Chapter 37
Two days later, I stood near the back of the library in Big Deep’s east wing, watching the scene before me with chills running up and down my body.
Part of me wanted to look away; it was too huge, this magic, too volatile.
The air was hard to breathe, like it had taken on a physicality the room couldn’t quite contain.
But I couldn’t possibly look away. Not yet. The impossible was unfolding right before my eyes, and my Gareth was the one orchestrating it all.
Lily and Alastrina lay on two heavy tables parallel to one another.
Surrounding them in two concentric circles were twelve Anointed magicians from Gareth’s university team—six elementals in the inner circle, and six beguilers in the outer one.
They murmured spells and prayers, but not in unison; each magician’s litany was highly personal and uttered at their own pace.
For the most part they remained stationary, but every now and then someone would shift or exchange places with another.
Outside the circles, eight more Anointed drifted slowly around the room, following a strange pattern that reminded me of dancers cycling through an excruciatingly slow waltz.
I recognized several members of Gareth’s Rosewarren team among them, including his friends Tarek, Loudon, and Blaise, the librarians Marvyn and Fiacra, and Gareth’s scowling assistant from the university, Heldine.
And in the center of it all, between Lily and Alastrina, stood two figures with bowed heads.
The first was Ankaret, one hand touching each woman’s forehead.
Her white hair streamed out behind her like a banner, and as I watched, the tiny flames outlining her body shifted, expanding to cloak her entire form in fire.
Wings unfolded from her back, spread wide, then retracted.
An instant later, the flames resumed their previous tame form.
The other figure was Mhyll, the artificer to whom General Haldrin had granted asylum in exchange for her services.
She looked entirely human—light brown skin like Cira’s, a soft cap of black hair, an elegant bearing—but her arms were not made of flesh.
They were made of undulating, blue-tinged light, and they were inside Lily’s chest, and Alastrina’s too—probing, cutting, siphoning.
Artificers were surgeons, only they didn’t cut bone and organs; they cut magic, manipulated it, transformed it into something new.
As I watched her, I tried not to think of five-year-old Gemma trapped in a room with such a being, screaming her poor little heart out as she was cut open and remade at our parents’ command.
I understood why they’d done it; her magic was conflicted, torn between the botanical magic she’d inherited from Philippa Wren and the power of the goddess Kerezen, who in those days had only just begun to awaken inside the body of our mother.
I understood, but I wasn’t sure their decision had been the right one. And the sound of Gemma’s screams echoing through the house was one of the few clear memories I’d retained from my years at Ivyhill. No amount of Farrin clamping her hands over my ears could truly block out such a sound.
I shifted my attention to the iridescent cords of magic streaming through the room.
They were delicate and coiled, like curls of smoke, connecting the magicians to Ankaret and her to them, amplifying their magic and fueling their spellwork, which in turn allowed the artificer to carry out her own work.
Gareth had explained the whole thing to me the day before, but even with his careful, confident descriptions in my mind, I couldn’t quite believe that what I saw was real.
The most important factor, he’d told me, was Ankaret.
Her power made all of this possible. And rather than draining her, reducing her to the tiny creature she’d been on my sickbed in the Citadel, the effort made her look stronger and more resplendent than ever.
After only a few minutes, she’d grown too bright to look at comfortably.
Gareth was in constant motion, overseeing everything with a patient watchfulness that reminded me of Brigid.
He traveled slowly from person to person, providing them with water and food, assessing their comfort, observing their magic and offering suggestions on how to adjust the rhythm of their incantations, the angles at which they raised their arms.
I tried not to worry about the shadows under his eyes or the fact that they’d been at this for twenty-one hours straight.
What if it didn’t work? What if they exhausted themselves to death first?
Thinking back to Vauzanne and my own brush with that particular danger made me want to yank Gareth away from this room and tuck him away somewhere safe, somewhere far away from this humming, crackling magic that both smelled and tasted like burning.
But worrying would help neither of us, and I had my own work to do. I left the crates of fresh sandwiches I’d brought from the kitchen near Gareth’s paper-strewn desk. Then I quietly left the room, residual magic sticking to my taloned feet like wet snow.
Brigid met me in the entrance hall for our morning patrol. She glanced at my feet with mild curiosity. “You’re buzzing.”
“Stray magic sloughed off during the transference. It will fade.” I gestured to the front doors. It was quiet, still dark. Dawn had not yet come. “Shall we?”
She fell into step beside me. Freyda circled overhead, Brigid’s hawk familiar not far from her.
“Well?” Brigid said. “Are they making progress with the transference?”
“Everything looks the same to me as it did when they started yesterday morning, only now they’re clearly exhausted. I’m trying not to read anything into that.”
“Since you don’t really know what you’re looking at?”
“Exactly.”
We nodded in greeting to three Lower Army soldiers en route to their lookout posts, freshly cleaned rifles strapped to their backs. Once we were past them, Brigid cleared her throat.
“And how is Gareth?”
I glanced at her. “I don’t think I like your tone.”
“Oh, it’s not that much of a tone. I’ve just observed that you look much more comfortable than you did three days ago.”
“Nanette’s balm has worked wonders.”
“Ah, Nanette’s balm,” she said gravely. “Yes, of course.”
I swallowed a smile. I’d missed this. I’d missed Brigid.
If I ignored the tidy battlefield all around us—the barricades and trenches, the watchtowers and soldiers, the hum of ward magic surrounding the grounds—I could almost imagine that we were on patrol in the Mistlands, years ago, when things were easier.
Except back then, I’d known Gareth only through Farrin’s letters.
And now I couldn’t imagine living even a day without him.
“He’s behaving himself, then?” Brigid asked after a comfortable silence. “He doesn’t need any sort of talking-to?”
“Brigid,” I began.
“Because I have several on hand.”
We stopped on a ridge overlooking the long, rocky slope down to the northern perimeter.
A slight breeze slid between my feathers.
Beyond us stretched the network of canyons, still black and blue with night, and beyond even that lay the southern front—and the encroaching Mistline, which grew closer every day.
It now hovered on the horizon like a thin line of smoke, illuminated by the distant lightning strikes of storms and Mistfires.
“You don’t need to worry about Gareth,” I told Brigid. It was peaceful here on this ridge. Even the Mist, at this distance, was beautiful.
“I’m not worried about Gareth,” Brigid replied. “I’m worried about you. I want you to be happy, as impossible as that might be given your propensity for self-destruction. Though there does seem to be a bit less of that now that he’s in your life. As your friend, however, I must remain skeptical.”
“Of course.”
“It’s my solemn duty, and I expect you to do the same for me, should I ever find someone I can tolerate sharing a bed with for longer than an hour or two.”
The slight disgust in her voice made me smile. “I understand, and you know that I will.”
Another peaceful silence fell. Then Brigid cleared her throat again, this time more delicately. “As your friend,” she said, “it’s also my solemn duty to ask for details about how well that gorgeous man satisfies you, and in what particular ways he does so.”
My smile became a grin. Gareth’s hands gliding through my feathers, the kisses he stamped into my downy skin, my talons encircling his wrists as I rode him on his childhood bed—the memories made my heart soar and my legs weak.
“I love him, Brigid.” I looked right at her so she could see the truth on my face. “I love him so much.”
She smiled at me, just as she had as a younger woman on the day of my trials—a little proud and terribly fond. “I know you do.”
Then, to my left, a quick flash of brilliant light came and went.
I whipped my head around to find the source—not lightning, not an Upper Army soldier running drills.
Something else. With my mother’s help, the Upper Army’s beguiler teams had erected a shell of protective wards around the Fontaine estate.
Now, as we watched, that shell thrummed, shimmering with watery blue light, before falling silent and dark once more.
That could mean only one thing: something had breached the wards, or at least tried to.
The next instant, I was in the air, Brigid transforming just behind me.
The swift eruption of her familiar gray-and-white feathers turned my stomach a little.
It had happened so quickly. I knew very well, of course, that the Warden had the ability to surveil far beyond the priory.
Whenever a Rose in her human form encountered danger, she transformed not long after.
But suddenly I couldn’t shake the disturbing thought that the Warden was watching us far more closely than I’d realized. Was it possible she’d even spied on Gareth and me? A wild part of me hoped she had. Let her see how little we care about what she did to me. Let her witness our joy and seethe.
I shoved thoughts of the Warden aside as Brigid and I landed at the perimeter a few seconds later.
“What’s happened?” I demanded.
A group of six Lower Army soldiers were struggling to get hold of something writhing in the dirt. One of them looked over his shoulder in panic.
“It’s a man, my lady!” he cried. “Somehow he broke through the wards!”
“Somehow?” The man on the ground was tall, well built. He laughed through hysterical tears. “Somehow? Can’t you see what’s happening right before your eyes?”
The sound of his voice unnerved me. One moment it seemed entirely human; the next, it was like two different voices had folded messily into one.
I crouched beside him and easily pinned his flailing arms to the ground. At my touch, something flickered in his wide, wet eyes, and he fell still.
“Who are you?” he whispered.
I inspected him quickly. Lacerations marred his dark brown skin. He had recently been bound; open sores encircled his wrists, ankles, and neck.
And the blood that glimmered there had a golden sheen.
My heart pounding, I kept my face impassive. “You first,” I told him.
He blinked up at me, eerily calm. Then his face shifted, and a flicker of amber light flared to life in his eyes.
“I am Caiathos,” he said, in a deep, steady voice that seemed too grand even for his impressive stature.
It carried the weight of ages. It reminded me of my mother when she’d come to Gareth and me during our flight from Falkeron—armor and bone, brilliant jewels and gliding footsteps that spanned miles.
“Kilraith is coming,” the man claiming to be Caiathos continued. “In fact, he’s right behind me.”