Chapter 12
They did not let us into the Citadel.
It was madness there. Hundreds of people were gathered at the northern gates, which stood nearest the university. They shouted for the queen, for the Senate. They grabbed the iron gates and shook them, waved flaming torches, threw rotten food. Those who attempted to scale the great perimeter wall were turned back with almost comical politeness by the guards who stood atop it. And everywhere we looked, the protesters held up portraits of people I assumed were the abducted—children and adults, young and old. Many faces repeated themselves, and some had been hung on the wall above shrines of coins and candles and flowers.
Heart in my throat, I quickly looked over the portraits. There was young Dornen Lerrick, and not far from him were two handsome men—one with pale skin, one with brown—wearing fine robes and beautiful smiles. I wondered if they were Lords Wynn and Moris from the village of Devenmere.
And then, after a few more portraits—a gangly young man, an elderly woman, a grinning, ruddy-cheeked farmer—was Alastrina.
Whoever had commissioned this portrait clearly viewed Alastrina with reverent awe. The portrait had been done in charcoal, all black except for her pale skin and the blue pinpricks of her eyes. Her expression was mischievous, haughty, and her gown and hair were bursting with black feathers.
I looked for Ryder, part of me hoping he hadn’t seen it, but of course he had. He stood very near me, staring hard at the portrait with an unreadable expression.
Suddenly all my wild speculation about the shining boy seemed foolish, even outrageous. Ryder was not some phantom of my childhood; he was a man who had lost his sister, a man trying very hard not to let his grief consume him.
I reached for him. “Ryder…”
He grabbed my hand, squeezed it, then released me. “Not right now. This way.”
He pushed his way gently through the crowd, clearing a path for us, but when we reached the gates, I felt the pointlessness of what I would say even before I opened my mouth. On the other side stood ten stone-faced guards. One of them recognized me—I saw it flash across her face—but when she whispered something to one of the other guards, the response was a firm shake of his head. The first guard glanced at me with apology, then fell back into line, her expression returning to its previous watchful blandness.
I tried anyway. “Excuse me,” I said, shouting to be heard over the clamor, “I’m Farrin Ashbourne, a friend of the queen’s. I’d like to see her, please. She’s always happy to—”
“We know who are you, Lady Farrin,” said the most senior guard, a broad man with dark brown skin and a red sash across his uniform. “But our orders are to let no one through these gates. Not even you.”
The specificity of the orders startled me. “You were told to look out for me?”
The guard nodded. “By Lord Thirsk himself. His instructions were clear.”
Thirsk, Yvaine’s principal adviser. My shock left me speechless.
“However,” the guard added, not unkindly, “I’m certain that if you sent the queen a letter, she would be glad to hear from you.”
“Yes, I’m sure she would,” I said drily before turning away. If Thirsk didn’t want me to see Yvaine, I doubted he would allow my letters through either.
We regrouped at the edge of the protesters, not far from Alastrina’s portrait and shrine.
“What should we do now?” Ryder asked. He glanced only once at Alastrina’s portrait, his shoulders tense, his hands in fists.
“The question is,” I said, “has Thirsk decided on his own to keep us out of the Citadel, or has the queen requested it?”
“It is absolutely not Yvaine’s doing,” Gemma said. “It can’t be. She loves you, Farrin, and considering everything she said last time we were here about how all of us are important to whatever’s happening—”
Suddenly Talan spoke. He wore his glamour again—the mild-mannered, bespectacled man of fifty—and it was as strange as ever to hear his smooth, familiar voice coming out of a stranger’s face.
“I can get you inside,” he said quietly, “if you can take me somewhere less crowded, where there might be fewer guards.”
I met Ryder’s eyes at once. “The gardens near my music room,” I said. He nodded in agreement. “There’s ward magic there,” I went on, “but it’s designed to admit me, at least. Unless it’s been altered, though hopefully Thirsk’s influence doesn’t reach that far. And with everyone so distracted by the sinkhole, the protests, Yvaine’s illness—”
“Maybe the ward magic is unstable enough right now to admit me too,” Talan finished, nodding. None of us remarked on the darker side of that hope: if the ward magic was unstable, that would leave the Citadel even more alarmingly vulnerable.
Gemma grabbed Talan’s arm. “Wait a moment. What if Kilraith was the one to make the sinkhole? What if its existence gives him a sort of foothold here? You’ve evaded him thus far, but could using your power so close to a magical aberration of that size draw him to you?”
Talan folded her hand into his and gave her a small smile. “Not if I’m careful and quick.” He glanced at me. “Farrin?”
I swallowed my doubts, trying not to meet Gemma’s worried gaze. “This way.”
***
The western gates were far less crowded. Through them, I could see the sprawling gardens that abutted my music room. They were not so grand as those outside the Pearl of the Sea Ballroom; they were smaller, humbler, with far fewer sparkling fountains and elaborately pruned topiaries.
A small crowd of protesters had gathered at the gates, but though they shouted the same complaints as the others—where was the queen, what was she doing to protect us and recover those who were lost?—the mood here felt much less volatile. Ryder and Gemma lingered at the crowd’s edge as Talan and I approached the gates. I held my breath, fluttery with apprehension. Talan was one of the greater demons—a descendant of both the goddess Zelphenia and the god Jaetris—and therefore possessed tremendous powers of both the mind and deception. He could disguise himself, sense others’ moods and alter them, and convince them that the truth was a lie, that a lie was the truth. I hoped his power wouldn’t attract Kilraith to him like a fly to honey.
“Good afternoon,” Talan said cheerfully to the five guards keeping watch beyond the gates, his appearance that of the innocuous bespectacled man. “I wonder if you could help me with something?”
Gemma had told me what to expect when Talan used his power, but I still wasn’t quite prepared for the sensation of it. The air warmed all at once, as I’d suddenly stepped out of gloomy shade into a bright pool of sunlight. His magic rippled gently through the crowd, subduing both them and the guards, whose stern expressions softened into something more solicitous.
“Of course, sir,” said one of the guards, a strapping woman with slightly lined brown skin and cropped white hair. “How can we be of help?”
I hardly listened as Talan spoke. I already knew the lie he would feed the guards: that he hoped to gain access to the royal gardens because they housed a rare type of azalea, which he wanted to study for a book he was writing on botanical oddities of Gallinor. I, his assistant, was there to help him take notes. I kept my head down, too nervous to focus very hard on what he was saying; if there was even a slight flaw in his magic, a single flicker of doubt, one of these guards would surely recognize me.
But soon the guards were grandly ushering us inside with smiling faces and dazed eyes, and the crowd we left behind at the gates waved after us as if bidding beloved family members farewell. I didn’t dare turn back to look at Ryder and Gemma. I followed Talan into the gardens, flinching when the gates clicked shut behind us.
A few steps into the gardens, everything grew quiet, the world outside the great stone wall muffled by the profusion of flowering bushes on all sides. Silver birch branches met like arched rafters over our heads. Talan kept up a steady stream of conversation with the guards, complimenting everything from their uniforms to the shine of their swords to the aesthetically pleasing blend of yellow tones in the autumn-touched gardens. I stuck to his side as much as I could without looking ridiculous; I had it in my head that doing this would somehow protect me from being found out, even though I knew quite well that Talan was powerful, talented, and quite practiced at subterfuge. He’d been traveling in disguise for weeks and weeks now, after all, and done it for years before that at Kilraith’s behest; this was hardly his first time using deceptive magic.
But every time we encountered a new guard, in that sliver of time between the guard seeing us and Talan soothing their confusion with his lies, I went cold with fear. Would one of the guards we met be Kilraith in disguise? Would Talan not act quickly enough, revealing my identity to these soldiers and ruining the whole charade?
My tension must have been obvious; at one point, Talan put a steadying hand on my back. Distantly, I heard him say, “Ah! There it is.”
In my panic, I didn’t at first register what that really meant. Talan crouched beside me, inspecting a bright red bloom that might have been an azalea or might not have. “There it is,” he said again, loudly. “How odd for a spring bloom to still be alive here in the early days of fall. Tell me, are any of you familiar with the practices of the elemental groundskeepers in charge of tending these gardens? I have many questions for them.”
Talan gently set his heel down on my foot, and the slight pain helped me snap back to myself. There it is. Those were the words I was meant to be listening for. I looked around wildly, and my heart leaped as I saw through the nearby trees the stone steps that led to my music room’s private veranda. Above it rose the great circular base of the queen’s tower. We were close enough now for me to run.
I glanced down at Talan, who looked absurd there on the ground, spectacles at the end of his glamoured nose and a flower cradled in his palm. I noticed a bead of sweat on his temple and felt a thrill of fear; a hundred terrible scenarios raced through my mind. He was tired; his magic would soon give way; the ward magic latticed throughout the gardens was killing him.
But Talan gave me a slight firm nod, and a swell of warmth rippled through the air—a fresh surge of his magic, I assumed, reinforcing his hold on the guards.
I turned and fled, racing along the garden paths and up the steps. Layers upon layers of ward magic gave way at my approach, as if I were pushing through invisible fleshy membranes meant to protect something precious from invaders. But I was no invader; this magic knew me to be as much a part of the queen’s tower as the stones in its walls.
I burst into my music room, feeling a thrill of equal parts triumph and unease to find the doors unlocked. Once inside, I locked them behind me and leaned against the wall to catch my breath. My mind spun wildly; I needed to think. There would be guards stationed all through the tower, especially if Thirsk and the other advisers were determined to keep Yvaine as sequestered as possible. But years ago, Yvaine had installed a secret bellpull in this music room, hidden behind stacks of sheet music and spelled by a beguiler to reveal itself only to me. The bell on its other end sat in a tiny silver locket that Yvaine always wore hidden underneath her clothes. Wherever she was in the palace, she would hear its chime.
I hurried to the shelves where it was hidden, found the tasseled velvet cord, hesitated. If I rang this, Yvaine would know I was here and come at once. But if they were watching her as closely as I feared they were, and if she was too ill to defy them—
“Farrin?” asked a small, hopeful voice.
I turned and saw a flurry of white hair and peach chiffon just before Yvaine barreled into me. She threw her arms around my neck and buried her face in my hair, and I held her to me for a long moment, feeling shaky with relief. Tears pricked my eyes as I tried to remember the last time we’d been alone and together and well, or well enough. The night of the ball, the night she’d gone mad by the sinkhole, I’d helped her sleep afterward, but there had been guards everywhere, watching us like hawks, and she’d hardly realized where she was, let alone that I was there beside her.
This felt different. This felt dear and familiar.
I pulled back from her a little, hating that I had to, hating all the questions and demands I would soon throw at her. She must have sensed my discomfiture; she looked at me hard and then dropped back down to the floor, light as a feather.
“You’re afraid of something,” she said. “Come sit. Tell me.”
I let her lead me to the sleeping couch tucked into the corner of the room. A stack of books sat beside it, and several half-full cups of cold tea, and a plate or two scattered with crumbs. There were slippers on the rug, quilts draped over the cushions.
“Have you been sleeping here?” I asked.
She sat delicately on the edge of the sofa, looking sheepish. “I hope you don’t mind. It’s the only place I can find some peace. Thirsk and I worked out a bargain. I can have my privacy here as long as I don’t leave. And I haven’t, and I won’t. Being here, I can almost pretend you’re with me.” She let out a sad little laugh. “I suppose I should have worked harder to make friends here in the Citadel, friends other than you. But the truth is, most people don’t treat me like a person. They treat me like a queen. And that isn’t a trustworthy basis for friendship.”
I took a breath and sat beside her, choosing my words carefully. Her own felt ruthless, cutting me to pieces before I could even begin. “I have much to talk to you about,” I said quietly, “but first, I have to ask you a private question, one that will seem silly on the surface. But it’s important to me, and I hope you’ll take it seriously.”
Yvaine’s expression brightened. “I’m intrigued. And I always take you seriously. Ask me.”
I forced myself to look straight at her. “You know about the shining boy.”
She nodded gravely. “Of course.”
I felt a rush of gratitude. She had always accepted my story about him, had not even once tried to dissuade me from holding on to his memory so fiercely.
I said the rest in a rush, stumbling over my words. “Lately I’ve been spending more time with Ryder Bask, and I wonder…I hate to ask it of you, but I know you have the abilities to read things, to search the world for people, to probe past and future, even if only vaguely. And I never— never —want to take advantage of our friendship. But, gods, Yvaine, I know it’s absurd, but I’ve had these strange feelings, these…these twinges of something I can’t name, and I’m so curious—”
“You’re wondering if Ryder was your shining boy,” she finished gently.
I nodded, burning with embarrassment. Hearing Yvaine say the words out loud made the question seem all the more ludicrous.
“Darling Farrin.” She placed one warm hand on mine and leaned forward to meet my eyes. “Don’t you think I would have told you, long ago, if that were the case? I would’ve easily sensed such a thing, and revealing that truth could have prevented years of strife between your families, perhaps even served as the first step toward peace.”
I’d never felt such relief in my life. Yvaine’s expression was open, honest, clear; her voice brimmed with compassion. She wouldn’t lie to me, not about this.
I closed my eyes, laughed a little. “Thank you. I wouldn’t have been able to stop thinking about it if you hadn’t…” I bit back the awkward tumble of words; I’d already taken too much of her time for this small, selfish thing. I resolved to put the whole matter out of my mind, at once, and keep it there.
“A very odd weight has been lifted,” I said simply. “Thank you.”
“You are most welcome,” she said, and then, more quietly, she added, “But I think this isn’t the only reason you’ve come to see me.”
I shook my head, the euphoric rush of relief fading fast. “No, it isn’t. Far from it.”
Yvaine looked suddenly very old. Outside, the clouds shifted, and harsh afternoon sunlight fell upon her face. “And none of what you have to say is very good, is it? You feel as gray as I do.”
“I won’t lie to you—no, none of it is very good. Some of it, maybe all of it, you won’t like to hear. But hear it you must.”
Yvaine went very still. I saw the last traces of happiness drain from her expression and wished passionately that I could forget all of this, that I could simply sit with her and talk about unimportant things: silly palace gossip, or Gareth’s latest romantic catastrophes, or what it felt like to be kissed by Ryder Bask. I could accompany her shockingly off-key singing on the piano, or we could go to the kitchens and raid the pantry, or she could teach me—with limited success, if past attempts were any indication—whatever dance was the latest fashion at court.
But instead, Yvaine nodded and raised her gaze to mine, cool and regal. “Speak, then.”
I tried not to be hurt by that voice and instead be glad for it. It would make things easier. We were not friends in that moment, with years of love between us; we were a queen and her subject.
“First,” I said, “and I must ask you to be completely honest with me, as we’ve always been with each other. Are you ill?”
Her answer was unflinching. “Yes.”
I swallowed hard. It wasn’t a surprise, and yet I still had to fight back tears. “What is the extent of it?”
“I don’t know. No one knows. I…” Yvaine’s brow furrowed slightly. “Sometimes my powers manifest in surprising ways, without my permission. It’s as if for all these years, I’ve been a tightly capped bottle, and now the glass of my body is starting to crack. Things are getting out that shouldn’t. There are whole days that I can’t remember. I’ll wake up in the strangest places, my advisers frantic because for two, three days they couldn’t find me anywhere. And I can’t tell them where I’ve been.”
Her voice grew quieter as she spoke. When she finished, she looked up at me, imploring, her white hands tightly clasped in her lap.
I tried not to let the absolute horror I felt show on my face. This was worse than I’d expected. “All right. Thank you for telling me that. And…” I paused, gripping the sofa cushions hard to keep myself from giving her false reassurances—that everything would be fine, that there was no reason to worry. “And your healers, they can’t name the affliction?”
Yvaine smiled a little. “They have nothing to compare it to. I’m the only one of my kind, after all.”
“But memory loss, unpredictable powers, involuntary use of power—those have to be common symptoms of other illnesses.”
“Of course they are.” She started counting off points on her fingers. “The degradation of magic due to advanced age. The degradation of the mind due to advanced age. Loss of magic entirely, again, due to advanced age.”
I wasn’t sure how to phrase my next remark without sounding indelicate. “And I suppose you are of advanced age…”
She regarded me with fond amusement. “I both am and am not. I’m ageless, Farrin. I’m a pet of the gods. Hundreds of thousands have lived and died during my lifetime, and hundreds of thousands more will live and die, and still I will be here. Lifetime is, for me, an absurd unit of measurement. You know this.”
“I know, but…is it possible that…” I shook my head, miserable in every way. “Something’s wrong with the Middlemist. And with the Crescent of Storms and the Knotwood. And something’s wrong with you too. Are these things connected? Is…” And this was a fear none of us—not even Mara in all her grim letters—had yet voiced. “Is our world in danger, Yvaine? Is the end of your life coming? And will that mean the end of Edyn?”
Yvaine’s eyelids fluttered. She drew in a sharp breath, hesitated. “There’s…there’s something wrong with the Middlemist?”
I stared at her, my shock too overwhelming to mask. Terrible fear, colder and greater than any I’d ever known, dropped over me like winter come all at once. She didn’t know. No one had told her, none of her advisers—but worse than that, she couldn’t sense the truth on her own. She, Yvaine Ballentere, high queen of Edyn, chosen by the gods thousands of years ago to keep us safe.
Suddenly I felt childishly terrified, and hugged myself, and looked down at my feet. The weight of this moment crashed down onto my shoulders with thunderous force, but I wouldn’t cry; I refused to cry.
Yvaine touched my hand. I looked up through a glittering sheen of barely restrained tears.
“Tell me everything you know,” she said, with the sort of calm patience that reminded me of my mother and hit me with the force of a blow from Ryder’s staff. My mother, when our home was complete, content. My mother, before everything had changed and she had left us to endure it alone.
I dashed a hand across my face and obeyed. I told her everything: what Talan had learned in his travels, what Mara had said in her letters—the Mistfires, the sickness spreading through the Mistlands—and everything the Warden had told us too. When I spoke of Devenmere, and of the binding magic the Warden had been using to keep the state of the Mist a secret, Yvaine’s expression hardened.
“Llyleth,” she muttered angrily, and I realized that this must be the Warden’s true name. “That use of power is well beyond her authority. I will send for her at once and speak to her.”
“It’s more complicated than that,” I said. “This binding magic—she didn’t work it on Gemma or Gareth or me, and I believe she’s released Ryder from it as well, though I don’t know how such a complex working is possible—on such a large scale, yet with such specificity…”
I trailed off, hoping Yvaine would jump in and explain it all to me. But she simply looked at me, waiting.
“What I’m trying to say is this,” I went on quickly. “She allowed us to come here, with our knowledge of the truth intact, so that we could make a request of you.” Not a request , the Warden had said. A demand. But I couldn’t say that word, couldn’t even look Yvaine in the eye.
“She sent you because she thinks I’ll be more receptive to her requests if they come from you,” Yvaine said gently.
I nodded, staring at my skirts. “She wants you to propose to the Senate a national draft to bolster the Order of the Rose’s numbers. And I suppose the other Wardens probably want that as well, on their continents and for their Orders, but I can’t be certain. I know only what our Warden requested.”
Yvaine was very quiet. “What else did she say?”
I heard the slight dangerous note in her voice and hated that I had caused it, even indirectly. “She told us that if steps toward such a draft haven’t been made by the end of next week, she’ll confiscate the Three-Eyed Crown from us.”
“The Three-Eyed Crown. The cursed object that once lived in Talan d’Astier?”
“Yes. Gareth has it at the university—”
“Don’t tell me anything more about it,” Yvaine said sharply. She rose and took a few quick steps away. Her back to me, she stared out of the windows at the gardens beyond. “I can’t know where it is or what you’re doing with it. I don’t think it’s safe for me to know.”
“Because of your illness?”
She nodded. “Because I don’t know where I go during these lost days, what I do, and if such an object were to come into my possession, I’m not sure what I would do with it. I can’t be certain I wouldn’t do something terrible, though I can’t imagine what.” She touched her temple, her fingers shaking. “It’s not this me, here before you, that I’m afraid of. I’m afraid of the me who disappears. The me who started screaming at the sinkhole. I don’t even remember what I said that night.”
She turned to look at me, her eyes shining, and gave me a sad, soft smile. “I remember your singing, though. I remember you keeping watch over me afterward. I’m grateful for it. I don’t think I ever told you that.”
I didn’t want to say anything more, but I had to, and I hoped she could see how unhappy it made me. “I won’t tell you everything, then, about what we’re doing, but…Yvaine, I have to tell you some things. We’re fumbling in the dark, trying to determine what’s behind all of this, how everything’s connected, how it can be mended or undone, but—”
“You’ll have to do so without me,” Yvaine said firmly. “At least until I’m well. For now, I must devote myself to keeping this city intact. A bastion of safety, a sanctuary the people of Edyn can turn to for protection.”
“But that sanctuary has already been violated, has it not? The sinkhole, the abductions—”
“And don’t you think those catastrophes would have been far worse, were it not for me?” Yvaine blew out a sharp breath. “Without my powers reinforcing their efforts, the royal beguilers’ spellwork would have failed weeks ago, and the sinkhole would have engulfed the palace by now. Without my presence here in the capital and my power radiating outward from the Citadel, more people could have been abducted. Even sick as I am, I know that. Whatever’s happening, whatever dark forces are behind these events, they are being tempered by my very existence. And I cannot be tempted away from staying safe and alive by Three-Eyed Crowns or Mistfires or whatever brave, wild things you’re doing to try and find the villains at work in the shadows.”
Yvaine came back to me then, stood before me with her arms crossed protectively over her chest. She glared at the carpet, at her bare white feet. “If I could,” she muttered, “I would do all of this for you. I would take away the responsibility, the mystery, and bear it on my own, and I would be happy to do it, if it meant you could stay at Ivyhill with your family and your piano and be safe and content. I despise having to ask such things of the one true friend I have.”
I stared at her—her bright eyes, her earnest, desperate expression. I’d never seen her so openly frightened, so obviously frustrated by her own limitations. I hadn’t ever known her to acknowledge that she had limitations. I’d always assumed she had none. I began to understand—really, truly understand—what her words the night of the ball had meant. I need all of you to be my eyes, ears, and hands out there in the world.
She must have seen the comprehension dawn on my face. She nodded grimly and sat beside me, took my hands in hers. “Yes, you understand now, as I think you did not before. Maybe you thought I was simply tired that night, or exaggerating the importance of the roles you and your sisters will have to play in what’s to come—and these friends you’ve made, these lovers.”
Something strange flickered across her face too quickly for me to read it. I looked away, embarrassed. Lovers , she’d said. More than one. There was Talan, and…who else? I thought of Ryder kissing me in the stable, his arms around me, the heat of him under me, my own heat rising fast, my whole body blooming to life.
But surely Yvaine didn’t know about that. She was powerful, but she wasn’t all-seeing.
“There’s…” I began, my voice coming out in a whisper. I was too overwhelmed to think clearly, and suddenly Talan’s report from the far north came to mind. “Talan found a forest—”
“ No , Farrin,” Yvaine interrupted. “I can’t know anything you’re doing, any leads you’re following. It’s too dangerous—for you, for me, for everyone. You are my knights, and you must ride out across the world in my service. A service I wish I didn’t have to ask of you.”
She watched my face intently for a moment, her eyes glittering and sad, and then she rose and went to the windows once more, the gauzy peach skirts of her gown drifting after her.
“I will speak to my advisers and my Senate council about the draft,” she said at last. “And I will write to Llyleth, apprise her of my actions. The Three-Eyed Crown will stay with you. I promise you that.”
And I didn’t doubt that; her voice was quiet but resolute. I felt the steel of her from where I sat, the fierce, ancient forces burning inside her tiny body.
I relaxed the slightest bit. At least that one task had been accomplished. I braced myself for the next one.
“There’s another thing,” I said slowly, “and I’m sorry for asking it of you, for asking any of this—”
“Professor Fontaine wants access to the royal archives.” She turned to smile wearily at me. “I can read your face very well, and Gareth is a particularly insistent specimen of academic. I’m sorry, but I cannot allow you or anyone into the archives right now. In fact, even my royal librarians have been banished from them. I can’t trust anyone with the knowledge stored there, not even myself. I’ve stationed a team of beguilers at every access point, whose sole duty is to maintain a constantly rotating schedule of spellwork, ensuring that even I won’t be able to enter. So far, they’ve managed well enough. Though there are those days I can’t remember…”
Suddenly her gaze went distant, and a stricken expression fell over her face. She bit her lip, shook her head slightly. And something about the look of her just then—small and ragged, frightened, miles away—left me terribly afraid. I curled my fingers around the edge of the sofa cushions, steeling myself. Ryder’s face flashed before my eyes; I wished desperately that he were with me.
“Yvaine?” I managed to say.
“I’m fine,” she said, her voice thin. She shook herself a little. “I’m here.”
But she sounded unconvinced, and she wavered there for a moment before her eyes glazed over once more. Before me, she changed, her body shifting subtly from familiar to unfamiliar, from very human exhaustion to the quiet, burning vitality of something inhuman and indefinable, something else .
“Moon by day,” she said, her voice soft as falling snow, “fire by night. Come and dance. Don’t try to fight. The beauty of shadows, the garish sunlight. Spin for the watchers, their revels so bright.”
A chill tore down my spine. Dancing. Moonlight. Recognition tugged at me. The word I keep hearing is Moonhollow , Talan had told us. A story heard across the continent—a legend, a new piece of lore. Scraps of rumor picked up here and there, coming together to make a strange, frightening whole: a palace surrounded by gardens. No sunlight, only that of the moon. Dancing and never growing tired.
“What?” I whispered to Yvaine. I went to her, and though I was afraid to touch her, I held on to her shoulders, desperate for her to start making sense. “Look at me. At me , Yvaine, at me . Say that again.”
Slowly she dragged her gaze up to mine, though it was clear her true attention lay elsewhere. “Moon by day,” she repeated, smiling a little, “fire by night. Come and dance. Don’t try to fight. The beauty of shadows, the garish sunlight. Spin for the watchers, their revels so bright.” Then her soft, dreamy expression shifted into sadness. “No,” she said, “not yet.”
“Not yet? Not yet what?”
Yvaine slumped under my touch. “They’ve come for you,” she said, rubbing her eyes. Irritation bristled in her voice. “They’ve found us out.”
The next moment, the doors to my music room burst open, admitting Lord Thirsk and three other scowling advisers—Lord Jarvis, Lady Bethan, and Lady Goff, all of whom I knew. Behind them hurried four armor-clad guards.
“Your Majesty,” said Thirsk sharply, “though you’ve indeed honored the terms of our agreement by staying in these rooms, I think you’ll agree that entertaining guests, even Lady Farrin, goes decidedly against the many reasons for your confinement.”
But Yvaine didn’t respond. She stared blankly at Thirsk, and then her gaze hardened, and a mean little smile flickered across her features before she turned away from us to face the windows. Ignoring us, she began to dance—a slow, measured swaying, her hands drifting eloquently through the air to music none of us could hear.
Thirsk dragged a hand over his white beard and jerked his head at the doors.
I stood firm in the center of the room. “I’m not leaving her.”
“You will, Lady Farrin,” Thirsk snapped, “whether by your own power or that of my guards. Don’t make me drag you out of here.” He gestured sharply at the queen. “She was well enough today before you arrived. And now look at her. Do you want to upset her even more?”
Gutted, speechless, I couldn’t find the strength to argue with him. Whether he was lying or not, the harsh truth was that I didn’t know how to help Yvaine out of whatever strange mood she’d fallen into, and perhaps her advisers did. I allowed myself to be ushered out by Thirsk and the guards while the other advisers carefully approached Yvaine. The last thing I heard before the doors closed behind me was Lady Bethan saying, “Your Majesty, perhaps you’d enjoy finishing the rest of this pie? Or shall I send to the kitchens for something fresh?”
Once outside in the corridor, two of the guards resumed their stations at the doors, and the other two, implacable, turned to glare at me. I hardly had time to think of what to say—an apology, a cool defense—before Thirsk rounded on me, his expression more furious than I’d ever seen it.
“You foolish girl,” he said quietly. “We’ve been lenient with you for years. Your family’s status, the queen’s fondness of you…gods know she has very few joys in this life, and I’ve been happy to protect this one for her. But are you truly this dense? You saw what happened to her the last time you were here, and now the city’s in an uproar and the entire continent is terrified, grieving. Did you really think this was the time to sneak into the castle like some kind of rebellious schoolgirl? I assume the perimeter guards told you the queen wasn’t receiving visitors, and yet you considered yourself above such restrictions. The arrogance, Lady Farrin. Did it never occur to you that those safeguards were in place for the sake of the queen’s health and that you should respect them?”
“Thirsk…” His reprimand—which, in my misery, I felt I fully deserved—had granted me time to get a good look at the man, and when I did, shock whacked me right in the gut. “What’s happened? Are you all right?”
He looked as though he’d aged ten years since I’d last seen him only a few weeks prior—deep lines in his face, his brown skin turned ashen and haggard. His eyes were bloodshot, and his normally immaculate clothes—gold-hemmed black robes, tasseled velvet hat—were rumpled and askew. He blinked at me in astonishment for a moment, and then something in his countenance gave way. I got the horrible feeling I was the first person in quite some time to ask about his well-being.
“My apologies, Lady Farrin,” he said, his voice suddenly as dull and tired as his appearance. “You are neither a girl nor a fool. But nevertheless, I’m afraid I’ll have to escort you from the Citadel grounds and request that you do not return until Her Majesty’s health has improved. I will send you a letter myself when that happens, at which point you are welcome to resume your customary visits. And tell your friends,” he added, his expression hardening a little, “that whatever clever magic they possess, they too must honor this request. No, this order . An order from the head of the Royal Conclave. Do not make me ask the Senate for an official petition of exile. I don’t want to do that. It would upset the queen, and I bear you no ill will. In fact, I’m grateful that you’ve long been a friend to her. But I will go to the Senate if I must. Do you understand me?”
“I’m not dangerous to her,” I protested, though even as I said it, I realized I couldn’t know that for certain. The thought made it difficult to breathe.
“I don’t know what’s dangerous and what isn’t,” he said, “but I do know—as I’m sure you do too, now—that our queen is ill. I know that she needs rest and peace and that often you and your family bring the opposite of that. Late nights and neglect of her duties. Stress and gossip, assassination attempts and public brawls. And I also know that if she gets worse…” He paused, shook his head. His mouth turned down at the corners. “Then gods help us all.”
He nodded at the two waiting guards, then turned on his heel and left us, but before he disappeared around the corner, I scrabbled for courage, and for my voice, and found a scrap of each.
“Wait,” I called after him. “I have some information you and the other advisers might find useful—”
“Good day , Lady Farrin!” he shouted back over his shoulder, his tone brooking no argument. Abashed, utterly defeated, I let the guards escort me away.