Chapter 18
In the morning, I awoke sore and happy, and when I turned to find Ryder sleeping beside me, I had to stare at him, watching him breathe in and out, to convince myself that the night we’d passed together was real.
After a moment, he startled awake, but as soon as he saw me and remembered himself, he relaxed. He held out his arms, and I was glad to go to him, to burrow against the mountain of his body. I pressed my face to his chest and breathed in his scent: sweat and warm skin, a hint of wine, the sharp, sweet scent of our passion.
“Was I snoring?” he asked. I shivered to hear his voice, hoarse with sleep.
“You were not,” I told him, “but your mouth was hanging open a bit.”
He laughed. “What a sight to wake up to.”
“In fact, if I’ve ever in my life woken up feeling so at peace in the world, I don’t remember it.”
I spoke the honest words into his shirt, part of me hoping the fabric would muffle my voice and he wouldn’t hear me. But of course he did hear me and shifted us both so he could look at me, his blue eyes soft under that fierce dark brow.
“You honor me by saying such a thing,” he said quietly. His gaze traveled over my face, and he shook his head in wonder. “What a vision you are in this bed.”
I felt bashful at his attention, tried to dismiss it. “With my hair a mess, like a lion’s mane, and my dress bunched up everywhere?”
“Yes, all of that,” he replied, and when he drew me to him for a kiss, I felt lissome in his arms, a precious creature who deserved such affection and wouldn’t ever be foolish enough to run from it. Such a new feeling—to know I was desired, to feel worthy of it. Lion-haired, trembling in my gray silk, I pulled Ryder close, and we moved together, quiet and slow, everything golden in the morning light.
***
Later, after we bathed and changed our clothes, we went downstairs to the queen’s dining hall. A messenger had delivered a note: Yvaine requested our company at a private luncheon.
I approached the dining hall with trepidation. What would we find there? Had Yvaine come back to the party from her errand and been hurt to find us gone? Giddy as I was, the taste of Ryder’s kisses lingering on my tongue, I still entered the room with a flutter of nerves in my throat, readying all kinds of excuses. We were tired, we’d had too much wine, the raucous noise of her guests had given me a headache.
Yvaine, however, wasn’t there. Instead, Gemma and Gareth sat at the table, Gareth in a tie and a gray morning suit, Gemma wearing a pretty gown of sea-foam green with a slight sheen of copper to every fold.
I startled to see them and paused in the doorway. “Where’s Yvaine?” I blurted out.
“We aren’t sure,” Gemma said, looking at me and then at Ryder with a pleased, assessing gaze that made me bristle. “We received a message at the university this morning telling us we were missed at last night’s party and inviting us to luncheon, and came at once. That’s all we know.”
I nodded and said nothing, taking a seat across from Gareth. I didn’t dare look at him. A servant in a violet tunic came over and offered me a bowl of cut fruit. I took it and began to eat at once.
Gareth cleared his throat. “So. How was the party, anyway?”
“Abysmal,” Ryder muttered, “as all parties are.”
“But the night wasn’t a complete loss, I hope?”
Ryder tore a hunk from a hot buttered roll and began to eat with relish, a fearsome glare of warning his only answer.
Wisely, Gareth quieted, but he did touch his foot to mine under the table, and when I looked up at him, his expression was kind, not a teasing glance to be found. I felt a rush of gratitude and tapped his foot in answer. Thank you.
Then the doors opened, and Yvaine glided into the room. She looked fresh and calm at first glance—her hair done up in an elaborate knot of white braids, her gown a soft sky blue—but as she came closer, I saw the shadows under her eyes, even deeper than they had been the previous night, and a patch of skin on her lip that bled, freshly chewed. A sheen of sweat shone on her brow. She took her seat at the head of the table with a magnanimous smile, looking around at all of us while servants bustled about with platters and tongs, piling our plates high. Once they were finished, she dismissed them, and we five were alone with our crystal and silver.
“I’m so glad you could all join me for lunch,” Yvaine said cheerfully. Her eyes darted over to me, not quite meeting my gaze. She made no move to touch her food.
Gareth dabbed the corner of his mouth. “Yes, thank you for inviting us, Lady Queen, and our apologies that we couldn’t attend the party last night. We were quite caught up in our research, and before we knew it, the evening had gotten away from us.”
“Research?” Yvaine asked mildly. “Remind me, what sort of research are you conducting?”
“We’re reading everything we can about necromancy, Your Majesty,” Gemma answered, watching the queen carefully. “We’re hoping to unearth spellwork that might reinforce the body of my friend Nesset, who now lives at Rosewarren.”
It was their cover story, and an entirely reasonable one, yet Gemma’s words hung strangely in the air, as if not even the dining room itself was willing to believe what she had said. Yvaine stilled for an instant, her smile frozen. Then she grabbed a fork and speared a melon cube, popping it in her mouth. She looked ill, chewing it. It seemed to take great effort for her to swallow.
“Of course,” she replied. “I remember now. Forgive me for needing the reminder. It’s just that…well, you know how hard I’ve worked in recent months to watch over the city, given the…” She trailed off, frowning, and set down her fork.
“Given the sinkhole?” Ryder prompted.
Yvaine nodded. “Yes, the sinkhole. I’ve been concentrating so hard on reinforcing the beguilers’ work and monitoring the city’s borders, that it sometimes feels as if that is the entire world, and everything beyond is an illusion.”
Absently, she traced the rim of her plate with one white finger.
“And is that…working?” Gareth said carefully. “All is well downstairs?”
The word made me sit up straight. Downstairs. Last night, Lady Goff had retrieved Yvaine from the party, and Yvaine had said, I’m needed downstairs .
And I’d been so distracted by everything—the party, her behavior, Ryder’s nearness—that I hadn’t even thought about what that meant.
“Yes,” Yvaine whispered, “everything’s quite in order. My beguilers are tireless. The sinkhole hasn’t budged in three days.” She looked up at me, smiling. “Isn’t that wonderful, Farrin?”
I felt everyone’s eyes upon me and struggled for what to say. “It is, Yvaine, and impressive. You’ve appointed your beguilers well. But…”
I hesitated. Now that we were alone with her, a thousand questions sat ready in my mouth, and yet I couldn’t forget Yvaine’s warning from two weeks prior: I can’t know anything you’re doing, any leads you’re following. It’s too dangerous—for you, for me, for everyone.
“You want to know about the draft,” she said wearily, misinterpreting my silence. “The Senate is working out the language as we speak. They’re being quite slow about it, and I can’t blame them. Who wants to tell everyone in the country that they must send all their daughters to war against an evil they don’t understand?”
“When will it take effect?” Gemma asked quietly. She was thinking of Mara, as I was.
Yvaine looked suddenly irritable. “I don’t know. When they’ve finished, I suppose. Why do you all look so worried? Has Llyleth grown impatient and come after the Three-Eyed Crown? I warned her to do no such thing. I told her quite plainly, looked at her with my own eyes and watched her quake to hear my voice.”
Llyleth. The Warden. I couldn’t bring myself to feel sorry for the awful woman, and yet it wasn’t like Yvaine to speak so callously of making someone cower, just as she’d bragged last night about making Lady Bethan weep.
“No, the crown is safe,” Gareth began, before a slight jab from Gemma made him fall silent.
Yvaine leaned forward eagerly. “And you’ve been studying it, have you? Both of you? What have you found?”
I cleared my throat delicately. “Yvaine, you told me it wasn’t wise to share such things with you—”
She shot me a ferocious glare. “I remember very well what I told you. But do not think that just because I love you, I will tolerate your interruptions.”
Her words stunned us into silence. Breathing hard, her eyes glittering, she returned her attention to Gareth. Her mouth trembled as if she were fighting back tears.
“Tell me what you’ve found,” she said, her voice low, and as she spoke, the air grew heavy around me, thick and cold, and I felt pinned to my chair, bound to it with invisible chains. I could see by the others’ expressions, the way they went rigid, that it was the same for them.
“Tell me,” she repeated, looking at Gareth. Her eyes flashed—one violet, one gold. Against her wan, slick skin, the pink scar on her brow looked angry and red, barely healed. “What have you found?”
Gareth looked suddenly green with nausea. I could see him fighting not to speak, but in the face of Yvaine’s power he had no choice. The words came out of him roughly, as if tugged from the deep on a fisherman’s line.
“While I was gone,” he began, “Heldine continued our work. She is a beguiler with a particular talent for investigative spells.” He drew in a ragged breath. “Her spellwork revealed colors, sounds, all of it gibberish,” he continued. “What can a flash of blue tell you, or the shriek of a bird? But then I came back from—” Wardwell. He’d almost said it, his lips forming the word, but then he hesitated, swallowed. The tendons on his neck stood out from the strain of fighting Yvaine’s magic. “When I came back, I brought Gemma with me.”
“My power of working glamours has helped to unveil more of the crown’s secrets,” Gemma continued. Her eyes were closed; her fingers gripped the edge of the table, white-knuckled. “Just as I was able to that night in Talan’s house. I saw beyond his flesh and bone to the crown beneath. I saw the truth in the lie and unraveled it.”
She turned away, tight-lipped.
“And what truth did you see?” Yvaine persisted.
The pressure in the air grew colder, heavier. Beside me, Ryder let out a low grunt of pain.
“It’s begun to bleed shadows,” Gareth burst out, panicked. “Like furls of smoke from a dying ember. And Heldine and Gemma, they’ve managed to uncover in its shadows…shapes. Words. A flake of gold, a rod of metal. And I’ve translated the words. The shadows…they whisper .”
Ordinarily, Gareth would’ve been elated to share such remarkable news—his eyes lit up behind his glasses, his blond hair a mess from having dragged his hands through it a hundred times. But now he looked terrified, as if each word being pulled from him was another glimpse of an approaching disaster.
“What do they whisper?” Yvaine said eagerly.
The sight of her—fervent and hungry, so clearly not herself—gave me the strength to push against the cold hand on my chest. Unbidden, an image of Ankaret flashed into my mind.
Do not fear your old power, Farrin of the gods.
You must use it even when you are angry.
You must use it even when you are afraid.
I began to hum quietly, a patchwork tune.
“Tell me what they whisper!” Yvaine shouted. “What do you see in these shadows?”
“An egg, a goblet…” Gareth trailed off.
“A key,” said Gemma, her eyes full of tears. “A black lake under a full moon.”
I couldn’t bear seeing my sister’s quiet distress. I forced open my mouth, urged my hum into a song. There were no words, and I didn’t recognize the melody. It was new, a song composed out of my own desperation. At first my voice was thin, pressed flat by the queen’s will. But then my thoughts went to Philippa: her portentous words, her broken body healing itself, the maddening calm of her voice as she sat smoking in her chair, telling us all those impossible things. Demigods is the word .
The memory gave me an angry burst of strength. My song grew, and my voice poured forth, a supple river of sound. Each wordless note made me feel mightier. I was a torrent, a storm surging toward the shore.
Yvaine’s head snapped toward me, her eyes flashing, but when she tried to rise from her chair, the wave of my song pushed her back down. Baffled, she gasped for air. Her magic shot out in all directions, diverted from its course.
I stood, my legs shaking; I took a step forward, held my arms out to her. I gentled my voice. It’s all right. It’s me, Yvaine. I’m here. Don’t be frightened.
But as she struggled there, confused and furious, groping through the fog of my song, a stray piece of her baffled magic lashed out wildly and caught me in the throat. It was like being struck by a bolt of icy air whistling down from the Unmade Lands in the farthest north.
The cold stole my breath. I lost hold of my song and staggered, stumbling into the table. Our uneaten lunch rattled. Five glasses of sparkling lemonade tipped over all at once; the tablecloth bled pink.
And when I tried to sing again, it wasn’t music I found but a question, one of many I ached to ask but didn’t dare to, one of the many secrets I had, until that moment, successfully kept from Yvaine. But even in its disarray, her magic was tenacious, willful. It found my question and tore it from my throat.
“What do you know about demigods?” I croaked.
Yvaine, reeling in her chair, grew suddenly very still. My song had muddled her; now she was fully awake, her eyes a bright fury of violet and gold. Shadows ripped across her face, contorting the sweet lines of her jaw, the delicate sweep of her brows.
“What do you know?” she whispered, her voice low and rasping. A horror. “What have you seen?”
I didn’t know how to answer, couldn’t even turn to the others and ask for help. I shook my head, tried to back away. But Yvaine was fast. She shouted, “What have you seen?” with such desolation that it sounded like agony, inexplicable heartbreak. She flew at me and tackled me to the floor. She shook me, knocking my head against the tile. I was too shocked to breathe, to speak. The impact rang in my ears, drowning out everything but Yvaine’s furious screams.
“Tell me!” she said, tears streaming down her face, and yet that face was contorted in anger, in fear, and I couldn’t decipher its ugliness. But whatever she wanted of me, she was desperate for it. “What have you seen?” she cried. “You lie, you’re a liar! It’s impossible!”
All the magic she’d used to compel the others was now rushing right at me, pinning me to the floor, flattening me. The weight of it would crush my bones. I began to gag, choking on my own bile. In a flash of hope, I remembered Ankaret’s feather; I’d tucked it into my dress before coming to the dining hall, and now it flared hotly against my skin. Use me, it seemed to say. Call for help. But I was trapped under Yvaine and couldn’t move my arms to grab it.
Vaguely, I saw Ryder and Gareth trying to pull Yvaine off of me. Ryder had something in his hands, a vase or a pitcher. He brought it crashing down upon Yvaine’s shoulders, but that did nothing to deter her. She snarled over her shoulder at them and kept clawing at me, screaming at me. Other blurry shapes crowded into the room: advisers, guards, servants. Yvaine jerked her head at them and sent them all skidding away across the floor.
And then there was Gemma. Even as blackness crowded my vision, I could see her. Resplendent in her green gown, its copper patina gleaming, she flung her arms toward the far wall and then ripped them back toward us. Trees burst into the room, an explosion of autumn gold that shattered every window. Gnarled branches and great black roots snaked across the floor. I saw them out of the corner of my eye, reached desperately for them. They belonged to my sister; my sister would save me. I was beginning to fade. I saw my arm, streaked with my own blood.
Then the trees were upon us, guided by Gemma’s sure hand. The roots grabbed Yvaine, tore her off of me, flung her across the room. I heard the sick crack of bone when she hit the wall, then screams of horror—her advisers, the terrified servants.
But all I knew in that moment was Gemma. She came to me and held me on the floor, cradling my bleeding body against hers. Her golden hair fell all around me, and the fabric of her dress was blessedly smooth and cool. I let her hold me, let my eyes fall closed.
“I’ve got you,” she told me, her voice thick with tears. “My brave Farrin. You’re all right. I’m here.”
As she whispered comforts to me, it occurred to me that I was extraordinarily lucky. I had Gemma, I had Gareth, I had Ryder. They were all here, and they had fought for me. I opened my eyes, though the pain of my body was beginning to bloom like fire—all the places Yvaine had clawed at me, the bones she’d smashed against the floor—and through the haze of that pain, I saw Ryder looming nearby, shielding Gemma and me from the rest of the room. I heard Gareth talking to the panicked advisers, trying to explain. The idea made me want to laugh; how could any of this possibly be explained?
Then, without warning, the room shook. Ryder stumbled, nearly losing his footing. Someone screamed; a wave of shouts crested sharply. Gemma gasped, and when I turned in her arms, I saw Yvaine tearing across the room, knocking aside quaking servants, even Thirsk in his black robes. She raced out the door with a sharp, frightened cry, and I called after her, my voice breaking.
“Farrin, you can’t,” Gemma said, trying to keep me still, but I fought her, my head reeling with pain.
“Something’s wrong downstairs,” I gasped out. “The room shaking…that’s where she’s going. We have to follow her. If the sinkhole…if she…” I couldn’t finish. There were too many terrible scenarios to imagine. I looked up, reaching for him with desperation. “Ryder?”
At once, he scooped me up into his arms. Then we were out the door, Gemma and Gareth right on our heels. A crowd surged around us. Servants ran for safety; Lady Goff shouted commands at the guards. Lord Thirsk’s panicked voice boomed distantly, giving an order to sound the lockdown alarms.
The path downstairs was strewn with bodies—guards, palace staff, anyone else who’d tried to stop Yvaine. Frightened as I was, my whole body throbbing with pain, I clung to Ryder and murmured a quick prayer to Kerezen, goddess of the senses and the body. In my exhaustion, those childhood teachings broke through all my determination to forget them. Let them live , I prayed. Please let her not have killed anyone. She is not herself. Protect her. I wouldn’t remember until later that I’d been praying to my mother.
At last we reached the third subbasement of the Citadel, where the sinkhole raged. The inky churn of it, cut into the floor and raging like storm clouds, flashed blue and white and the vivid violet of Yvaine’s left eye. Yvaine herself stood at the perimeter, arms stretched toward the high ceiling. The sinkhole’s wind whipped her sky-blue skirts around her legs, tore her hair from its pins. She was working some great power; the air rippled with it, swirling, a violent heat mirage that distorted all shapes, all colors.
Guards flooded the cavernous stone room, their swords raised and their weapons trained on Yvaine—gilded crossbows, gleaming Lower Army rifles. Thirsk, hobbling after them, held a bloody cloth to his head and shouted at them to hold their fire. Then he hunched over and retched. Gemma ran past him and knocked a cowering servant out of the way just before a section of the ceiling came crashing down.
My heart thundered like the quaking room around us. I searched for the royal beguilers and found them scattered about, dazed but alive. Yvaine had thrown them back; she was keeping them away with a shimmering wall of her own magic, which rippled past her like a river. Brogan, the beguiler who’d been appointed to oversee the sinkhole’s maintenance, crawled toward her, cradling a broken arm to his chest. Tears glistened on his cheeks. He shouted for Yvaine—I saw his mouth move—but I couldn’t hear his words. Gareth hurried to him, helped him stand.
I pressed my lips to Ryder’s ear. “Let me down,” I told him, and he did at once, though he stood just behind me, holding me up. Together we staggered toward Yvaine, struggling to keep our balance as the floor pitched under our feet. A great wind whirled through the room with the sinkhole as its eye. With Ryder’s hands on my waist, steadying me, I reached for Yvaine, screaming my throat raw. I didn’t know what I could do to help her, nor did I care that she had hurt me. The thing that had beaten me hadn’t been her. A single word spun wildly through my mind: Kilraith. Kilraith. Somehow he’d breached the Citadel. He’d sunk his claws into the queen. I fumbled at my bodice; I would use Ankaret’s feather. Surely there couldn’t be a better time.
But before I could do that, before we could reach Yvaine, everything exploded. A dark wave of shadows rushed out from the sinkhole, cold as death. The shadows flooded the room, obscuring my vision, stopping up my lungs; for a moment, I was a child back at Ivyhill, lost in a world of smoke, certain I would die.
Then a great burst of light erupted, clearing the room of all darkness and enveloping the sinkhole entirely. I screamed in terror, “No, Yvaine !” But a sucking silence swallowed my voice, and then a deafening boom ripped through the room—a hundred thunderclaps all at once. Ryder and I dropped to our knees, and he threw his body over mine, shielding me.
Silence fell. The world was dark; a distant clamor of bells began far above us. The Citadel had locked its doors, reinforced its wards.
For a few frantic heartbeats, I allowed myself to huddle under the heavy shelter of Ryder’s body—his arms around me, his breath short and hard in my hair—and then I lifted my head and made myself look.
The sinkhole was gone. In its place, a jagged seam glimmered across the floor, faintly smoking. The sight of it reminded me of the scars on Talan’s brow, on Gemma’s left hand. Remnants of the Three-Eyed Crown.
And Yvaine… My stomach dropped when I found her. She was a smoking heap on the ground, her clothes torn, her skin blistered and bloody. She was charred .
I scrambled away from Ryder, shoving him off when he tried to stop me. I sobbed her name, ignoring the scrape of my battered hands and knees along the floor. No pain was worse than this: my friend, my queen, ravaged and still. Not moving. Not breathing.
I tried to sing—that would help her, that would bring her back—but my throat burned, and I could only rasp out a few ragged notes. But it must have been enough. As I wept, fumbling for some kind of song—any song, anything ; I was a demigod, Philippa had said, so where was my godliness, why wasn’t it coming to help me?—Yvaine began to stir. At first I thought I was imagining it, but then she reached up for me with one red hand and opened her eyes—violet and gold, clouded with pain.
“Farrin?” she whispered. “You’re still here.”
I laughed through my tears and dashed a hand across my face. “Yes, I’m here, but you mustn’t speak, all right? You’re…Yvaine, you’re quite hurt.”
Yvaine shook her head slowly against the stone floor, a faint smile on her lips. “He will not touch you again,” she said. Her voice was stronger than the rest of her, a blade glinting in the darkness. “I promise you, Farrin, I won’t allow it. I’ll kill him if he tries.”
My blood ran cold. “Who? If who tries?” I made myself say the hated word. “Kilraith? Was he here just now?”
Yvaine’s eyes fluttered shut.
“Was that him in the dining room?” I choked out. “Was he inside you?”
“Just like Talan,” came a faint whisper from Gemma. She sat stunned on the floor, not far from me.
We shouldn’t have come. The realization was like a boot to the gut. All our work with the crown, our journey to Wardwell—we’d brought some invisible evil into the Citadel. Kilraith had been shadowing us, and now he’d followed us here. We should’ve listened to Thirsk, I thought wildly; we should’ve let Yvaine be. The feather pulsed frantically against the sweaty skin of my torso, its rhythm reflecting my own wild alarm. But what could a firebird do to help a woman who’d already been burned?
“Oh gods, Yvaine, I’m sorry,” I whispered, and then I heard her draw in a wheezing, thin breath, and my whole body flooded with white-hot terror. “Yvaine? Please, stay with me. Yvaine!” I shouted for Thirsk, for the guards, for anyone. “Send for healers, now!” I screamed, but they were already there, six of them bustling over to us in their white robes, their faces grim and drawn. They lifted Yvaine’s body onto a canvas stretcher, and though I tried to go with them, I could barely stand and instead fell back, furious and desperate, into Ryder’s arms. I watched them carry her away, and it was then that I began to understand that something else was deeply wrong.
The royal beguilers were huddled together in frantic conference beside a pile of smoking rubble. Some were weeping; others, stricken, wandered about the room, calling out, “Brogan? Brogan!”
Brogan—the head beguiler, who’d been working for months to keep the Citadel safe from the sinkhole’s inexorable expansion.
One of the beguilers wept into her hands. “He’s gone,” she said. “They took him!”
They? At first the word didn’t make sense to me. Then I remembered the shadows. Clarity smashed into me like a falling rock. I remembered the message of Uven Lerrick in the Basks’ beguiled mirror, that day at Ravenswood when Alastrina had disappeared. One moment we were all here, and the next, a great rush of shadows washed across the room, and I felt horribly cold, utterly disoriented, my sight gone, my hearing gone. Then the shadows vanished, and my Dornen was no longer here.
He just…he disappeared .
Just then, Gemma let out a strange noise, a strangled gasp of horror. “Gareth?” she whispered.
I whirled to find him, heart in my throat. I looked wildly around the room for a familiar blond head, a lanky frame in a gray suit. He’d come downstairs with us. I’d seen him only moments ago. He had been helping Brogan—
With a lurch of fear, I realized the truth without even having to search the room. Gareth could have been injured by falling debris, I reasoned; he could have been knocked off his feet in the chaos and now lay unconscious in the dark somewhere.
But even as the thoughts came to me, I knew them for lies. I couldn’t pretend away the sudden emptiness in the room, the obvious void at my side.
Gareth—my brilliant, infuriating, dearest friend—was gone.