. She helped us escape. If she’s still alive—”
“Do you truly think I allowed any of them to live after what they did to you?”
An icy silence followed her words, and grief for this girl I barely knew flared up inside me. “You kill innocent people to avenge me, and yet you strike me with such cruelty, as if you hate me.” I drew in a painful breath. “As if you’d like to kill me yourself.”
“Oh, Mara.” Then she smiled, mockingly tender. She crouched beside me and stroked my hair. The drag of her cold fingers reduced me to the child I’d once been, shivering alone on an unfamiliar cot.
“You’re so wrong,” she crooned. “I don’t want to kill you. I want you to understand how completely and irrevocably you are mine. And until I’m convinced that I’ve corrected your misguided thinking…”
She stood slowly, her gaze never leaving mine, and for a moment everything grew still—the crawl of time, the panic buzzing through my body. Then she sighed, cocked her head slightly to one side, and held her hand out to me, palm to the ceiling.
“Until then, I’m afraid I’ve no choice but to punish you.”
I nearly reached for her hand, some stupid part of me still believing that this was a mistake, that she would help me to my feet with a smile and apologize for frightening me.
But then she clenched that open palm into a fist, and with it came a feeling I knew well—the feeling of transformation.
Only this time, when my body stretched and my bones snapped into their new positions, pain like I’d never known ripped through my body, stealing my breath, my voice, my mind—worse than the brutal cold of Falkeron, worse than my flight across Vauzanne.
No Rose remembered her binding, which always took place on the last night of our trials.
The older girls had told me this was a gift from the Warden.
The binding was so painful, they said, that remembering it would shatter the mind.
But the Warden had softened the experience for all of us.
She softened everything, even our normal transformations.
She protected us from the worst of her magic, and she did it out of love.
Even so, transformation was inherently brutal; the first few times had left me sobbing, not only from the pain but also from the disturbing realization that my body was no longer my own.
It could change according to someone else’s will.
To my child’s mind, this was an attack. But, as had happened with so many kinds of violence over the years, I’d grown used to it.
This, though—this was different. It was agony.
It was the world tearing itself to pieces, and I was the world.
I was the thing being destroyed. A thousand feathers burst out of my skin, drawing blood as they cascaded down my arms. Wings broke through my back with a crack like splitting bone.
My shredded clothes floated to the floor, and when it was finished, I was left naked and alone in the silent hall, choking on my own sobs.
Had this been what my ten-year-old self had felt during her binding all those years ago?
I wept for that child, for the pain she had endured.
All she had wanted was to go home. Instead she had killed and suffered, and now she suffered again, and she always would.
My head reeled with sadness. I could hardly breathe through it.
The Warden knelt beside me, watching me shiver. When I retched, she glided out of the way so I wouldn’t soil her clothes. Then she leaned close and kissed my downy cheek.
“You are bound to me,” she whispered, almost lovingly.
“Your blood, your thoughts, the power that you carry—it all belongs to me. Remember that as you fly back to your lover.” She stood and began walking away, only to pause and add with mocking concern, “I wonder what he’ll think once he realizes this is now the only form of you he can have. ”
Then she left me. They all did, all the Roses hovering in horror at the edges of my awareness. I couldn’t be angry at them. If they protested, she would kill them. Even comforting me could be dangerous.
I curled into myself on the rug, my wings limp and bloody, and waited for the strength to stand.