Chapter 16
Ryder slowly reached for his crossbow, which he still wore across his back on a leather strap slung around his torso. I shouldn’t have been surprised that he still carried his weapons, though he’d long ago discarded his winter coat and now wore his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows. He took a thick black arrow from the quiver at his hip, nocked it. All the while his eyes remained trained on the firebird. Its flames shimmered and snapped as it crouched there behind the tree, apparently frozen in place—with fascination? With fear?
Or with the focused attention of a predator on the hunt?
I tried to swallow, but my mouth had gone dry. I made myself speak. “Who are you? What do you want?”
“Farrin, don’t,” Ryder muttered under his breath.
The firebird’s form shifted every time I blinked: a woman, tall and alien, bright as snow gleaming under the sun. Then, a bird, or something like a bird—beaked and winged, with long, slender arms ending in talons of crackling fire. Whether it couldn’t maintain a single form or simply chose not to, the effect was mesmerizing. My eyes glazed over, like I’d been staring too long at a hearth fire. I started moving toward the creature without meaning to.
Ryder snapped at me—“Farrin, don’t ”—but he didn’t dare lower his crossbow and arrow, so I kept going, even as he roared at me with increasing panic. Only a few steps more and I would reach the firebird’s tree. I put out my hand, palm up. I crouched a little, as if approaching Osmund when he’d gotten spooked by something.
The firebird cocked its head, considering me. A spray of scarlet plumage burst from its head, shedding embers that scattered across the mossy ground. It let out a soft cry—the jangle of gold coins, the trickle of water down smooth black rocks—and reached for me with a long arm of fire. Somehow, even with the memory of that long-ago fire etched into my every bone, I was not afraid of the creature’s flames. Soon those flames became feathers, a thousand shades of gold and orange, scarlet and violet, and each one gleamed as if silkspun. I reached for its brilliant talons, every curved tip glowing like a tiny blazing sun. Heat gathered under my hand; a distant, distracted part of my mind screamed at me in warning, but that was easy to ignore in the face of such beauty.
A crash, a curse, and suddenly Ryder’s arm was around me, pulling me back against him, out of the firebird’s reach. We stumbled back together, as if a cord connecting me with this fiery creature had suddenly snapped. The force of it was so strong that I felt Ryder lose his grip on me, and I fell to my hands and knees in the dirt.
And then, with a sharp, angry cry that stabbed my skull, the firebird lunged, a column of fire so quick and hot that the gale of it blowing past me pulled tears from my eyes. I turned to follow it with a scream in my throat, but it was too fast for me, too brilliant, its wings and talons outstretched, and before I could warn Ryder, before he could move out of its path, the firebird’s flames engulfed him.
Immediately, his screams filled the crackling hot air.
The sound of his agony made me wild. I shot to my feet and ran for the fire without thinking. What would I do with it? Spray it with water I didn’t have? Would the firebird even respond to such things as normal flames would have? I didn’t know, I couldn’t think. Ryder’s screams were awful, each animal cry shattering my heart. Suddenly I was back at Ivyhill, trapped in smoke and flame, but this time Ryder was the one trapped in the firestorm, and I was my parents—powerless to stop disaster from unfolding right before my eyes.
“Stop it!” I cried, uselessly. I could barely hear my own voice over the roar of the firebird, and if it heard what I said, it gave no sign of it. It simply stared at me from within its sea of flames: two brilliant blue eyes, unblinking, unfeeling.
I tried once more to run straight at it. In the Ravenswood forest, the creature had seemed skittish, fearful. At the mere sight of me, it had flown as if in terror. Maybe, I thought, I could frighten it away, spook it, like a horse that would bolt at the slightest strange sound. But the sheer heat of the firebird threw me back before I could take three strides, and I landed hard on my backside. I thought wildly of Gemma, of Talan, of Philippa—or Kerezen, or whoever she was, whatever she was—but by the time I fetched them, it would be too late. Already, it was too late. I could no longer hear Ryder screaming.
I crawled as close to the fire as the heat would allow, great heaving sobs tearing out of me. The ground was wet, steaming. My hands sank into black mud.
“Please let him go,” I whispered, a pathetic heap in the dirt, but the firebird remained unmoved, the only sign it had heard me a slight ripple of light that raced across its face like the flit of a stray sunbeam.
It was the first time I’d seen anything like an expression on its inhuman face, and some instinct told that expression was… annoyance .
The realization snapped me out of my frantic fear, clearing my desperate mind just enough to think, Oh .
Of course .
In my panic for Ryder, I’d forgotten all about the greatest weapon I possessed: my voice.
An avalanche of despair crashed down on me. If I had acted faster, if I had remembered sooner the power of my music, perhaps I could have saved him.
So when I began to sing, it was with bright, sharp anger, hot enough to rival the flames that had taken Ryder from me. From the huge library of music that lived in my mind, I pulled a chant of battle written decades ago, when for a brief time the continents of Gallinor and Vauzanne had been at war over a newly discovered chain of fertile islands. I hardly registered the words as they formed on my tongue; I knew only my grief, my desolate fury, which grew with each ragged note, each spat syllable. But the firebird seemed unaffected by me. It observed me with those blaze-bright eyes for such a long moment that I began to feel truly afraid. I had fought specters with my voice, I had fought Kilraith, but it seemed this creature was impervious to whatever power I held.
Then, suddenly, it shot up into the canopy with a stifled cry of pain. And where it had stood, within a charred ring of earth, was Ryder, dazed but unburnt.
He stared at me, and then his knees buckled and he fell, and I was there beside him in an instant, moving faster than I ever had in my life. He was nearly unconscious, and the bulk of his body was too heavy for me to hold up properly, but I tried with all my might. I pressed my face against his hair and swallowed hard against the sobs bursting to escape me. Then I inspected him—his hair, his arms, his dear face. I touched his beard, held his cheeks.
“Ryder,” I choked out, “say something, please.”
“I’m all right,” he rasped. He raised his sweaty, scorching-hot hand to touch mine and let out a rough cough. “It was just…very hot in there.”
I laughed through my tears and grabbed on to him, kissed his wonderful unhurt fingers. Then my wits returned, and I looked up with a jolt to find the firebird, smaller and paler than it had been, hovering a few paces from us.
Fiercely I drew Ryder to me and glared at the horrible thing. But before I could even consider what to do next, a fist-sized spot of pale light began to glow on what I thought must be the firebird’s face, beneath its lapis eyes.
“You understand now,” it croaked, in the same common tongue I used. The sound was a strange one, a combination of a shrill avian cry and a broken human voice, neither male nor female. Bizarrely, the creature seemed to wince as it spoke, as if offended by the tone of its own voice.
“You understand,” it continued, falteringly, “what must be done.”
My shock rendered me mute for a moment. I felt Ryder shifting slightly beside me; I knew with certainty that he was reaching for his crossbow.
“I understand nothing of what just happened,” I managed to say, “except that you attacked my friend without provocation.”
“And you were frightened of her, and cowed by her fire,” the creature continued, cocking its head—a human head crowned with flames, tresses snapping like ropes of molten gold, then a bird’s head, sleek with shining feathers. The shape of it was always shifting, always transforming. “At first you did not remember the weapon you carry. At first you knew only grief and terror. In war, there is no room for grief or terror. You understand now. You must practice this. You have let it sit idle for too long. She had to remind you.”
I shook my head in frustration. “I don’t understand you. You speak in riddles. Who are you? What are you?”
“Ankaret.” The firebird’s voice softened around the word. The syllables came haltingly. “Her name is…Ankaret.”
“Ankaret,” I repeated, trying out the unfamiliar word. My blood roared in my ears. I wanted desperately to run, but if we moved, would it— she —strike us down?
Before either of us could utter another word, Ryder shot to his feet. He was lightning fast, even after what had just happened, and furious; the arrow of his crossbow flew true and hit the firebird’s right wing.
She shrieked and flailed, all human voice stripped from her—only bird now, only beast. One of Ryder’s thick black arrows pinned her to a mammoth tree just behind her. Her light had dimmed; her form flitted frantically from human to bird to pale fire, and back again.
Ryder strode toward her, his expression murderous, and nocked another arrow.
I scrambled to my feet and raced over to put myself between them. “Wait! Ryder, wait.”
He swore and spun away, lowering his bow. “Gods, Farrin. Wait? For what? For her to trap me in fire again? For her to actually burn one of us next time?”
He was right; my common sense told me that. But something else gave me pause, a strange idea that had started turning in me at the sound of the creature speaking. And her cries were terrible, shredded with pain.
“She can speak,” I insisted desperately. “We can talk to her.”
He looked at me as if I’d lost my mind, and maybe he was right. “I have nothing to say to her except goodbye,” he ground out.
“Let me try something first,” I said, still with my hands up, placating him.
“Farrin—”
“Please, trust me. Let me try this.”
He glared at the creature. “If it hurts you…” he began, his voice tight and miserable.
“Then you can loose all your arrows at it. But first I must try this. Do you trust me?”
He finally lowered his crossbow to his side. He nodded once. “Of course I trust you,” he said, in a rough whisper.
I gave him a quick smile, my heart racing, hoping fervently that I wasn’t making a terrible mistake. Then I swallowed hard and turned to the creature. She writhed in pain upon a bed of thorns, sprawled across the tree’s roots. She had taken on a more solid form, as if the arrow in her wing, pinning her to the physical world, had eroded whatever Olden power she possessed. Her dim fire flickered quietly: flame, feather, flame once more.
I approached her slowly, crouched so I could meet her unblinking eyes. Each was a brilliant blue jewel wreathed with white fire.
Then, my palms sweating, my skin cold with fear, I began to sing.
It was a folk song from Big Deep, the great region of canyons and rivers on Gallinor’s eastern coast where Gareth’s ancestral home stood. He’d first sung it to me on that night long ago in his bed—rather badly, every word slurred with wine. We hadn’t yet undressed, hadn’t even kissed, but I’d sensed nonetheless that something new and momentous was about to happen, and so I recalled every word, every lilting note, with tenderness.
As I sang, the firebird began to calm, and so did I. This song couldn’t have been more different from the song of anger I’d launched at her only moments before. My voice rose up from my chest on an unbroken rush of supple air. Each note felt round and full in my throat; the melody fell like a tumble of smooth stones through their river. By the time the last note faded, the firebird had ceased her struggling. Her former effulgent glory was gentle but steady—fresh candlelight flickering on a bedside table. She stared at me with an expression I couldn’t read. How was one to read a face made of fire?
I hesitated, and then, ignoring Ryder’s gruff, tearful plea, reached out to touch the feather nearest me: thick, long, glossy red as a polished ruby, each silken fiber glowing softly with light. Warmth flooded my hand, raced up to tickle the back of my throat, but it wasn’t scalding or even unpleasant. In its wake, I felt more alert, more clearheaded, as if I’d just scrubbed myself clean in a hot bath.
I gave her a tight smile. “All right, then. You said your name is Ankaret. Mine is Farrin. That’s Ryder.”
The firebird’s eyes cut to Ryder. Ankaret ’s eyes. White-hot. Angry, maybe, or afraid. “She wasn’t going to kill you,” she said mournfully, her voice a multitude of eerie tones—not quite human, not quite animal. “Please, let her go.”
Ryder came to stand over us. I was glad to see he had yet to raise his bow again. “Can you not burn yourself free?” he asked caustically.
Ankaret shook her head, dislodging a soft shower of sparks. “The arrow has broken her wing. She cannot burn with real strength, not like this.”
The sadness in her words made me ache, but I kept my own voice cool. “You said you weren’t going to kill him. Why, then? Why did you make me think you were?”
“In war, there is no room for grief or terror.” She looked right at me as she said it, her bird’s head tilting sharply. Each word bent under the weight of some great emotion I could not name. “You need to understand. War is coming. In your blood is old power, and you cannot be afraid to use it.”
Philippa’s story from the cottage slithered back into my mind. Demigods is the word . Cold slipped down my arms.
“Old power?” I repeated.
Beside me, Ryder shifted uneasily.
Ankaret continued as if she hadn’t heard me. “You must use it even when you are afraid. You must use it even when you are angry. You must keep it always sharp, always ready. Do you understand? What she did was not to hurt you but to show you.”
I thought I was indeed beginning to understand. I glanced up at Ryder, then back at her. “At first I didn’t remember the weapon I carry,” I murmured, repeating her earlier words. “At first I knew only grief and terror.”
“And more of that will come,” she said forlornly, beginning to struggle once more against the arrow’s hold. “And she will show you again and again, if she must. You must understand. You cannot be afraid.”
It was unthinkably strange to speak with a creature whose eyes I could not read: no pupils, no irises. Simple glowing discs, flat yet fathomless.
“Afraid of what?” Ryder said, his voice snapping with impatience. “Of Kilraith? Do you know him?” He knelt beside me and looked closely at Ankaret. “Are you a messenger of his? Are you his enemy? This isn’t the first time we’ve seen you. You’ve been following us, spying on us. Why?”
“She is not following,” Ankaret protested. “She is…”
Then her voice trailed off, and suddenly I could read her shifting face of fire. The flames gathered and snapped. Her great blue eyes shrank to bright pinpricks. Fear. She was afraid.
“She must go. Please.” She wriggled in vain, sparks flying from the tips of her trapped wings. “Someone is calling her, and she must go.”
“Who’s calling you?” Ryder demanded.
“Whoever it is, they can’t find you here,” I said, though I didn’t quite believe my own assurance. Philippa seemed to think Wardwell’s protective magic couldn’t be breached, and yet here was Ankaret.
“It isn’t that, it isn’t just finding.” Ankaret shook her head. Her free wing snapped bright with frustration. “Mercy, please. Let her go, and she will grant you a gift. Let her go, and she will answer a single question with what time she has. And she will see you again, she promises.”
I exchanged a glance with Ryder.
“Is that promise meant to be reassuring?” he asked, incredulous.
“What kind of question, Ankaret?” I asked slowly.
“Anything,” she replied. She wrenched her body hard against the arrow and cried out softly in pain. I watched in horrified wonder as bright teardrops of fire streaked down her cheeks, snaking into the white-gold feathers of her breast. “If she knows the answer, she will tell you. If she does not know the answer, she will find it.”
I looked again at Ryder; he was staring hard at Ankaret, his expression suddenly not angry but closed, guarded.
“And that is the gift?” he asked quietly.
“No. No, the gift is this,” said Ankaret, and as she spoke, she plucked from her pinned wing a single feather of fire, long as my forearm and thin as my wrist, with a downy tuft at its base, where the silver barb began. The barb itself was thick and bloody, freshly wrenched from…skin? Muscle? She held it out to me, her blazing arm shaking as if from exhaustion. As the feather rested in the flaming white cup of her palm, its snapping firelight soon faded to a rich hue of scarlet and violet, reminding me of a brilliant sunset horizon.
“It will not hurt you,” she cooed, in her warped dove’s voice, and when I looked into her eyes, though I could not read them, I felt the certainty of that promise. This feather would not hurt me.
I plucked it from her hand before Ryder could stop me. It weighed nothing, of course, and yet the air around it seemed to bend and shift, as if drawn to its slight form. I hesitated, then stroked its length; it was like water in my fingers, a ribbon of finest satin.
“Keep this with you always,” said Ankaret. “Someday you will need her. Use this to call her. She will hear you, wherever she is.”
I cradled the feather against my chest, feeling suddenly, fiercely protective of it.
“And in exchange, we free you?” Ryder asked.
“And in exchange for the freeing, an answer for you as well,” Ankaret reminded him. “Ask now, if you must. She will tell you before you free her, if she must. An act of trust. A promise.”
Ryder looked hard at her for another moment, then stood and walked a few paces away. “Farrin,” he called quietly.
I joined him, still holding the feather. “What do we ask her?”
“I don’t like this. How are we to know this feather is truly just a feather? What if it’s some kind of trick? And if we ask her anything we really want to know—”
“She could use it against us, or give that information to anyone she chooses,” I finished, realizing the truth with a sinking feeling. “The enemies we know, the enemies we don’t.” All of our questions—about the Mist, Yvaine, the abductions, Kilraith—the very topics themselves were too sensitive to speak of beyond our small trusted numbers.
“And even if she never told a single creature, living or dead or Olden,” Ryder continued, “she could still burn us to a crisp the moment she’s able to fully burn again.”
“Your sister lives.”
Ryder and I froze. I recovered first, turning back to stare at Ankaret. “What did you say?”
Her color paled further. She was shrinking in size, like a dying fire. “Your sister, Alastrina.” She was looking not at me but at Ryder. “You love her so. She knows this. She sees it in you. And she must tell you that your sister lives. She lives, but she isn’t safe.”
There was real pity in her voice, and when Ryder hurried toward her, she did not flinch, merely stared up at him with her round unblinking eyes.
He knelt before her, heedless of the thorns and fire. “How do you know this?”
“She does not know,” she said mournfully. “And yet she knows much. She sees it in her dreams, and her dreams are only fire and light. Your sister lives, but she is not safe. She hardly sleeps. When she does, she dreams of games in dark hallways. Hide-and-go-seek. Quiet cupboards, everything black and safe. A cave in a house in a wood.” She went quiet for a moment, then shook her head and let out a sharp, strained cry. “She tries to see more but cannot! This is all she knows, Ryder Bask of the north. Please, let her go. Please. ”
Ryder turned away abruptly, dragged shaking hands across his face. His expression was horrified, his color suddenly ashen. Looking at him, I felt cold. What Ankaret had said was nonsense to my ears, but clearly something in her words had struck home.
“Please?” Ankaret begged, her voice small, her crackling body now the size of an ordinary human girl. “Please, let her go.”
“Do it,” Ryder said hoarsely, his back to us both.
I was glad to. With both hands, I yanked the arrow from the tree, and once Ankaret was free, she did not fly away. She unfurled her glorious wings to a span of perhaps thirty feet and once more bloomed into a bird woman, at least twelve feet tall, and yet she did not burn us. In fact, she seemed jubilant. She stretched her beautiful body of fire up into the trees, taller and taller, then dropped down to our height again. Her feathers rippled and fluttered, a sea of red and gold.
“Thank you for your mercy,” she said, her voice stronger, less frightened. “She will not forget it. Now, ask her your question, and she will answer if she can.”
Ryder glanced over at me, his eyes bright. I could feel a despair radiating from him like the working of acrid magic. He couldn’t speak. He looked lost, and young—a boy without his sister.
So, I was the one to speak. “What is the city called Moonhollow?” I asked.
Immediately I deplored my choice. Out of all the questions teeming in my mind, this one seemed suddenly the least important. I could have phrased it more precisely; I could have insisted Ryder give me his opinion before we decided what to say. What are you, truly? Why are you following us? Where is Kilraith? Where is Alastrina?
But the words had been spoken, and Ankaret drew her wings close to her body, becoming a single column of fire.
“Moonhollow,” she repeated. My stomach sank when I heard the regret in her voice. “This is a word she does not know. This is a word she has never heard, not in any wood, not on any mountain. But…”
And then she surged toward me, too close, too bright. I flinched back from her overwhelming warmth, and she shrank away. She bowed her head—an apology, I thought. A tendril of feather-fire lingered in the air near me, as if suspended in water. The sight of it seemed somehow wistful.
“Do not worry, Farrin of the forest light,” she said, “and Ryder, raven-wild. This city called Moonhollow—she will find it. A promise is a promise. She will find it, and she will tell you. Watch for her, and be always sharp, always ready. Do not fear your blood’s old power, Farrin of the gods. You will need it. It is a friend.”
Then, a quick flicker of heat past me, a circle of light whipping around Ryder, and she was gone. No trace of her remained in the woods—no embers, no singed trees.
We stood in silence, and at last my courage faded and my wobbly knees gave out. I sank slowly to the ground and sat there in the moss, staring at the feather in my hands.
Ryder knelt beside me. I couldn’t look at him.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I should have asked about Alastrina. I should have—”
“No, it was a good question,” Ryder said at once. “The mystery of Moonhollow, whatever it is, connects all the other ones. At least it seems to. You did well.”
I nodded, then said quietly, “Farrin of the gods. That’s what she called me.” I looked up at Ryder, imploring. “She knew. Somehow she knew.”
“Or,” he said, his expression grim, “this is all some test of your mother’s, some twisted game.”
“Maybe, but…” I shook my head. “I don’t think so, and I don’t think you do either. The things she said about Alastrina—games in dark hallways, quiet cupboards.” I hesitated, hating the images the words evoked. “Those things meant something to you.”
Ryder nodded, staring at the ground, his gaze like daggers. He said nothing else, though his jaw worked as if he was fighting mightily for words he could not find.
I touched his arm, and almost at once he grabbed my hand and held it with something like desperation.
“We can’t tell Philippa about her,” I said, after a moment. “About Ankaret, I mean.”
“She might already know. Her ward magic might have alerted her to Ankaret’s presence.”
“If she asks, we’ll tell her. There’ll be no point in lying then. But I want to see what she’ll say when we return. If this is all some game of hers, maybe she’ll drop coy hints, pleased with herself. Or she’ll smell Ankaret on us and recognize the scent, give us information. Until then, though…”
He nodded. “We won’t say anything. Not yet.”
“Not ever ,” I added firmly. “That woman can’t be trusted, and neither can her home or anything she’s touched. We’ll tell the others, but not here. And meanwhile, we’ll observe her, see if she gives anything away.”
I stood, not allowing him the chance to argue, keeping my expression as fearless as I could manage, though in the crash of nerves following Ankaret’s departure, a hundred different questions boiled in my mind. War is coming , Ankaret had said. But when? And had I lost my senses to even for a moment give weight to the broken riddles of a creature I did not understand?
I tucked the feather into my coat and started walking back the way we had come, Ryder following behind me. With every stride, I wondered if my new treasure would dissolve in my hands, or if we would step back into the sunlight of the Wardwell fields and forget all we’d seen. But the feather remained, a press of warm silk in my coat, and when I closed my eyes, Ankaret’s unblinking gaze stared back at me, seared into my eyelids like the glare of twin white-blue suns.
***
The others were still talking in the cottage’s main room when Ryder and I returned.
They fell silent as we walked in. I couldn’t bear to look at any of them, and I certainly didn’t want to talk any further about gods and demigods, and mothers who weren’t entirely mothers. The walk back to the cottage had utterly drained me; I couldn’t even bring myself to observe Philippa for signs that she recognized the traces of Ankaret’s flames, or a telltale twinkle in her eye that would tell me this had been some terrible game of her design. Ryder was paying better attention than I was, I hoped. I had only the capacity to stay upright.
Philippa seemed to sense my exhaustion. She watched me quietly from her chair, the air around her hazy with pipe smoke. “Upstairs and on the left is a room you can use. The bed is clean and comfortable.”
I didn’t even acknowledge her. Gareth stood as if to join me, but someone stopped him—Ryder, probably—and I walked past them all and up the stairs. Alone in the little wood-paneled room, I took off my coat, tucked Ankaret’s feather into my bodice, and curled up on the bed, which looked very much like my bed at home: plain white linens, crisply made. I pressed my palm against the place where the feather lay and let its warmth soothe me to sleep.
When I awoke, it was night, and the house was quiet. I saw a shape across the room: Ryder, his bulk crammed onto the too-small sofa by the window, a quilt of green patchwork covering only his legs. Even in sleep, he was frowning. I was tempted to go to him, press a kiss to his brow, but I instead rose and left the room as quietly as I could. The upper floor contained three other rooms, all with closed doors, and for a moment I stood in the dark hallway, considering retreating to my bed. But I was stiff and dirty, I needed to stretch, and my growling stomach could no longer be ignored.
I crept downstairs, hardly breathing, hoping no step would creak, but my stealth was for naught. Philippa was in the kitchen, sitting alone at a small table of polished wood with elaborately carved legs, each adorned with leafy wooden vines. It was far too fine a thing to decorate a plain cottage in the middle of nowhere. The very sight of it enraged me; any hope I had of getting back to some kind of peaceful sleep was gone.
I started to leave, but of course she’d already heard me.
“You can come and eat something,” she said. She held a steaming cup of tea in her hands and stared over its rim at nothing in particular: the shadowed wall, a clock softly ticking. “There’s bread and cheese, fruit, honey. I won’t bother you.”
To leave seemed childishly stubborn; to stay felt like a concession. In the end, I obeyed my stomach. I gathered a plate of food and stood at a window eating it. Minutes passed in uncomfortable silence, and as I ate, I considered all that had happened. Ankaret’s feather seemed to pulse against my skin, as if it contained its own heartbeat. The warmth of it gave me courage; the food gave me clarity. And suddenly it seemed unimportant to examine Philippa for some sign that she knew Ankaret. If she did, so be it. A more important mission had presented itself to me, one that made me sick to consider.
I sat at the table and clasped my hands atop it. I looked at my fingers, not at her. “Come back with us. We need your help. If you are who and what you say you are, that is.”
“The others have already told me what’s happening,” Philippa said quietly, “and though it disturbs me very much—a dying Mist, a dying queen—I cannot leave Wardwell, Farrin. I’m sorry.”
She sounded sad, extraordinarily tired. I could feel her looking at me, and for a moment, a lonely part of me—perhaps a part untouched by anger, even after all these years—imagined that we were simply a mother and her daughter, unable to sleep, enjoying a quiet conversation over midnight tea.
I ripped myself from the foolish reverie and dared to look across the table at her. “You can’t leave Wardwell? Or you won’t?”
“It’s more complicated than that simple distinction.”
“It isn’t. Something is deeply wrong in our world. A monster is roaming free, perhaps the force behind it all. You claim to be a god reborn. And yet you’ll sit here and do nothing?”
“A god reborn, yes,” she replied wearily, “and yet even after years alone, learning how to exist in my human body, I am a mere shadow of what I once was. My power is still a child who has only just learned how to walk. And none of you can tell me who or what Kilraith is, nor the true extent of his power. What you do know is that he bound a demon to his service for years, and that this demon was the last one of many. A demon—one of the strongest Olden beings we ever created. This Kilraith possessed his mind and body, nearly defeated all of you fighting him at once, and managed this when he was not even in his true form. It was him, yes, but diluted through his possession of Talan. His real self was likely hundreds, maybe thousands, of miles away. Perhaps he was not even in the Old Country that night. And this is the sort of power he can wield? One that can transcend the boundary between the realms?”
She fell silent, as if waiting for me to answer the question. But I couldn’t, of course; I could say nothing. My heart raced as I listened to her, this creature speaking godly words with my mother’s voice. For they were godly—every sentence shivered against my skin with the weight of ages.
“Gareth told me of this curse, this ytheliad ,” she went on. She shook her head, her mouth thin. “I don’t doubt that we created such an abomination when we were young and stupid, drunk for millennia on our own power. But I remember nothing of it now, nothing that can help you. Whatever knowledge I hold of it is buried deep within me, perhaps lost forever, or else it might take years for me to uncover it. And what would this monster do, I wonder, this Kilraith, if he discovered there was a resurrected god in Edyn? A god who is still remembering how to be a god? Would he try to bind me as he did Talan? Or would he kill me outright? I would rather be dead than bound. But from what the others told me, I do not think he would kill me. I think he would want to use me.”
She closed her eyes, set down her cup. “Poor Talan,” she said quietly. “The things he has seen, the things he was made to do…those wounds will never heal.”
I bristled at the hopelessness in her voice. “You underestimate the strength of his love for Gemma, and hers for him. Whatever wounds they live with—some of which you yourself inflicted—they will learn from each other how to heal. They already are.”
Philippa opened her eyes and looked at me. “You speak of love with such conviction. It warms me to hear it. My little bird, with her song of starlight.”
Her expression was soft with affection, and the sight of it revolted me. A woman and a god; my mother and yet not. The contradictions were too many and too overwhelming: my mother’s voice, my mother’s body, Kerezen’s words of portent, her ability to heal a shattered physical form. Wardwell, hidden from everyone and everything except for us, her daughters, because our human bodies carried, as hers did, the blood of a god. Her ward magic had admitted us easily, had called to us in that northern forest.
And Ankaret? How did she fit into this puzzle? The ward magic of my mother’s secret home had either allowed her passage, or she was powerful enough to override it.
The feather, pressed against my torso, suddenly felt like a brand on my skin.
I shoved back from the table and stood. “Don’t look at me like that. I am not your little bird.”
She smiled, her eyes glazed with memory. “Do you remember the first concert you gave at Ivyhill? I do. Merrida Jan-Tokka’s Sonata for an Autumn Morning . What a gorgeous piece of music, though no one had ever played it as beautifully as you. And do you remember what I said to you afterward?”
Of course I did, though I hadn’t thought of it since arriving at Wardwell. It was one of many memories of my happy childhood that I had tried in vain to forget, for every recollection brought with it a twist of pain.
“Your music, little bird…” Philippa whispered, remembering.
“Will give the gods new life,” I finished. A chill swept lightly across my skin. “Did…did I…”
Philippa laughed. “Did you resurrect me? No, darling, though don’t you see? Even then, before the great changes began in me, part of me knew exactly who and what I was. And therefore part of me knew who and what you and your sisters were too: daughters of a goddess and a very human, very frustrating man.”
That last remark left me burning with fresh anger. “Don’t speak of him,” I whispered. “Don’t you dare speak of him. You don’t know what your leaving did to him. You can’t imagine.”
It was as if she’d not heard me. She leaned across the table, her hands open to me, as if hoping I’d take the opportunity to grab on. “Stay here with me, my Farrin,” she said. “Convince the others that they must too. My Mara, my little Gemmy. If anyone can persuade them to stay, it’s you.”
“Absolutely not.”
“It’s safer here, don’t you see? Whatever’s going on out there in the world, it hasn’t touched Wardwell. It hasn’t touched me. Here, I can protect you. We can learn about your powers, all of us together. I can teach you what I’ve learned. In this sanctuary, we can truly become ourselves.”
“I couldn’t possibly—”
“Remember what you saw yesterday?” she interrupted. “Remember how you struck me, my strong, angry girl? Perhaps a human would have died from such a blow to the head, but I didn’t. I healed myself in an instant, right before your eyes. You saw it. Imagine being able to protect yourselves in such a way. It’s in you somewhere, all of you, latent but alive. You are the daughters of Kerezen and therefore demigods of the body, of the senses. Fighting and creating glamours and making music—these things you can already do. But there is more buried in your power, and I can help you find it.”
Her words shook me; they seemed to me cousins of Ankaret’s earlier warnings. War is coming , she had said. Do not fear your blood’s old power, Farrin of the gods. And yet I could see no guile on Philippa’s face, nothing that told me she had even the slightest idea what had happened to Ryder and me in the forest. My heart sank. Only then did I realize that part of me had been hoping the whole thing had been some sort of game, some outrageous deception designed by Philippa as a punishment for breaking her jaw.
“You already spoke to the others, it seems, and they gave you their answer,” I said sharply, biting off each word as if my very teeth and tongue could conquer the fear roiling inside me. “Well, that’s my answer too. You may be able to stay here and ignore a world that needs you, but we cannot.”
I felt lightheaded with rage, tempted to pull the feather out of my dress and summon Ankaret to me right then and there, if such a thing were truly possible. Burn this woman , I would tell her. She is hateful, she is evil. Reduce her to ashes so I never have to hear her voice again.
Blinking back tears, I stepped away from the table. “We’re leaving in the morning. I trust that with all your many mighty powers, you’ll be able to devise a way to speak to us, or come to us, if you ever change your mind and decide to be useful. But I suspect you won’t. I think you’re too selfish to do anything you don’t want to do, even for the sake of those you love, much less to help innocent strangers. If the other gods are like you, I sincerely hope they’re still dead.”
With that, I turned and left her.
Ryder was awake when I returned to my room. He still lay on that ridiculous small couch, pretending to sleep, but I could hear the truth in his breathing.
“Ryder,” I said, crying. It was all I could say. I was so angry I could hardly breathe; my chest ached with too many memories, too many fears all fighting for air. He came to me at once, joined me in the bed. He held me close to him, his hands gentle in my hair, and we slept, the feather pressed between us, thrumming its strange, quiet heat against my skin.