Chapter 15
For a few moments, the world moved as it often did in my nightmares of the fire, my dreams of the shining boy: flames all around me, my young legs not strong enough to carry me, the floor shaking underfoot. Each passing second was an agony of confusion. The very air was a mire, pushing against me as I clawed desperately for any door, any window, frantic for a proper breath.
Such was the feeling of watching my mother walk toward me, her arms outstretched and a peaceful smile on her face. She wore a green dress the color of the bright spring buds, plain but fine, and she was barefoot, her feet brown with mud. She carried flowers in her pockets, and on a thin cord around her neck hung a polished black pipe. Beyond her, Gemma sobbed into Mara’s sleeve while Mara looked on, silent tears streaking her face.
“Farrin, my dearest heart,” Mother said, reaching for me. “Look at you. Look at all of you. Such lovely women you’ve become.”
Her hand touched my sleeve. The sensation jerked me out of my stupor. I took three quick steps back, out of her grasp.
“What is this?” I said, my voice coming out hoarse, my throat tight with anger. “Who are you?”
My mother’s smile melted into something even kinder, even gentler, as if I were the child I’d once been, come to her for comfort after scraping my knee. “Farrin, it’s me,” she said, trying once more to reach for me. “It’s your mother.”
This time I shoved her hard. My own force surprised me; I stumbled back, nearly fell. “I have no mother,” I snapped. “She died years ago.”
Her brow furrowed slightly. A shadow fell over her face. She lowered her hand and stepped back. “Clearly I didn’t die.”
“You might as well have. In fact, it would’ve been better if you had. Instead, you left us. Or she did. What are you, some Olden creature? A figment guarding Moonhollow, sent to confuse us, lull us into inattention?”
“Moonhollow?” Her head tilted to the side, inquisitive. “What’s Moonhollow?”
I whirled around, scanning the trees that encircled the little cottage. I couldn’t look at this person anymore; her face was too familiar, pale and oval-shaped, as Mara’s was, but softer, rounder. And her eyes were the same blue as Gemma’s, and her hair was long and dark brown, also like Mara’s, and even the way she stood upon the earth was the same. She took up the same amount of space in the world as I remembered, moved with the same easy grace.
And her mouth was thin, a little pinched, her brows sharp and angry even when her face was at rest.
Pieces of my own face, staring back at me.
My bile rose. I marched toward the trees, away from the thing wearing the perfect mask of my mother’s face. “Gareth? Talan? Ryder! ”
“If you’re calling for the men in the forest,” she said from behind me, “they can’t hear you. Nothing can enter Wardwell, or hear or sense anything of Wardwell, unless I wish it.”
“Wardwell?” Gemma asked, wiping her face. “Is that what this place is called?”
“It is. My own private sanctuary.”
“Stop crying,” I snapped at Gemma. “Both of you, stop crying. Don’t you see that this is some kind of trick?”
Mara blew out a long, shaky breath. “I don’t think it’s a trick, Farrin.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t, but—” She gestured helplessly. “Look at her.”
“I’m looking, and all I see is the same face Alastrina Bask wore when she came to the midsummer ball and humiliated us.”
The creature’s eyebrows rose. “Alastrina Bask? That’s a story I’d like to hear. But I promise you, I wear no glamour. This is no trick.”
And suddenly, the bubble of anger rising inside me burst. I still wore the fighting staff; it rested against my back, held in place by a padded leather strap slung across my torso, over my coat. I reached around and tore it loose, then rushed at this false creature, this evil lie. I ignored the cries of my sisters; not even Mara was fast enough to stop me, turned slow by her own dazed joy.
I raised my staff high and swung it hard at the creature’s head. If she was a figment, some being sent to trick us, a mechanism created by Kilraith or Moonhollow or whatever terrible place this Wardwell really was—then she would defend herself. She would fight back. Her mother-skin would peel away to reveal the monster beneath.
But she did nothing. She didn’t even dodge the staff as it came flying at her. She stood there and let it come. It thwacked her hard on her temple; she let out a sharp cry and crumpled to the ground, then lay there among the flowers in a stunned heap.
Mara was on me before I could strike again; she grabbed the staff, easily overpowering me, and tossed it away. Then she seized my arms and pulled them behind me, securing me against her front while I struggled uselessly to break free.
“What’s wrong with you?” Gemma cried. She knelt at the felled creature’s side, helped her turn over, and gasped when she saw the damage I’d done.
I saw it too: her temple was split open, blood spilling onto the ground. And her jaw, I realized with a sick twist in my stomach, was no longer where it should be, as if the force of my blow had knocked it half out of her skull.
“Oh gods,” Gemma whispered, hovering over her. She tore off her own coat and pressed it to the bright red gash. “Here, lie still. Let me just hold this here, stanch the blood—”
But the creature gently shook her off. “It’s all right,” she croaked, her voice thick with pain. “Just give me a moment.”
Then she slowly sat up—not with extraordinary effort, more like stretching out one’s limbs after a long night of sleep. She touched her temple and lightly drew her hand down her body, her fingers trailing thin streaks of blood across skin and gown. A cold, clear sort of feeling washed over me, as if I’d plunged into a glacial lake faster than any human could move and then been thrown back out. She was working some kind of magic, but it was swifter than any I’d ever felt, a quicksilver ripple through the air, and it hurt my teeth, left every hair on my body standing on end. And then, as we watched, her mangled jaw cracked back into place. The wound on her temple closed. She shook her head and shoulders, as if to make sure everything was back where it belonged, then rose, looking much wearier than she had before I’d bludgeoned her.
Gemma scrambled to her feet and hurried over to join us, staring at the creature in horror. Mara’s grip on my arms loosened. Her body tensed behind me, ready to fight. “What are you?” she said, her voice newly flat and hard.
“I wasn’t lying to you,” the woman said quietly. The serene expression she’d worn upon our arrival was gone, something grave and old and tired in its place. “I am Philippa Ashbourne. I am your mother, and I…” Her voice broke a little. She shook her head, let out a single soft laugh.
I stepped forward, trembling, my hands in fists. I glanced at the fighting staff, lying abandoned in a patch of clover. It wasn’t too far; if I was quick enough, I might be able to grab it before she attacked us.
“But?” I prompted.
“But,” she agreed, “I am also more than that.” Then she lifted her gaze to meet mine, and then Mara’s, and then Gemma’s, one at a time, before coming back to look straight at me. She gave me a sad smile. A bird passed overhead, singing cheerfully, and as its tiny shadow passed over the woman’s face, her blue eyes—Gemma’s eyes—flashed a subtle but unmistakable amber.
A chill dropped over me.
“I am Kerezen,” she said, and as she spoke the words, her voice became deeper, more sonorous, as if it were echoing through a long tunnel of stone. “Goddess of the senses. Mother of all bodies, singer of all songs, maker of bone and blood.” She paused, then glanced beyond us at the trees. When she blinked, another cold ripple of the magic I’d felt before shot past us—a crackling jolt of power, so quick I wondered if I’d imagined it.
Truly, I wondered if I was imagining all of this—this place, this impossible woman standing before us. My body felt hot and cold in waves my heartbeat roared in my ears, a drum of disbelief.
“There, I’ve let them in,” she said. “The others, your men. They will arrive soon.” She looked at us with resigned exhaustion on her face, as if muted, frozen shock was not the reaction she’d been hoping for. She gestured back at the cottage. Her voice was smaller now, her eyes an ordinary blue. “Come. Let’s go sit and wait for them. As you might imagine, there is much to discuss.”
***
When Ryder, Gareth, and Talan arrived, they were stiff with snow and ice, and frantic to find us. Freyda, chirping angrily, flew like a shot arrow to Mara’s shoulder and started tugging irritably at her braid. Talan rushed straight for Gemma and drew her tenderly into his arms, his eyes squeezed shut as if in pain. He murmured something into her hair; she held his cold face in her hands and told him something in response, something sweet and low I couldn’t hear. The next moment, Gareth was upon me, his hug so fierce it knocked the wind out of me.
“Thank the gods, Farrin,” he breathed, his voice thin with relief. “We called and called after you, and our voices bounced back to us. It was like screaming at a wall of rock in the canyons back home.”
I held on to him for a moment and looked over his shoulder at Ryder. He stood a little apart from us, snow dusting his hair and beard, his eyes blazing an angry blue. Gently, I detached myself from Gareth and went to him. He didn’t reach for me, as I assumed he would. The air around him snapped as if it contained unseen fire, and the sight of him looming there, glaring at our surroundings with enraged skepticism, filled me with a strange comfort. He looked like he wanted to tear down the cottage with his bare hands, and yet I knew how gentle those hands could be.
I touched his sleeve. “Ryder…”
“You’re not hurt?” He finally looked at me. He cupped my cheek, his fingers cold and gentle. His gaze searched my face, my body, as if checking for wounds. I saw the fear in his eyes. “You disappeared into the trees. The darkness took you so suddenly.”
I shook my head, leaned closer to him. “I’m not hurt. In fact,” I added, offering him a little smile, “just before you arrived, I pummeled the shit out of her.” I jerked my head at the woman gliding about the cottage’s main room, offering hot tea that no one would touch.
Ryder’s fearsome expression softened; he took a deep breath in and out, some of the tension leaving his shoulders. He returned my smile. “Farrin of the forest light,” he said quietly. “Stronger than she looks.”
Warmth blossomed through my body. I closed my eyes and allowed myself to feel the mountainous presence of him, so near and angry—a shield and sword both at once, ready to strike, ready to protect me.
Then I stepped back and opened my eyes, feeling calmer. I lightly squeezed his fingers; our eyes locked, a silent conversation passing between us. We were safe for now; he would kill anyone who made it otherwise.
“Please, sit,” said the woman pretending to be my mother—pretending to be a god . She sat in a fine wingback chair by the dark hearth, as serene and unbothered as Yvaine holding court. She’d lit her pipe and now puffed on it for a moment, considering Ryder, Gareth, and Talan in turn.
Her gaze slid to Gemma. “You trust these men?”
Gemma, dry-eyed now, her expression stony, replied, “More than we trust you.”
The woman nodded once. “I understand that, and I understand your anger. But allow yourself to believe for a moment that what I’ve told you is true. Think about what that means.” She looked at Mara, then at me. I hated the feeling of her eyes upon me: my mother’s eyes, and yet there was a mighty weight to her presence, cold and foreign.
The sheer absurdity of what she was asking us to consider made me want to laugh. She was my mother, and she was also a god. My mind couldn’t wrap itself all the way around such a preposterous idea. And yet, as I said the words to myself—my mother, a god; a god, my mother—a slow bloom of comprehension, of acceptance, began to unfurl in my stomach. It was the feeling of a horrible truth settling inside me, making itself inexorably known.
“Now,” said the woman after a moment. She seemed satisfied by my discomfiture. “I ask you again: Do you trust these men?”
“Yes,” Gemma said at once, lifting her chin a little. Beside her, Talan’s eyes shone with love.
Mara glanced at them, then at Gareth, who sat tensely on a pretty footstool that was too small and delicate for his long, lanky body. He looked grave; though he’d not brought out his notebook, his quick green eyes darted around the room, observing every detail. The power of his mind—the mind of an Anointed sage—would allow him to remember everything. Another small comfort.
Mara’s brow furrowed as she watched him; her mouth twisted. But she relented. “Yes,” she replied.
All eyes were on me, but I could look only at Ryder, brooding watchfully not far from me, arms crossed over his chest. He was the only one who hadn’t taken a chair. Fierce and hawkish as he looked, he nevertheless gave me a small smile. My body lit up quietly in response, and I found it easier to breathe.
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Well, then.” The woman in the chair took a contemplative puff of her pipe. “Let me say this, before I begin. My daughters trust you. This is no small thing. And I know the importance of allies. It is unnatural for anyone to walk through the world in solitude, especially creatures as fragile and short-lived as humans. But if any of you men reveal what is said here today, rest assured that I will find you and avenge the breaking of my daughters’ trust. And the punishment will not be swift.”
She said it very simply, in easy conversation, and yet the threat was clear and physical; the room trembled with it, as if the very structure of the world we’d found ourselves in were absorbing her words, holding them fast until they were needed again. The air took on the brutal bite of winter.
An instant later, warmth returned. The woman relaxed into the velvet brocade of her chair, took another puff of her pipe, and set it down on a glass tray on the table beside her.
“As I just told my daughters,” she began, “I am Philippa Ashbourne, their mother. But I am also more than that. I am a human woman, yes, and I was born to human parents, and I possess the low human power of elemental magic, with a talent for botanicals, just as I always have. I am Philippa Ashbourne, once Philippa Wren. But…I am also Kerezen, goddess of the senses.” She paused, the air heavy with the weight of her words. “I understand that this may be difficult for you to believe.”
I burst out laughing, suddenly near tears. My body couldn’t decide how to respond. “That is a terrific understatement.”
“You lie,” Ryder said bluntly. “The gods are dead.”
“We were. Well, I was dead, that is. I can’t speak for the others. If they live now, if they have been reborn in human bodies, as I have, that knowledge is beyond me. I can’t hear them or feel them. The bonds that connected us in our godly lives were broken in the Unmaking and have yet to be reforged.” A flicker of sadness moved across her face. “I suppose it’s possible,” she added quietly, “that the others are still dead. It’s possible I am alone.”
“Wait, wait, wait just a moment,” said Gareth, leaning forward eagerly. He took off his glasses and rubbed his face. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it. He rubbed his face again; he dragged both hands shakily through his hair.
The woman regarded him with quiet amusement. “Even I, goddess of the senses and not of the mind, can hear the whir of your many questions, Professor Fontaine. You may ask them, if you can find your voice.”
Gareth nodded a few times, swallowing hard. “All right.” He set his glasses back on his nose. “First question, then—”
“Is that why you left us?”
Gemma’s quiet voice cut across the room, silencing us all. She sat on a midnight-blue divan beside Talan, who took her hand. She grabbed on to him, held on tight.
The woman, Philippa—I refused to call her Mother or Kerezen , even in my own mind—lowered her head in a single sad nod. “I left when it became clear to me that something was wrong. I first became conscious of the signs when you were born, my darling. The last of my daughters, remarkable right from the start, though I know that extraordinary nature has been more a burden to you than a blessing.”
I was already losing my patience; the swift blow of Gemma’s question had cut me to the quick, destroying the fragile calm Ryder’s strength had brought me.
“Speak plainly,” I snapped. “Not in riddles or pretty language. We deserve an explanation. A proper, simple attempt to convince us you’re not lying. Because right now, I’m just wishing I could hit you again.”
Philippa raised her eyebrows, her eyes sparkling a little. “Ah, but if you did, though it would hurt me, as it did the first time, my wounds would soon heal, as you saw with your own eyes.” Then her smile faded. “You’re right though. I should get on with it. It is difficult to explain such a complicated story. But I shall try.”
She took a breath, closed her eyes, then opened them. Shock startled the anger right out of me; her blue eyes were now fully changed—a lambent gold, like Freyda’s.
“I was born Philippa Wren, but when I emerged from my mother’s womb, a kernel of greater life ignited deep inside me, unknown to me. I don’t know why I chose this body, this particular woman, to bring me back into the world. I was dead for so long, and then I wasn’t.” She shrugged. “Not even we gods know the whys of our choices.”
Suddenly, my frustrated comment about Ryndar from two days before seemed eerily prescient. Gareth must have thought the same; his eyes cut to mine.
“Ryndar sent you back,” he suggested. “The Great Dominion.”
“The land beyond life and death.” Philippa nodded thoughtfully. “Perhaps. There are certainly forces more powerful than even I was at the apex of my godly glory. But whatever the reason, back I came. At first I didn’t understand what I truly was. I was simply Philippa Wren. I grew up in Gallinor’s southern heartlands, as had every generation of my family before me. In my blood ran the magic of Caiathos, god of the earth. I was an elemental, blessed with low magic. I could manipulate plants and flowers. I could coax life into dried-out husks of leaves and stems, urge them to grow faster. My power was limited but sweet. And when I was grown, I met Gideon Ashbourne, and he, mighty Anointed sentinel that he was, thought me sweet too.”
A distant smile played at her lips. “We had daughters. One a savant with a voice clear and brilliant as starlight.” She glanced at me, the affection on her face soft, terrible. I made myself glare back at her, my heart thundering painfully.
“One,” she went on, turning to Mara, who sat on a plain bench by the door, hands clasped tightly in her lap, “a sentinel like her father, with strength and agility we both knew would someday surpass his. And one”—she looked at Gemma, her expression stricken—“with abilities neither of her parents understood. Unpredictable and frightening, or so I thought at the time. The power of glamours and the power of elemental magic, warring for dominance in one little girl’s body. An impossibility. But my mind was still fully human then. I didn’t understand what was happening to either of us. Forgive me, Gemma. An impossible ask, I know. What we did to you—hiring that artificer, requesting that he alter you, stifle your power, sew you up tight—it was what we thought best at the time, but now I see it for the evil act it truly was.”
The sadness in her voice, the regret, was painful to hear, sincere enough to make my eyes burn with emotion. But I didn’t trust it, and the stricken look on Gemma’s face stoked a sudden raging fire in my chest. I stood, ready to fly at Philippa even though I had no weapons in hand.
“How dare you mention that right now,” I said quietly. “How dare you try to make us pity you—”
“It’s all right, Farrin.” Gemma’s voice cut me off, a quick slash of steel. “It’s my body she’s talking about. If I wish for her to stop, I’ll ask her to.”
Abashed, I returned to my seat. I put my hands flat on my thighs, feeling wild and helpless, my anger churning fast with nowhere to go. Without thinking, I looked to Ryder. He nodded once, his gaze steady. Breathe, Farrin , his grave expression seemed to say. I’m here. I understand.
I did breathe, holding for a beat after each inhale, each exhale. A sliver of calm returned to me. I wiped my sweaty palms on my dress.
“What I didn’t know then,” Philippa continued, “was that the things I was experiencing—the sleepless nights, the voices whispering to me of strange songs, beautiful other worlds—was my godly self, the twin life within me, stretching her limbs. Growing, taking her first breaths. My human body had been born with a god-seed inside it, resurrected after centuries of darkness. And now that seed was opening.” She looked once more to Gemma; her next words were heavy with regret. “That is why, daughter, your power is twofold—power of the senses, power of the elements. You can weave glamours. You can tear trees from the earth. When you were small, you choked on flowers. You are a creature of conflict because when I birthed you, I too was in conflict of the deepest kind, though I didn’t yet understand why.”
“And Farrin and I…” Mara said, after a moment. “Our abilities are less conflicted because when we were born, you were more woman than god.”
Philippa nodded, smiling warmly. Mara’s astute observation had pleased her. “And when Gemma was born, I was becoming more god than woman. Though it would be years before I understood that, and years more before I understood that I must leave you. To protect you. To protect myself, and everyone else too.”
I scoffed at that. My mind struggled with too many emotions, too many unthinkable questions. I couldn’t even look at Mara; that she was so calmly putting together the pieces of this woman’s wild tale felt like a betrayal of the worst kind.
“You left us to protect us?” I spat. “Parents don’t protect their children by abandoning them to grief and confusion. You insult us by saying otherwise.”
But Philippa seemed unbothered by the anger in my voice and continued her story. “Sitting beside Gemma while the artificer changed her body was the first great blow to my heart. I’d thought it was the right thing to do, and yet as my daughter screamed and twisted under his magic, I knew I’d been wrong, that Gideon had too. But it was too late, and that knowledge shattered a piece of my human heart, making room for the godly one to take its place. Then,” she said, looking at me, “there was the fire.”
I stiffened; my mouth went dry. Ryder shifted where he stood, his shoulders square with ready anger.
“My home was destroyed by our enemies,” Philippa said. “All that beauty, the safety of those halls and rooms, every sprig of greenery coaxed to life by my fingers: gone. And my daughter, my eldest, my songbird, was nearly taken by the flames. There was a whole hour, Farrin, when we thought you had died. Searching the black grounds, the acrid smell of smoke—that was the second blow to my heart. I was two-thirds a god after that, and only one-third a human woman.”
I went cold, remembering that night. So many moments of those long dark hours had been seared into my mind, shaping me—the screaming wallpaper peeling away from the walls, the shining boy leaning over me in the damp grass—and then, abruptly, even memories I’d buried resurfaced: my mother on her knees in the grass, staring at Ivyhill in grief and fury as it burned. I remembered the wicked smile she’d worn, how her whole body had blazed as if some ageless fire had been lit within it.
A pit opened in my stomach. I wanted desperately not to believe her, and yet it made a sudden, perfect sense. That night, my mother had changed; a piece of her had died, and a piece of a god had found new life. I’d seen it with my own eyes, though neither of us had truly known what was happening.
Philippa’s gaze hardened, slid over to Ryder. She looked him up and down appraisingly. “Trapping the Basks in their forest was a balm to my grief, helped soothe my anger. How foolish I was, and Gideon too. How childish. But you and your parents and your sister—Alaster, Enid, Alastrina—you were all the same. Held in thrall like worms on a hook, just as we were.”
She glanced at Talan, and a flash of confused pity crossed her face. “Poor demon,” she said quietly. “Something terrible was done to you too, was it not?”
I shivered. That cutting stare, calm and still, fixed on Talan as if Philippa could peel away the layers of his very self to discover everything he had ever known.
Shadows of memory darkened Talan’s face. “Something terrible,” he agreed, his fingers tightening around Gemma’s. “But Gemma saved me. And so did Mara, and Farrin. All of them did.”
Philippa beamed at us, a light from within making her skin glow. “Of course they did. My daughters, brave and strong, just as I always knew they would be—”
“Your story,” I snapped, interrupting her.
She blinked once and said, “Of course. Well, those were the first two blows, each unmaking me and remaking me at once. And then the third, perhaps the worst of all.” Her sad gaze moved to Mara. “My little Mara was taken from me.”
“From all of us,” I corrected. “You weren’t the only one to suffer when the Warden took her.”
“I concede that. But the blow of that grief—the third great one I had borne in only a small handful of years—it completed my Remaking, you see. I was no longer Philippa Ashbourne, not entirely. I was something else, something more. That day, watching Mara borne away in the Warden’s carriage, the tide of my self turned. I was more god than woman, more Kerezen than Philippa. Though I could not yet put the feeling into words, I knew the truth. I felt it in my marrow. My anger was volcanic. One daughter mutilated, another nearly killed, the last taken from me. If I had stayed, I would have hurt someone. I know it.” Her voice was low, thick, her amber gaze distant. “Gods are selfish beings in the way that beasts are selfish, concerned only with their own survival, the thriving of their domain, the marvel of their own strength, the safety of their young. If you’d seen me during my first life, creating and destroying with no regard for the consequences…”
Philippa shook her head wryly. I got the sickening sense that she was amused by whatever horrific memories she held.
“But humans are not this way,” she said, “and there was enough of Philippa left in me to realize that what I was feeling—this great uncoiling inside me—was dangerous. I contained powers I did not understand. I couldn’t remain at Ivyhill, or anywhere else that people lived. I had to explore myself, to learn what it meant to be a god—and to do that, I had no choice but to leave everything behind. My children, my husband, my home. And so I fled. I lived in solitude for years, and with my strange twin powers—human and god, elemental and physical—I built this place, and I named it Wardwell.”
She gazed around the cottage’s main room, a lofty, airy space with greenery draped over every rafter. “Here, I am safe from myself, and so is everyone else. This is no longer a world made for gods, and yet here I am living in it. So I exist as I must, in solitude. My daily prayer is that enough of Philippa remains alive in me that I am content to stay here, tucked securely away. The day I become fully a god, leaving my mortal shell behind…this day is one I dread, and I hope it never comes. I hope to live forever in this strange peace I’ve constructed, a god in a human shell.”
She laughed quietly and held up her left hand, marveling at it. “I wish you could experience even a moment of how it feels to live like this, a vessel of mere flesh and sinew that contains godly amounts of power. To be two selves at once. To have memories of pushing babies from my body and also to remember crafting the first ancient humans with my own hands. Scooping up earth and water, mixing it with my let blood, sifting through the Olden realm for sinaelum and using it to weave a lattice, holding all the fragile pieces together. The first humans: limbs and scalps, breakable bones and pulsing hearts.”
“Stop it,” I whispered. I was shaking, revolted. Hearing such words coming from my mother’s mouth—from my mouth, mirrored on her face—made me feel sick. Philippa looked at me, serenely curious, perhaps waiting for me to say more, but then Gareth spoke. He hadn’t heard me; he was bursting with the same question that was turning over and over in my own mind. I could see it on his face, in his dazed, ashen expression.
“Does this mean,” he began, very quietly, “that Farrin and Gemma and Mara are all…”
In the end, he couldn’t say it. I could hardly think it; the very word felt monstrous.
“Gods themselves?” Philippa finished, with a quirk of her eyebrow. “No. There’s too much of their father in them for that. But it is not only Gideon Ashbourne’s blood pumping through their bodies. It is mine too. Philippa’s, and Kerezen’s.” She retrieved her pipe from its glass tray, puffed on it, blew out a curl of white smoke. As if all of this were nothing, mere frothy gossip after a dinner among friends. “They are both mortal and not,” she said simply around her pipe. “Humans and gods. Demigods is the word.” She tilted her head, considering Gemma with fond amusement. I hated the expression, wanted to wipe it from her face with another jaw-cracking blow.
“Fae blood indeed,” she murmured. “Not a bad guess, Gemmy, but not the correct one.”
The use of Gemma’s nickname was the final blow. I couldn’t stand to be in that room for another second. I surged up from my seat and stormed toward the door. Mara moved to stop me, then relented. I burst outside into the world of green spring beyond the cottage. I didn’t stop to think where I was going, nor to consider if the magic boundaries of Wardwell would expand to accommodate me. I simply ran, tearing across the clover-soft lawn, through the vegetable garden beside the cottage, across the wildflower-strewn fields beyond. I ran as fast as my shaking body could take me. Tall grasses whipped past me; lazy bumblebees bumped drunkenly into my legs. The air smelled fresh and green, every petal and blade of grass sugared with nectar. I smelled honeysuckle, roses, jasmine. The sweetness made me want to cry; I let out an angry, gasping sob, ducked under a low branch, and hurried into the woods.
The shade of the pines towering overhead was a relief. The air was cool, less cloying. My side cramped; my lungs and legs burned. And still I ran, until suddenly I couldn’t. I stumbled down a slight rocky slope, tripped over a jutting stone, let out a sharp cry of surprise.
But I didn’t hit the ground. Ryder caught me before I could. He was breathing hard, though not as hard as I was. He held my arms, steadying me. He’d run after me into these strange spring woods.
I glared up at him, sweaty and on edge, my heart still pounding. I’d never seen anything as beautiful as his frowning, bearded face.
“You caught me,” I said, panting hard. I shoved at him a little, and he let me go. But I didn’t want him to let me go. I went back to him, fisted my hands in his coat. “How did you catch me? How are you not even sweating ?”
He raised one dark eyebrow. “Farrin, love, you’re not that fast a runner.”
And that made me laugh, though tears were not far behind. I relished the feeling of him lovingly tucking a strand of damp hair behind my ear, and then the relief of him being there—the sensation of his warm body under my hands, holding me up—pushed me over the edge of my anger into pure overwhelmed release. I hid my face in his chest and cried, and he asked of me no explanation, no apology. He simply held me, one hand cupping the back of my head, his cheek pressed against my crown. In his deep, gruff voice he told me again and again, “I’m here, Farrin. I’m here with you. I’m not going anywhere. Feel me, love.”
He pressed my palm flat against his chest, right over his pounding heart. “I’m right here.” He kissed my hair, rocked me slowly against him. “Farrin, Farrin.” His voice was like a strange, rough song, a lullaby under the trees. “Farrin in the forest light,” he said, a tender smile in his voice.
I clung to him as the pines whispered around us. A cool breeze kissed my skin, and I pulled back at last to look up at him, a hundred clumsy words of love on my tongue—but Ryder wasn’t looking down at me, as I’d imagined. He was staring past me, into the woods. His whole body tensed against mine.
“Stay very calm,” he said quietly, “and don’t move.”
But I’d already turned to see what he was seeing, fear bolting through me like lightning, and what I saw staring back at me—at us—was a blazing, familiar figure peeking out from behind a tree. White-gold flames, sparking wings, two eyes of cold blue fire.
My breath caught. The firebird.