Chapter 4
I came back to myself and found several faces hovering over me: Gemma, Gareth, Alastrina, Illaria. I was lying on the floor, the great ceiling of the Citadel soaring overhead, and my back and head were propped up against something warm and reassuringly solid.
I tried to twist around to see what the thing was, but twisting made my stomach twinge with pain, and all of a sudden everything came flying back to me in bright colors.
I pushed myself upright, gasping, and looked down at my stomach. Someone had draped a pretty violet shawl over me, but underneath that I was half dressed—nearly naked, really. Tears sprang to my eyes, and I clutched the shawl to my throat, covering myself as best I could, and felt around my body with my other hand. I found only normal, unhurt skin, slightly tender, and my poor torn dress.
“What happened?” I croaked, turning, wincing, and I saw that the warm thing propping me up had been Ryder’s lap. Beside him, leaning hard against him as if otherwise she might puddle on the floor, was Yvaine. The creamy white of her skin looked sallow, unwell, but her lilac eyes were bright as ever. Her mouth was in a hard, angry line.
Ryder looked at me gravely, quiet fury burning in his gaze. “You were poisoned,” he said, “and the queen healed you.”
I couldn’t think of what to make of that, so I awkwardly gathered the shawl around me—thank the gods it was a generous size—and tried to turn away from all of them, but everywhere I looked was another face. A few royal guards had gathered around us. Their captain, Vara, wore a broad gold sash across her chest.
Then Gareth crouched down next to me and opened his arms, his expression a horrible, frightened thing that made me realize just how close I must have come to dying. I turned gratefully into his embrace and hid myself against him for a moment; after all, he’d seen me naked before at the university baths, and another time, a humiliating moment for both of us, that we hadn’t talked about since except in little jokes that never failed to lift our spirits. Gareth loved to laugh.
The thought made my tears spill over. Somewhere behind us, the orchestra played merrily on; the ball had resumed. I realized we were all hidden in an antechamber very near the dais. A pair of guards stood at the door, blocking us from view.
“The trick knife?” I rasped.
“Laced with venom,” Gareth replied. “I’d have to study it further to be sure, but based on the effects, I’d guess it was—”
“A fae elixir,” Yvaine interrupted softly. “Distilled from the roots of a tree that grew in a lonely wood, where the shadows are restless and every bloom hungers for flesh.”
We all stared at her. Alastrina, standing nearby, shifted uneasily and crossed her arms over her chest.
Slowly, the obvious became clear to my muddled mind. Yvaine had healed me, Ryder had said. A prickle of awe crept over me, raising goose bumps on my skin.
“You used your magic on me,” I whispered, marveling. Then a jolt of panic lanced through me. “Are you all right? You look unwell. The poison, did it hurt you?”
Yvaine smiled from her spot beside Ryder, the sight of her so sweet that two of the guards turned away, visibly overcome.
“It looks worse than it is,” she said. “I took the venom from you, and now it lives in me. But it will die soon. Such evil can’t survive long inside my body. In fact…ah.”
She closed her eyes, cocked her head to the side as if listening to something none of us could hear. Soft pink returned to her cheeks, and she drew in a breath and opened her eyes. She patted Ryder’s shoulder and stood, quick and fluid, her hair cascading to the backs of her knees. The mightiest tiny thing that had ever lived.
“Thank you, Lord Ryder,” she said briskly. “Your shoulder is most excellently strong.”
Ryder blinked, looking suddenly much younger underneath that fearsome black beard, and then stared at his hands, a secret smile pulling at the corners of his mouth.
I knew that smile; I knew what it felt like to receive the queen’s love.
“I don’t understand this,” Alastrina said, her voice tight and impatient. “Some mad citizen obtained a trick knife laced with fae elixir and decided to assassinate an Ashbourne in front of hundreds of people?”
“The blade was meant for me,” Ryder corrected her.
I glanced up at him right as he looked at me. Our eyes locked; heat crawled up my cheeks. I couldn’t read his face, but I was certain he was thinking the same thing as me. What would it be like now between us? He, the target; me, his savior.
Embarrassed, I turned away.
“A similarly unthinkable situation” came the low, gravelly voice of Lord Alaster Bask, who stood unmoving in his sharp black suit, hands behind his back. “Someone meant to murder my son, here in the Citadel.” His gaze slid to Yvaine. “I thought, Your Majesty, that there were protective measures in place here powerful enough to prevent such occurrences.”
“A reasonable assumption, my dear,” added Lady Enid coolly. She glowered beside him, gorgeous and cold, carved out of porcelain and dipped in ink.
Captain Vara strode forward. “It isn’t your place to criticize the queen, my lord, especially in her own home.”
Lord Alaster raised an eyebrow. “What a funny thing to say. I would think, as an Anointed subject of the queen, that it is in fact my duty to criticize and question. The gods favored my ancestors too, after all. We were chosen to protect the realm. And if the magic the queen has used to safeguard the heart of our capital is faulty, it is my responsibility to find out why.” There was a pause. “I am reminded,” he added, “of the incident this past summer, when chimaeric beasts invaded the castle through means that have still not been divulged by the Royal Conclave. There seems to be a pattern emerging.”
My blood ran cold as I remembered that day. Five monstrous chimaera had raged through the palace halls. Gareth, Gemma, Talan, and I had tried to flee, only to be waylaid in this very ballroom by one of the beasts—a ferocious, muscled creature with a reptilian aspect, deadly razor claws, a tail like a whip. It had nearly killed me, and would have, had Ryder not thrown himself between us and shot the thing.
The memory reassured me. A life for a life. We were even. I no longer owed him anything. The thought gave me courage to speak.
“You forget to mention the night of the midsummer ball, Lord Alaster,” I said, though my throat burned with each word, “when Alastrina assumed a glamour to deceive my father into believing she was my mother. When your son then assaulted my father on the ballroom floor, right there in front of everyone. If there is a failure in the Citadel’s ward magic, then your children are guilty of taking advantage of it just as my attacker did tonight.”
An uncomfortable silence fell; I could feel Ryder watching me but refused to meet his eyes. Instead I looked to my father, certain he would be grateful for my defense. But he was sitting on a nearby chair, leaning heavily forward, elbows on his knees. And when he raised his gaze to mine, I saw, before he could mask it, a flash of something miserable on his face: guilt and self-loathing and fear. He was utterly shaken.
Understanding pricked me like thorns.
I knew nothing about the cackling madman, but he’d been easily overwhelmed by the royal guard and had done nothing to defend himself. His method of attack had been convoluted, even a little silly. He’d said it himself: It was only a joke! This was not a person capable of overpowering the queen’s wards on his own.
But an Anointed lord with friends in the Upper Army and a thirst for revenge? That man certainly could have devised a way.
Father must have seen the realization on my face. His own clouded over, went blank; he lifted his chin, ever so slightly defiant, as if daring me to say something.
I felt sick. Of course I wouldn’t say anything, not here. And that glint in his eye told me that if I did, he’d be able to deflect the accusation. He wouldn’t have done whatever he’d done without a way to avoid being punished for it.
The guards at the door parted to make way for a man wearing fine black robes hemmed with gold and a tasseled velvet hat. His brown skin gleamed, and his beard was neat and white. His name was Thirsk, one of the queen’s closest advisers and a member of the Royal Conclave. He went straight to Yvaine and bowed, then bent to whisper something in her ear.
Yvaine nodded, touched his arm, and then looked solemnly at Alaster Bask.
“You are not wrong to express such concern, Lord Alaster,” she said. “In fact, the gods would be grateful for it. Such accountability is what they intended. I will sit in conference with you in the morning, hear all of your grievances, and, I hope, set your mind at ease. For now, Thirsk has prepared rooms for you and your party—and yours as well, Lord Gideon—so you can rest and recover in the wake of this alarming incident.”
Lady Enid raised her eyebrows and opened her mouth as if to protest, but Yvaine spoke over her, and I felt a slight wave of power push over us, a breeze with a will. Lady Enid fell silent.
“My staff will escort you upstairs for the night when you are ready and attend to your every need,” Yvaine continued. “In the meantime, I wonder if your children would remain with me for a moment so I can thank each of them personally for the speech they worked so hard to prepare? They did so at my request, after all.”
No one could have argued; the air hummed gently with magic. Nothing too coercive, merely a firm encouragement. It was enough to send Lord Alaster, Lady Enid, and my father docilely into the care of their guard escorts. Only once did Lord Alaster look back, tight-lipped, furious. He knew it was the queen’s magic at his back, shepherding him away, but what could he do about it? Nothing, if he didn’t want to lose his slight righteous advantage.
Father, on the other hand, left us without even a glance over his shoulder or a word of comfort. He’d be relieved, I knew, to no longer have to look at me and be faced with the enormity of what he’d done, how close he’d come to watching me die.
Gareth gently released me and stood. He and Illaria made to leave us, but Yvaine said smoothly, “Professor Fontaine, if you would remain here, please,” which stopped him in his tracks. Illaria glanced at him curiously before the stoic guards led her out of the antechamber. Soon we were alone: Gareth, my sister and I, the Bask siblings, the queen, and her adviser.
It was then that I noticed the sweat on Thirsk’s brow, near his hairline.
Yvaine turned to face all of us, her expression suddenly grave and hard. “Come with me, quickly,” she said. “There’s something you need to see.”
***
The sinkhole swirled like a knot of storm clouds, only instead of roiling across the sky, they churned within a circular chasm cut jaggedly into the floor.
It was as if some great fist had punched through this once-lovely expanse of ivory-and-coral tile, here in the third subbasement of the Citadel, where a forest of marble columns supported the vast ceilings and where artifacts and relics of ages past were stored, some in labeled crates, some displayed on pedestals of jade and pink granite. And what the fist had left behind was a doorway to some other place, a world of storms with inky black clouds. In the mess of darkness, distant lightning flashed; a constant rumble of thunder shook the floor.
Around the sinkhole hummed a ring of magic, invisible but obvious, the sizzle of it like cooking meat. A bitter scent filled the air, and my mouth turned sour and strange, as if I’d put my tongue to an old metal coin. Next to this barrier of magic, forming an adjacent ring, were a dozen tired-looking people, all of them wearing pale robes embroidered with intricate shapes: a language, I thought, but one I couldn’t read. Strewn around them were books and scrolls and plates scattered with crumbs. Some of them stood facing the sinkhole with raised hands, murmuring what must have been spellwork. Two rested on velvet pallets.
All twelve of them snapped to attention when they saw us coming. They smoothed their tunics, scrambled to their feet, hastily tried to hide the abandoned dishes. One of them came to greet us, a squat pale man who smiled at the queen with obvious relief.
“This is Brogan,” said Thirsk, the queen’s adviser. He patted his brow with a silk handkerchief. “The Royal Conclave appointed him to oversee the reinforcement efforts.”
“Your Majesty,” said Brogan with a hasty bow, “thank you for coming so quickly. As you can see, there have been several…disturbances today, and…well, we’ve been pushed back from our previous position by two feet.” He pointed to the air above the sinkhole, where a faint circle of blue specks turned slowly in the air, precisely echoing the sinkhole’s perimeter. They were small and glinting, like dust motes in sunlight. Within their circle was another, this one bright red, and smaller.
Yvaine stood there for a long moment, very still. My heart thundered as I took in the scene. A ring of shimmering air formed a barrier between the sinkhole and the surrounding space. Dusty piles of shattered floor and broken tiles had been swept into tidy piles.
“A sinkhole of light and shadow,” Ryder murmured, a fearsome expression on his face. “Just as the guards said when they released us from your prison that night. There’s a sinkhole , they told us. And the chimaera crawled out of it. ” Ryder looked sharply at Yvaine. “And you haven’t closed it.”
Yvaine’s expression was distant, bleak. “I can’t,” she said quietly. “I’ve tried.”
The room rang with her words as if she’d shouted them. My mouth went dry; I was suddenly, fiercely glad for the strong arm of my sister.
Gemma, holding on to me, said in a small voice, “I don’t understand. You are high queen of Edyn. If you can’t close this thing, then what—”
“Who made it?” Alastrina snapped, turning away from the sinkhole in disgust.
“I do not know,” Yvaine replied, still with that strange, faraway look on her face. “Here is what I do know. The night of my midsummer ball, I placed Lord Ryder and Lady Alastrina in prison for their assault on Lord Gideon. Weeks later, a sinkhole opened without warning, and chimaera emerged. In a panic, my guards released Ryder and Alastrina in the hopes that their wilding magic would prove effective against the creatures.”
“And it did,” Alastrina added. Her eyes cut to me. “You’re welcome.”
“Only you didn’t use your magic against all of them, did you, Lady Alastrina?” said Brogan, his face flushed. “You saved yourselves and ran. Twenty-two people died that day before we managed to subdue the beasts. Twenty-two. Do you know any of their names?”
Abashed, Alastrina fell silent. Gemma’s hand tightened around mine. I was glad; I felt faint. Twenty-two. And we had run, all of us, just as the man had said. We’d run to the Old Country and used our power there to save Talan. But if we had stayed at the palace only a little while longer, could we have helped prevent some of that bloodshed?
“Your blame is misplaced, beguiler,” Ryder said, hands in fists at his sides. “It took all of my strength and my sister’s to turn back just one of the chimaera. And the Ashbournes couldn’t have done even that, not before…” He stopped himself. I knew what he’d nearly said: Not before they went to the Old Country, where something in them was awakened.
Gemma, rending trees from the earth and tearing the cursed crown from Talan’s head.
Mara, impossibly strong, fighting necromancers and demons like a one-woman army.
And me, distracting Kilraith, giving Gemma the time to fight him, using only my voice raised in song.
I swallowed hard. These were not memories I’d allowed myself to consider over the past month since we’d returned home. Thinking of them was like looking at a strange version of myself in a dark mirror, an eerie reflection I did not recognize.
Yvaine went on as if nothing had been said. Her voice was airy and strange. “My advisers tried everything to keep me locked up in my rooms. They wanted to protect me; that is their duty. They exhausted themselves, used all their magic. But I got out, and I slayed the beasts that remained. I closed my fingers into a fist and said a prayer to the goddess Kerezen—ruler of the senses, engineer of all bodies—and I stopped their beastly hearts.” She turned to look at me. “But I do not know who sent them, or why, or from where, or how . I do not know what this thing before us is, nor do I know where it goes.”
I couldn’t think of what to say. Yvaine was frightening me. She looked so lost, so young and imploring, her white hair lit up eerily by the blue-and-red light of the floating rings. In this moment, Yvaine seemed less like my friend of many years and more like what I supposed she actually was: high queen of Edyn, chosen by the gods, unfamiliar and untouchable and unknowable. I clung to Gemma’s arm.
Gareth crouched a safe distance from the sinkhole. He held his chin in his hand, deep in thought. “You rotate the strains of ward magic daily?”
Brogan bustled over to him. “Yes, Professor. The queen visits every morning and crafts a new design. She teaches us how to bolster it. We do so until she returns the next day.” He lowered his voice, looked at Yvaine in awe. “We catalog every variation she devises. The language is entirely new. It does not match the syntax of any recorded spellwork.”
“Have any other creatures emerged from it?” Gemma asked.
“No,” Yvaine said quietly.
“No,” echoed Brogan, “but every few days, the aberration’s perimeter expands, despite all our efforts.” Nervously, he glanced back at the queen. “If it continues at this rate, we estimate it will engulf the entire Citadel by the end of the year. Perhaps sooner, if the rate of expansion accelerates.”
Gareth stood. “Have you consulted the Committee for New and Emerging Magics?”
“No, Professor. We’ve been instructed to—”
“No one can know,” Yvaine murmured, staring at the sinkhole. “They would be so afraid.”
Brogan looked helplessly at us. “The queen has forbidden us from working with any other institution to address this issue. We operate alone with her. To prevent a panic, she says.”
Thirsk pulled at his collar and cleared his throat. “Yes, and as I’ve said to you before, Your Majesty, there has been immense pressure from others in the Conclave to do just as Professor Fontaine suggests. The Committee for New and Emerging Magics is a jewel of the university and is headed by the professor himself, as you know. Surely they would be helpful advisers in this crisis.”
Yvaine slowly shook her head. “Gareth is important in what’s to come. I see that clearly. Not his colleagues. Only him.” She looked at me then, and her expression softened. “And the four of you, and your sister in the Order. And Talan—he is part of this too, of course. Oh, Gemma.” Yvaine’s voice was heavy with sadness. “You must miss him terribly.”
Gemma flinched. Now I was the one to grip her hand hard.
Ryder took a step toward the queen. “Your Majesty, why have you brought us here? What are we a part of, exactly?”
Yvaine watched him as she might a beloved child. Her right hand absently played with the air near the ward magic; sparks flashed at her fingers.
“I need your help,” she replied. “All of you. I must put every strength, every resource at my disposal, into guarding this place and determining the sinkhole’s cause. And”—her gaze flicked over to Brogan—“into ensuring that this secret does not breach these walls. I must remain here. I am strongest in the Citadel, which the gods made for me, which they carved out of stone with their own hands. You, though…”
She looked to each of us in turn. My skin tingled with some ancient instinct.
“You can go anywhere,” she murmured, “and everywhere, and you must. I need all of you to be my eyes, ears, and hands out there in the world. Learn what has made this aberration , as my advisers are so fond of calling it. This window, this door. What made it, or who, and what other else-things are out there in our world, opening up paths to the unknown?”
At once, I thought of the Middlemist and Mara’s recent letter. The Mist is dying. Was this sinkhole evidence that its disease was spreading? My mind raced with dire possibilities. More than anything, I wanted to go straight to Mara and wrap both her and Gemma in my arms, never let them go. We could hide away at Ivyhill; I would play my music night and day if it would keep them with me.
“Farrin,” said Yvaine on a soft puff of air. “Farrin.”
The queen’s voice pulled me back to myself. Everyone was looking at me; I realized I was trembling, my shoulders tense with anger.
“You must work together, all of you, at all costs,” Yvaine said after a moment, looking sorry for me. “There are those who may try to stop you from doing so. You must defy them, no matter how dear to you they may be. Even if—”
Suddenly, Yvaine fell silent and went rigid. Her solemn expression cracked open, and before my eyes she became herself again, my friend Yvaine, mighty but human, who knew mortal things like humor and loss and fear. Her face went slack with horror; she ran wildly for the sinkhole, and then, before any of us could stop her, tried to throw herself into it.
The ring of beguilers heaved; a shock of magic rippled through the room with a sharp crack that made my ears buzz. Dimly I heard the beguilers shouting in panic, in pain.
Gemma released me. “Keep working!” she shouted at the beguilers. “Brogan, make them hold!”
Brogan, wide-eyed, muttering an incantation himself, scuttled around to each of the beguilers in turn. He placed his hands on their shoulders, bowed his head, and kissed each of their own, murmuring all the while.
The invisible rope of magic encircling the sinkhole shimmered and darkened. Tongues of power snapped across the room, making our hair stand on end. Yvaine threw herself against the ward magic again and again. She beat at it with her fists, horrible sobs bursting out of her, and then she started shouting in a language I did not know. But at the sound of it, my skin tingled, and my memory flashed to the sad house at the edge of the sea called Farther—the evil echo of Talan’s family home, where Kilraith had nearly killed us all.
Whatever the queen was shouting, the language was Olden.
Ryder and Alastrina grabbed her, tried to pull her back from the sinkhole, but she was strong, frantic, and she twisted like a wild animal in their arms. The ring of ward magic echoed her, roaring, thrashing. An arm of it snapped out and whipped across Ryder’s cheek, leaving a horrible glowing burn.
“What is she saying?” Gemma called out. “Farrin, do something!”
I’d been too stunned to move, rooted to the floor by absolute terror, but finally rediscovered control of my body and hurried to Yvaine. She was on her knees, Ryder and Alastrina holding her arms. I knelt beside her, feeling numb and useless, hardly able to find my voice.
“Yvaine, I’m here,” I managed to say. “It’s Farrin. Please look at me.”
She shook her head, squeezed her eyes shut, and still the foreign words poured out of her mouth. The room trembled. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Thirsk run back into the shadows, toward the corridor that had brought us here.
Gareth crouched beside me, shouting to be heard. “She’s saying, They’re coming. They awaken. It’s Zelophar, a godly tongue. Found carved into the land in the days after the Unmaking, where the five Cloisters now stand. And in Aidurra and Vauzanne too, on the sides of mountains and the walls of caves. Most scholars agree the gods meant to mark these locations as holy sites, places ripe with power that are important for Edyn’s protective infrastructure—”
“Not the time for history lessons, librarian!” Alastrina snarled, sweat dripping down her face from the effort of restraining the queen.
“ They awaken, they awaken. She’s saying it over and over.”
“You have to stop this,” I shouted to Yvaine. I found some courage and grabbed her hand, though it was so scorching hot I nearly dropped it. I steeled myself and tried to ignore the pain, though it shocked tears from my eyes. “Yvaine, listen to me. You’re going to hurt yourself. Look at me, please! Breathe with me. Be with me.”
Gareth continued translating, the sinkhole’s lightning flashing across his face. “ Make them go to sleep! ” he cried, echoing the queen’s screams. “If they come here, they’ll die. Make them go to sleep!”
Yvaine was hysterical, her sobs so fierce they were making her gag. She clawed at the current of magic nearest her; blood dripped from each fingertip. Not knowing what else to do, I pulled her into my arms and held her, and over her shoulder I met Ryder’s gaze. He nodded firmly, the slash of blood on his cheek an alarming bright red. He and Alastrina kept their hold on the queen, gripping her shoulders, her legs.
“Yvaine, Yvaine,” I murmured. “It’s all right. I’ve got you. I’m here.”
I pressed my cheek against her hair. She was so hot and small in my arms. I cupped the back of her head, chaotic magic battering me head to toe. I thought of Gemma and how agonizing this must be for her; I ached to go to her but instead held on to the queen with all my meager strength. I sang into the buzzing cloud of her hair: no words, just melody. The sweetest tune I could compose, using only the solid, whole notes, full and warm—all the pretty notes, I’d called them as a child, the ones that fill the listener’s body with blooming light.
At last, slowly, Yvaine began to relax. Her screams became whispers; her body sagged against mine. She clung to me, her face turned into my neck, and drew a long, deep breath, and was quiet.
Alastrina released her and fell back to the floor, swearing robustly, drenched with sweat. Ryder staggered a little where he crouched and then came over to me. His strong hand at my back was welcome; I wasn’t sure my shaking legs would hold up both Yvaine and me, not on their own. I wanted dearly to sit but was afraid any movement would jar Yvaine, set her screaming again.
In the sudden deafening quiet, I heard the faint sounds of a beguiler weeping and another’s wheezing breaths.
“What in the name of all the gods just happened?” Gemma whispered somewhere behind me.
“Nothing good,” Ryder answered darkly.
Before anyone could say or do anything else, a huge clamor erupted. Bells, some distant and others jarringly near, sent urgent clarion tones echoing through the cold expanse of this vast, ruined room.
Brogan rose shakily to his feet and looked wearily at the corridor that had brought us here—the corridor down which Thirsk had fled.
“If you’ll all please leave here at once and take the queen to her rooms,” he said, his voice thin and his face newly gaunt, as if keeping the ward magic intact during Yvaine’s outburst had knocked years off his life. “It seems that Councilor Thirsk has decided to implement lockdown procedures. Soon the royal guard will flood down here by the dozens, and they cannot see the queen in this state.” Then he looked right at me. “I trust you know how best to reach the queen’s chambers discreetly?”
I nodded, bristling a little to hear the suggestive tone in his voice.
“Then take her and go, and don’t be alarmed if you hear a crackling noise behind you as you depart. We must erect deflective spells to confuse the guard, and it’s complicated work.” He laughed a little, looking sadly at the sinkhole. It seemed impossible that they would be able to keep this place a secret for much longer. How many guards and advisers and palace staff already knew about it? How many kept their mouths shut only because Yvaine’s power told them to? And how many of these exhausted beguilers would soon tire of their endless work and decide to mutiny? Could they even do such a thing? Or did Yvaine have their wills too tightly bound up in her own?
These were questions I didn’t want answered. I shifted Yvaine into Ryder’s arms, noting with relief how easily he could carry her, and led everyone upstairs.