Chapter 19
We went looking for him at once, but hours of tearing through the Citadel calling his name, searching every room, peering into every dark corner, yielded nothing. Everywhere we went, servants wailed through the halls, calling after their friends and sisters and lovers, now gone. Advisers and senators, councilors and archivists, the royal beguilers, the royal cooks, the royal astronomers—all of them were bereft, tumbling through the marble halls like lost children. Everyone had lost someone—or knew someone who had lost someone—during that brief instant when shadows had snapped through the Citadel, before Yvaine had closed the sinkhole and driven them away. The air in every corridor was sour with terror.
At last, I could walk no longer. Ryder, who’d been beside himself—trying to no avail to get me to stop and rest—noticed me fading the moment before I whispered, “I can’t.”
My shaking knees gave out, and he was there before I could fall, as he always seemed to be. Gratefully I leaned into him and closed my eyes, trusting him to lead me to a place I could sit. Gareth, Gareth. I whispered his name into Ryder’s sleeve, as if that would somehow call him to me, though it was shatteringly clear that he was gone, that dozens were gone. Dozens from this palace alone. Then the pain I’d been fighting off reared its head and said, No more.
Blackness rose up to claim me, and when I next opened my eyes, I was in my rooms, on a velvet sofa by the windows. Gemma sat beside me, cleaning the dried blood from my skin, her hair drawn up into a messy bun and her expression troubled.
I soon understood why. “Lord Ryder, we must do this,” came an angry voice from somewhere in the room. I turned, ignoring Gemma’s murmur of caution, and saw Ryder and Thirsk by the door. Ryder loomed; Thirsk bristled. His head was bandaged, his white beard singed. He saw me staring and hurried over, looking relieved.
“Lady Farrin,” he said, “I’m glad to see you awake.”
I cut him off. “Yvaine? Is she well? Is she—”
His expression softened the slightest bit. “The queen is alive. But her wounds are grave. She has told us she will heal, but it will take days.”
I sank back into the couch, squeezed my eyes shut. She was alive, she was alive—a joy I would hold fiercely to my heart.
Thirsk cleared his throat. “I’ve come to tell you that we must enact the draft at once. The Citadel is in an uproar, the city even worse. In the queen’s absence, I must use my authority as her speaker and issue an order to the Senate. They must institute the draft immediately—no more fussing over language and niceties—and dispatch soldiers from both armies to enforce it.”
His words washed over me like waves, dashing me against the rocks of my own pain. I struggled to sit up. “Absolutely not, Thirsk. We cannot ask that sacrifice of anyone right now, not when we don’t yet know the true reach of what’s happened.”
Past Thirsk, Ryder’s expression turned relieved. I felt a quiet thrum of pleasure; he and I were in agreement.
But Thirsk stood firm. “Lady Farrin,” he said coolly, “I hope you know I am here as a courtesy, not to ask permission. In the event that the queen is incapacitated—as she is now—I have the authority to act in her name. And in her name, I must do this. The country can sit and wait for action no longer.”
“Rash action is worse than no action at all. We must think of the days ahead—not just today, when everyone is frightened and grieving.”
A distant explosion drew our attention to the windows. Gemma helped me limp over to look outside, and what I saw left my skin crawling. Illuminated by the moon, the city was chaos; crowds flooded through the streets far below us and past the Citadel walls. Scattered flames burned, and protesters gathered once more at the palace gates. Distant rifle fire popped; I hoped it came from desperate citizens and not from the guards who’d taken oaths at the queen’s feet to protect them. A low drone of unrest rose up through the air to meet my ears: desolate screams, angry shouts. It was like an anthill disturbed, all its glittering inhabitants spilling out in confused disarray. Through it all, the bells of the Citadel chimed—not in warning now but in sorrow. Low, deep chimes, each separated by a few seconds. A death knell.
“You see, Lady Farrin?” Thirsk said quietly. He’d come to join me at the windows. “The people demand action.”
Part of me understood what he meant and thought his judgment necessary. But I knew Yvaine would disagree, and the thought of her lying unconscious on a healer’s cot while such decisions were made without her made my stomach turn over. It was procedure, I knew; a hundred contingencies had been meticulously engineered over generations to prepare for a hundred different catastrophes. But the thought of Upper Army soldiers dragging so many women and girls from their homes and bringing them to the Warden for trials and training—tomorrow, perhaps, if Thirsk had his way—that was a horror I could not abide. Not now, not after what had happened. In one horrible day, everything had changed.
“What I see is fear and chaos,” I said, “both of which an immediate draft will heighten. The city is tinder, and a draft will set it fully ablaze.”
I drew in a deep breath and turned to face him; Gemma held on to my arm, helping me remain on my feet. “We need time,” I told him, “and information. How many were taken, and from where? Did this abduction follow the same patterns as the first? Are all the taken Anointed, like the first time, or do some possess low magic, or no magic at all? What is the state of our armies, both Upper and Lower?”
Ryder, standing beyond Thirsk, nodded thoughtfully. “They will need to reconfigure their ranks, redistribute personnel to account for any losses.”
I agreed. “Information, Thirsk, is what we need most of all.”
Thirsk listened closely to us both. I saw his shoulders sag a little and knew we had won the argument. Perhaps part of him had been hoping we would.
“And what of the Warden?” he asked. “She will not take kindly to this delay.”
“Let us deal with the Warden,” Gemma replied, her voice hard. “She won’t bother you, Thirsk, not after we’ve spoken to her.”
Thirsk turned away and was quiet for a long time. “The queen trusts you,” he said at last, “and though she hasn’t told me everything, she’s told me enough.” He turned to look at me, his expression solemn. “I know she deems you important—all of you, and your sister at Rosewarren, and the demon named Talan, and…” He paused, a quiet beat of sympathy. “And the librarian.”
“Gareth,” I whispered, my heart twisting. Gently, Gemma’s fingers squeezed mine.
Thirsk nodded, then took a long, slow breath. “Therefore I will heed your guidance in this moment, though you’d be foolish to think I will always do so. I am not a cruel man. I do not relish the idea of tearing families apart.” He dragged a tired hand across his face. “I will send out soldiers to survey the land, gather information, catalog our losses. But in two weeks’ time, if the queen has not yet recovered, I will enact the draft in her stead.”
Ryder shifted. “And if she is well?”
“I don’t imagine I’ll have trouble convincing her to agree with me,” Thirsk answered wearily, “not after what’s happened here today.” Then he gave me one last look—searching, worried—and left us three alone.
Gemma helped me back to the sofa. “We’ll go to Rosewarren, then?” she said. “Speak to the Warden, try to calm her? She’ll be furious about the delay.”
I nodded, wincing as I settled. Everywhere Yvaine had scratched me stung as if I’d been lashed with nettles. “And we’ll offer help as we can.”
“We’re not trained Roses,” Gemma said doubtfully.
“But we’re demigods, it seems, whatever that means. We can tear up forests and sing down queens. That has to count for something.”
Ryder looked entirely unconvinced by my wry humor. “You’re in no condition to help anyone, Farrin. Gemma can go to Rosewarren. You should rest.”
“I can’t possibly do that, not now. With Gareth gone, and…” I choked on my own sudden despair, shaking my head. Alastrina, and now Gareth, and so many countless others. “I’d go mad sitting at home, waiting. I have to do something. Besides, the royal healers will send me off with their best tonics and salves. I’ll be good as new before you know it.” I offered him a small smile. “And I’ll rest when I can,” I added quietly.
His mouth quirked, though in his eyes I saw true naked fear and freshly uprooted grief. “Promise me, Farrin.”
I reached for his hand, and he took it gently. “I promise,” I told him.
Gemma had already begun packing up my things, rustling about the room in her shining skirts. “Before we leave,” she said briskly, “I’ll go to Heldine and tell her what’s happened. She should hear it from one of us.”
Ryder looked over at her. “Will she be able to keep working? Those things you saw in the crown’s shadows—we need to know more about them. An egg, a goblet, a key. A lake under a moon. What are these objects, and where? What are they made of? Are they other anchors of the ytheliad ?”
“Or are they simply nonsense images?” I mused. “Scattered memories of places the crown has been? A three-eyed crown is unique. An egg, a goblet…there are millions of those.”
“Oh, Heldine will continue working, all right,” Gemma said, “especially now. The trick will be to convince her to stop and eat every now and then. It’s a wonder she and Gareth are still standing, what with all their awful habits…” Abruptly, she stopped speaking. Still standing. Gods, I hoped he was, wherever he was.
“And you?” I glanced up at Ryder. “Will you come with us to Rosewarren?”
He shook his head, looking miserable. “I must go home. I’ve been gone for a long time, and my mother…” He hesitated, and in the silence I read a thousand sad things. It hurt my heart to imagine those dark halls—everything made of black stone, the cupboards and closets still shrouded with the memories of Ryder’s childhood’s darkest days. I put both my hands around his, pressing what little strength I had into his skin. He circled his thumb over my wrist and stood a little straighter.
“I need to see my mother,” he finished roughly. “And the north needs me. I’ll travel among the villages there, help as I can. Seeing my face, knowing I’m alive and well, will reassure them. It will be chaos, much as it is here, given everything that’s just happened, and the Mist’s borders constantly shifting…” He shook his head once more. “I’ll have to hope that whatever’s just happened hasn’t sent a new wave of monsters crawling out of the woodwork.”
“We’ll meet at Ivyhill in one week, then?” said Gemma. My bag was packed, sitting ready on the bed. She stood at the mirror, shook out her hair, efficiently tied it back into a neater bun. “Perhaps we’ll have heard from Talan by that time, though I don’t know what I hope he’ll tell us. Gods resurrected, gods still dead—at this point, I’m not sure which would be better. I only hope…” She bit her lip; I watched her reflection waver. “I only hope that Kilraith coming to the Citadel doesn’t mean he’s out there hunting Talan too.”
“He’ll be all right, Gemma,” Ryder said. “A lesser creature would’ve broken during so many years in Kilraith’s service. Besides, he isn’t alone. He’s got one of my birds with him now.”
Gemma smiled at him in the mirror, her eyes bright. “And a Bask raven makes a fierce companion, does it?”
“You’re damn right it does.”
I looked up at him, a sudden rush of love warming me, distracting me from all my aches and bruises, and from the prick of nerves I felt as I remembered Philippa’s eager words. 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—
Was I wrong to have left her? If we’d stayed at Wardwell, started learning from her as she’d proposed instead of coming to the Citadel, would none of this have happened? Would Gareth and all the others still be here? Would Yvaine have stayed unhurt, untouched by Kilraith?
I swallowed hard against these questions, ones I couldn’t answer. An image came to my mind of Kilraith as a great wolf, trailing after us with sharp, tireless eyes, never quite catching us but nevertheless bringing chaos wherever he went. Wherever we went.
But what was done was done. Wasting time worrying over the past would do nothing but hinder the future.
“One week, then,” I said softly, offering Ryder a brave smile.
He nodded at me, brought my fingers to his lips and kissed them. In his eyes, I read the same sadness I felt. A week apart, and the whole country a mess, and all I wanted was to crawl back into that bed we’d vacated only this morning. But our world needed us—whatever we were, whatever secrets our godly blood held—and the north needed Ryder.
“One week,” he replied.
***
When Gemma and I emerged from our family’s greenway hidden on the grounds of Rosewarren, we heard the protesters before we saw them: a muffled roar, constant but rippling, as if we were underwater listening to people howl on the shore.
Gemma leaned hard on me, winded from the passage through the greenway. “What is that?” she murmured. She looked behind us at the watery silver fog streaming through the trees—the southern border of the Middlemist.
But the noise was coming from the other direction. We hurried around the priory’s great walls of red-and-black brick to its front doors, and from there we looked down the rolling green lawn at the crowd gathered along its edge. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people swarmed the iron gates of the priory. But some sort of ward magic blocked their passage, obscured their figures. I couldn’t see faces or even distinct bodies, just a blur of colors and shapes that emitted a distant roar of muddied sound. Faceless figures crawled up the wall that surrounded the priory’s grounds and tried to jump to the other side; they battered at the gates with sledgehammers; they tossed stones and torches. But everything that touched the priory’s ward magic—every stone and torch, every body—was flung back, stunned and harmless, until someone in the crowd dared to try again.
My stomach turned as I watched them. Even through the ward magic, I could feel their fear scrambling up the sloped lawn, nipping at our ankles. Could they see us standing here, blurred and frozen, doing nothing to help them?
“Do you think she said anything at all to them before shutting herself away behind the ward magic?” Gemma muttered.
“I doubt she so much as posted a notice,” I replied. “‘Yes, we know there’ve been more abductions. We’re doing the best we can. Please come back later.’”
Gareth’s name turned painfully in my chest. Abductions. Such a clinical word for such a horrible thing.
Grimly, Gemma raised her hand to knock on the priory doors—but before she could, one of them swung open just enough to reveal Mara on the other side. The sight of her stunned me. She looked deathly pale and haggard, with deep shadows under her brown eyes that reminded me unsettlingly of Yvaine. She wore her hair slicked back in a tight bun and was dressed in Order garb of dark brown and charcoal gray: a long, square-shouldered jacket, knee-high leather boots. Worse even than the shadows under her eyes was that, with her hair pulled back and her shoulders high and sharp in that coat, she looked eerily like the Warden.
“Come in, quickly,” she whispered, and we obeyed at once. She shut the door behind us, pulled us into an alcove off the entrance hall, and gestured for us to be quiet. I listened past the pounding of my heart for the Warden’s steps gliding across the stone floor, but only silence met my ears. After a moment, Mara seemed satisfied.
“This way,” she said quietly. “I need your help with something.”
“Wait—” Gemma began.
Mara shook her head. “No time.”
I hurried around her, blocking her path. “Mara, wait .”
She could have evaded me or pushed me aside, of course, but instead she only said, rather impatiently, “I had Cira beguile our family’s greenway with a spell that notifies me whenever it’s used. That’s how I knew you were here. And I’m sure I look terrible to your eyes, but I assure you I’m quite well. And most importantly, will you please come with me without further delay? Later we can talk about whatever it is you came to talk about. But right now, I need your help.” She paused, her urgent expression hardening into something cold and careful. “ Everyone needs your help.”
I exchanged a worried look with Gemma but said nothing more, instead stepping aside and letting Mara lead us through the priory. The dimly lit hallways buzzed with activity. Older Roses, fearsome and focused, strode off to what I assumed were various assignments. Younger Roses trotted after them, arms full of gear and weapons. From all corners came the distant, industrious clamor of weapons being sharpened, horses neighing out on the grounds, voices of girls and women shouting to each other. Throw it up here, quick, now, grab another one from the armory!
Every now and then as Mara led us quickly through the twisting corridors, their walls decorated with murals of Roses in combat, I felt curious eyes upon us, but no one stopped our progress. Perhaps by now they’d heard of what we’d done in Devenmere, or else they were so focused on their own duties that they couldn’t be bothered to stop and question us. And besides, we were with Mara.
Yet the longer we followed her, the more uneasy I became. She led us through a series of carpeted corridors, then out across one of the stone training yards, which bustled with horses and weapons and Roses in their browns and grays. We hurried after her to a small outbuilding a fair distance away from the priory, where we could hear nothing but our own footsteps—not the noise of the Roses readying for patrol or the crowd of people yelling in vain at the gates. Stately pines flanked the building, whispering ominously in the silvery wind. Once we were inside with the door shut behind us, everything grew still. The air was close and damp and smelled sour, like unwashed bodies.
Mara grabbed a torch from the wall. The flames cast harsh shapes across her skin, made the fresh slash on her face look doubly gruesome. “This way,” she said quietly, and we obeyed, though my body screamed at me to run and never come back to this place. Its stone staircases and winding corridors led us down into the earth, and the deeper we went, the fouler the air smelled. It felt like we were entering a tomb.
“Mara, are you taking us to the caves?” Gemma said at last, her voice a mere whisper.
“Quiet,” Mara snapped, and then she seemed to feel sorry for it and said more gently, “No. Not the caves. Something else.”
We reached a heavy wooden door reinforced with huge iron brackets, and after a slight hesitation, Mara pricked her finger with a needle she took from her pocket and pressed her bloody skin to the door’s flat brass latch. A slight ripple of magic swept past us, raising the hair on my arms, and then the door swung open, revealing a small chamber sunk into the ground a good twenty feet, the only access a narrow set of stone steps.
And in the middle of the room—bound by a dozen chains anchored to the stone wall, the stone ceiling, the stone floor—was a harpy.
At first my mind couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing. After years of hearing Olden children’s tales and Gareth’s incessant lectures, I could identify the creature immediately, but I’d never seen one in the flesh. At first my mind refused to accept its existence. She was enormous, twice as tall as Mara, with a broad torso, a hunched back, and wings that would have filled the room if they hadn’t been strapped cruelly to her body. She was, as were all of her kind, part bird, part woman. A startling combination, and much more jarring, more weathered, than the Roses’ sleek feathered bodies when they transformed. Her neck was ringed with pale flesh mottled with scabs, and she had a hooked nose, a wide mouth stuffed with fangs, and two round yellow eyes sunken deep into a gaunt skull. A wild mane of brown-and-gray hair crested her head before transitioning into feathers. She crouched within her chains on naked muscled legs tipped with huge black talons. I was glad that at least we could not see her bare torso.
But we could see enough. The wounds on her legs, the festering sores on her neck were fresh, glistening. She had been beaten.
I froze in horror, staring down at her.
Gemma, just behind me, whispered faintly, “Mara, what is this?”
Mara shut the chamber’s door and started down the stairs. “This is Nerys. My unit caught her yesterday, just before we started receiving word about the latest abductions. She was feeling bold, I suppose, knowing what was to happen. Because she did know.” Mara stopped in front of Nerys, nearly nose to nose with the massive creature, whose head hung low, her eyes closed. Mara’s own eyes glittered. “She attacked some of us coming home from a night in Fenwood, caught us by surprise. She got Cira worst of all. She’ll live, but barely. The rest of us managed to get her here, secure her.”
The harpy, Nerys, stirred at the sound of Mara’s voice. She raised her head, a movement both graceful and grotesque. Such fluid motion, and yet there was that grinning mouth of fangs, those sunken eyes. Eyes, I noticed, that didn’t quite meet my sister’s.
“Ah, you’re back,” Nerys rasped—the voice of an old woman, with something glottal rattling wetly underneath. “How I’ve missed you.”
Mara’s hand twitched at her side, drawing my gaze to the spiked club leaning against the chamber wall. My bile rose, and Gemma drew in a sharp breath. Had those wounds on Nerys been inflicted by my sister’s hand? If we weren’t here, would Mara have… I could hardly form the thought.
“Nerys has been resistant to most of our normal methods of extraction,” Mara continued coolly. “She’s old and strong. But not as strong as me.”
The harpy barked out a harsh laugh that rapidly dissolved into a horrific cough. She hocked up a wad of phlegm and spat it, but her aim was poor. It went at least a foot wide of Mara and splatted harmlessly on the floor.
“Fool girl,” growled Nerys. “Strong? If we met on equal terms, without these chains binding me to your floor, I would tear you to ribbons.”
“I’m not sure that you would, or that you even could. You see,” Mara went on, raising her voice, “there’s something about me that Nerys can’t seem to resist. When she looks at me—looks right at me—she starts to talk. Most of it’s nonsense, but every now and then, she’ll let slip an immensely useful nugget of information. Like the location of not just one underground market hub facilitating illegal trade between Edyn and the Old Country, but three such hubs: Yennore, Tenevis, and Irethe, they are called. Their locations, what sort of trade passes through them, what Olden safeguards keep them cloaked from us—and all of this in a day. No, Nerys,” Mara said, a little quieter now, “I think that if we met out there in the world, I could just look at you and tell you to lie down in the dirt, harmless as a fat cat, and you would obey me.”
My growing panic wedged itself into my throat like a knife; I could no longer keep quiet. “I don’t understand. How did you do this? Why are you doing this?”
The harpy’s head jerked against her chains. She couldn’t move enough to look at me, but her eyes darted about, searching. “Who’s there?” she called out, fresh terror in her voice. “Who did you bring here?”
“Oh, them?” Mara said. “Those are my sisters. I thought you might want to meet them. Farrin, Gemma?” She turned back to look at us, and when she met my eyes, her expression faltered just the slightest bit. A hesitation, a flinch.
The sight warmed my cold bones. There was my sister, there in that flicker of uncertainty. Whoever this other person was—this woman with the hard voice and the glittering dark eyes—she hadn’t yet taken over the Mara I knew, not completely.
“No, no, no…” Nerys’s wings strained against her bindings. “No more of you, no more …”
“Come down here and join us,” Mara said. When neither Gemma nor I moved, she whirled on us, blew out a frustrated breath. “Now. Please. We don’t have a lot of time. We don’t know when the next people might be taken, and the Warden—”
Mara stopped, seemed to collect herself. She lifted her chin and looked hard at us. “You want to help our country, the people in it? Alastrina? Gareth?” Her eyes cut to mine. I thought I saw a flicker of something sad cross that cold expression on her face. “Yes, I know he’s been taken, and I’m sorry, Farrin. Now, come here and do something about it. I know neither of you is a coward, nor are you useless. So prove it. Help me.”
I started down the stairs on watery legs, Gemma just behind me. “I don’t understand,” I said again. It seemed the safest thing to say. Perhaps if I got her talking, it would buy us all some time, stop Mara from doing whatever this was, shake some sense into her, shake Gareth’s name and dear face from my mind so I could think . If I could only touch Mara’s hand, remind her of herself, this would end. “Tell me how you’re able to persuade such a creature to tell you anything, much less such specific, valuable information—”
“Because of who we are,” Gemma whispered, cutting me off. She grabbed my hand, held me back. “Isn’t that right, Mara? Because of…”
Mara glared at us. “Yes,” she said. “Because of who we are. She looks at me, and she can’t help herself. We are the flame, and she is the moth. Because of who we are. ”
She said it carefully, not divulging anything too particular. But I knew precisely what she meant. Demigods. My mouth went dry as Philippa’s voice ran through my mind in a relentless loop. 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 to find it—
But Kerezen was god of the senses and the body. The power of persuasion seemed more like a trick of the mind—the god Jaetris’s domain.
Then Gemma exhaled shakily. “Sirens,” she whispered. “Succubi, incubi. Even…” She glanced back at me. “Your voice, Farrin.”
An icy curtain of dread dropped through me. Of course. There were other means of persuasion besides powers of the mind. Many Olden creatures crafted by Kerezen’s hand—the fae, the sirens, the succubi and incubi—held powers of the senses, powers of beauty, allure, music, seduction. And then there was me, a mere human savant who could nevertheless bring listeners to their knees and stun monsters like Kilraith—like Ankaret—using only the power of my voice.
Thanks to Philippa, such powers of persuasion lay in our blood. And here was Mara, abusing it without fully understanding it. We should have stayed at Wardwell , I thought, my stomach churning. We should have let Philippa teach us. We weren’t safe. Danger was inherent to our very blood.
Desperate, I hurried toward Mara. I would pull her away from this, make her look at me , not at this poor creature tormented by her very presence. I would be quick; I wouldn’t look at Nerys, wouldn’t give whatever power I held the chance to snare her.
But merely being near the harpy, it seemed, was enough. Nerys strained mightily against her chains and managed to shift just the slightest amount—enough to look at me, and at Gemma a step behind me.
She let out a low, awestruck groan. Her putrid breath puffed into my face. “Three of you,” she whispered, “all at once? Gods help me. What are you? Who are you?”
I couldn’t help but look at her. I shouldn’t have; there was no need to. And yet I think part of me was curious to see what would happen, to confirm that this was real. Could my simple presence, combined with my sisters’, muddle a mighty Olden beast?
The harpy’s yellow eyes—round and small as river stones, dull as old brass—darted helplessly about the room but always, always, came back to us: Mara, then me, then Gemma. The sight of us didn’t render her completely helpless; she still struggled against her bindings and clawed at the floor, her massive body vibrating with anger.
And yet she gaped at us, struck with confused dread, and then Mara spoke, her voice stony. “Tell me who you work for.”
The harpy squeezed her lipless mouth shut. Her skin bulged over her profusion of yellow fangs.
Mara pressed on. “I know you work for someone. Harpies are selfish and solitary, concerned with their own welfare above all else. They don’t attack humans out in the open like you did, not unless they’ve a very good reason. So what is it? Who is it?”
Finally, keening quietly, rocking herself as best she could despite her chains, Nerys began to speak. “I work for He Who Is All,” she rasped. She spoke falteringly, fighting against every word. “I came to Edyn in search for new children for His city.”
“Whose city?” Mara said sharply.
“He Who Is All,” Nerys spat.
“And what city is this? Where is it?”
The harpy croaked out a pained sound; I couldn’t be sure if it was a laugh or a sob. She closed her eyes, their faint yellow glow disappearing behind lids of wrinkled skin.
“The splendor of its revels,” she said, “the palace in the green, the towers in the night.”
“What city ?” Mara insisted.
Gemma hurried over, put herself between the harpy and Mara. “Stop this,” she hissed. “You’re hurting her.”
“And do you think all the people who’ve been taken, who are being kept by He Who Is All , aren’t hurting?” Mara snapped.
I turned blindly for the stairs, tears in my eyes. Gareth. Alastrina. I felt sick, like the worst kind of coward. Once again, we were in a place we shouldn’t be. Once again, we had brought only ruin and pain.
“We’re leaving,” I bit out, turning toward the stairs. “Gemma—”
But then I stopped, for at the top of the stairs stood the Warden— not a hair out of place, her square-shouldered black gown pristine. She held her hands clasped behind her back and surveyed the scene dispassionately.
“Tell me more about the revels,” the Warden commanded, her cold, clear voice booming through the small chamber.
The harpy shivered in her chains, sucked in a rattling breath. “They are like nothing that has ever been or will ever be. Oldens in the finest robes, Oldens in jewels, feasting and drinking. Flowers in the streets, honey in the goblets, fae in gowns of moonlight, vampyrs who’ve nothing to fear, for there is no sun in this city. There are only shadows made by the cool white moon. And humans…there they become the animals they truly are, pathetic dregs of weak-minded gods.”
“You’re lying,” Mara said, her voice hard. But I saw the slight twinge of surprise on her face. “Fae and vampyrs are proud and tribal. They keep to themselves. They wouldn’t ever deign to live in the same place.”
The harpy laughed deep in her throat. “You think you know so much about the Old Country, little Rose. But you have not seen its grandest city, and you should pray that you never do.”
“The city called Moonhollow?” the Warden asked mildly.
Nerys lifted her head, folds of skin peeling open to reveal her eyes once more. She looked longingly at Gemma, who had turned away to hide her face. “No,” the harpy growled. “Mhorghast.”
The Warden started gliding down the stairs. I scrambled out of her way, blurted, “Stop, please,” but whatever power I possessed that held the harpy in its tormented thrall seemed to have no effect on the Warden. She walked on, unhurried, untroubled.
“What an interesting word, Mhorghast ,” she said smoothly. “Is that the true name of this city, then?”
The harpy glared at her. Drool dripped from her fangs. Her naked legs shook. “ Mhorghast. You say it improperly. You dare to misname it.”
“Mmm.” The Warden crossed to a small table in the corner, upon which stood a series of stoppered bottles, each filled with a sickeningly bright liquid: yellow, green, red. There was a gun there too, though not like any I’d seen Lower Army soldiers carry. Not as long as a rifle, but much thinner than one—a simple, sleek design. And beside it, an array of feathered silver needles.
“And does Mhorghast have other names?” the Warden asked.
“It needs no other names!” Nerys roared, fighting hard against her chains.
The Warden opened the bottle of bright green liquid and dipped one of the feathered needles into it. “You don’t seem to be listening to me,” she said. “I’ve heard that some people call this city Moonhollow.”
The harpy spat. “ Moonhollow. Your languages are as pitiful as you are.”
I couldn’t bear to listen to this exchange any longer. I didn’t know what the Warden was doing with that needle, those bottles, that gun, but I knew I couldn’t let her succeed. I ran back down the stairs, opened my mouth, drew a breath—I would sing Nerys into compliance, I would end all of this with a few well-chosen notes—but then Mara was on me, holding me back, a hand clamped over my mouth. I fought her hard, remembering everything Ryder had taught me—an elbow to her gut, a heel smashing into her instep. But Mara was a Rose and a sentinel. She grunted in pain but didn’t release me.
“Mara!” Gemma shouted, disbelieving. She pounded uselessly on Mara’s arm. “Mara!” Under my feet, the room began to tremble, as if the roots pushing against these underground walls were waking up, eager to obey Gemma’s commands.
Nerys struggled as I did, and even trapped as she was, she was a sight to behold, her feathered muscles bulging under their chains, her great claws carving furrows into the stone floor.
“Leave us,” the Warden said, loading one of the feathered needles into the gun with a practiced, chilling snap.
Mara seized Gemma with her free hand and dragged us both up the stairs, out of the room, through the winding corridors that led us back up to the priory grounds. As we stumbled through the dark, pulled by Mara’s inimitable sentinel strength, I heard the harpy begin to scream, an awful blend of avian shrieks and agonized human cries. Mara shut the door on the sound, and suddenly we were back outside with the whispering pines, and the air that shimmered silver.
As soon as I found my footing, I rounded on Mara. “How dare you,” I said, struggling to catch my breath. “You knew of our power’s influence and didn’t tell us. The moment we stepped in that room, we made Nerys our victim without even knowing it!”
Mara stood a little apart from us, not looking at either of us, her posture rigid. “I had to do it. When I realized the influence I had on her and then not long after, the two of you showed up… The Warden’s conventional torture was taking too long. This will get us answers more quickly. She won’t suffer as much.”
Gemma scoffed, incredulous. She flung out her hand toward the door. “That certainly sounded like suffering to me!”
“We brought much of her knowledge to the surface,” Mara said, still not looking at us. “The Warden won’t have to work as long now to get everything she wants. The procedure will be more…efficient. What we did is a mercy.”
“And then what will the Warden do?” I shot back at her. “Once she’s wrung all the information she can out of this poor creature?”
Mara lifted her troubled gaze to mine at last. She said nothing, but I saw the answer plain as day on her face.
My heart sank. “Mara, how could you?” I whispered.
“You don’t know what it’s like,” she began.
“What, torturing someone for information?” Gemma asked sharply, spots of angry color in her pale cheeks. “Being used for my power? Well, thanks to you, now I know what both those things are like.”
“You had no right to bring us to Nerys,” I told her. There was a distant ringing in my ears, some faraway bell of shock. I couldn’t silence it.
“I know,” Mara said, a note of bitterness in her voice. “But I chose to do it anyway. And do you know why?” She lifted her head high, no longer shrinking with shame. “Because the Middlemist isn’t the only thing that’s dying. My sisters are dying too. Every day, more and more Olden creatures break through the barrier between realms, bringing terror with them wherever they go. Hunting humans, invading villages, trading goods, bodies, blood, bones. A fae elixir for a child. The murder of an enemy in exchange for a pledge of subservience. Humans are disappearing, some wandering off into the Mist of their own accord, plagued by a sickness no one understands. Others vanish without warning, whisked away by shadows in the space of a blink. And nothing we do helps, and no one is helping us .”
She shook her head miserably, turned away to stare at the Mist’s roiling border. “You have no right to criticize our methods, not from the safety of Ivyhill, not when you don’t have to wonder every night when you go to sleep if you’ll wake up to find that one of your sisters has been killed.”
“But we do wonder that, Mara,” I said quietly. “Every day, when Gilroy brings me the post, I feel the same jolt of fear and hope the same desperate hope.”
Still with her back to us, Mara hugged herself, bowed her head. She said nothing, and the Mist slithered quietly on through the distant trees.
The next moment, the door opened, and the Warden came out to join us. I heard no more screams as she emerged; the air was ominously silent. I had to exercise tremendous restraint to keep from knocking her to the ground right then and there. Her expression was serene, her dress spotless. She looked curiously at Gemma, then at me. I saw the question in her eyes: How did you get her to talk with no elixirs at your disposal, no spellwork, no empathic power? Maybe she wondered if Talan had taught us a thing or two about influencing others’ minds.
I approached her before she could ask a thing. Anger and grief steeled my spine. For once in my life, I wasn’t cowed by the sight of the Warden’s calm black eyes.
“We’ve come from the Citadel,” I told her sharply. From which Gareth was taken , I wanted to say, the words desolate on my tongue. “The queen closed the sinkhole in the palace and was gravely injured in doing so. I believe that had she not succeeded, many more people would have disappeared. The Royal Conclave is sending out teams to determine how many were abducted and from where. The Upper and Lower Armies are regrouping, and the Senate will postpone issuing the new draft for another two weeks while the queen heals and her advisers take stock, determine how best to address the citizenry.”
I took a breath. Only then did my courage waver slightly. “The Three-Eyed Crown will remain in the capital during this time for continued study. You will do nothing to bring it back here to the priory.”
The Warden lifted her eyebrows, looking slightly amused. But before she could say anything, I added, “I think you’ll consider this a fair exchange for the service we just rendered you with the harpy.”
I felt sick to say the words. The harpy. Her name was Nerys.
And yet Mara was right. We didn’t know what it was like to live up here, to serve the Order of the Rose. And when I tried to imagine myself in her place—fighting monsters every day, watching villages fall apart before my very eyes—I couldn’t predict what I would do, how strong I would be. Would I be so quick to balk at such tactics then? Or would I too come to accept them as a necessary evil of war?
I didn’t know the answer to that question, couldn’t even fully wrap my mind around the complexities of it. Instead I held my ground, staring at the Warden until she finally relented with a nod.
“A fair exchange indeed,” she replied, still amused. The condescending note in her voice made me want to scream.
I watched her glide back to the priory. Her tracks carved a faint line through the dew-soaked grounds, the slick carpet of pine needles. The grass, the trees, every bit of green here near the Mist was always wet. Mara had said in one of her earliest letters home that she thought this was because the Middlemist was lonely, that it missed the gods who had made it and cried its grief upon the world every day.
And what did the Mist think now, I wondered, with the daughters of a god so near? Had it always recognized, from the first moment Mara set foot in the priory, the true power lying dormant in her blood?
“Is that what you came here to do?” Mara asked hollowly, still not looking at either of us. “Tell the Warden about the queen, the draft?”
“Yes,” I answered sharply, just as Gemma said, “Yes, but—”
“But what ?” Mara sounded tired.
“I think…” Gemma paused, glanced at me. “I think we should all return to Wardwell. Not forever,” she added hastily, “but…for a few days, at least. We know very little about what Mother—Kerezen—can actually do in her current form. We should let her teach us, apply her strategies to our own powers. Think of what we could learn, how we might be useful to the queen—”
“Absolutely not,” I interrupted.
Mara’s expression was unreadable, her gaze distant. “I can’t leave right now, Gemma. The Order needs me. Maybe when things become a little calmer…”
Gemma threw an exasperated look my way. “But Farrin, don’t you think it’s wise to learn more about—”
“No, I don’t,” I said, cutting her off. The specters of my disastrous childhood concert, the echoes of the audience’s desperate cries, whispered meanly in my memory. Farrin, marry me. Farrin, I need you! “Whatever we just did down there? I don’t want to know a thing about it. I want it to stay deep down inside me and wither away. I certainly don’t want Philippa to make it stronger. What I do want is to go home. Our presence there will reassure everyone—the staff, our tenants, the nearby towns. We headed straight from the capital to Rosewarren. We didn’t even stop for a moment to check in at the house. I should have insisted on it.” The fresh guilt of this threatened to smother me. “Has Lilianne been taken? Has Gilroy? Byrn? Mrs. Seffwyck?”
Gemma blanched at my sharp tone. I was glad. Anything to knock Philippa out of her head.
“Anyway, that’s where we belong,” I said, “not running away to play at magic with a god too afraid to show her face when her people need her.”
Mara looked keenly at me. “Are you talking about a god leaving her people or a mother leaving her children?”
For a moment, I was too stunned to reply. Then came a fresh wave of anger. “If we can’t criticize you for the atrocities you and your sisters commit here,” I said, very low, my voice thin as a blade, “then you have no right to criticize us for what we endured when you were already well and gone. You know what it’s like to be taken away, I’ll grant you that. But you don’t know what it’s like to be left .”
And I did leave her then. I left both of them. See this, Mara? I thought. Feel that pang in your chest? That frustration, that anger? Imagine that, but a thousand times more painful. Imagine living for years and years with that storm raging inside you, and no end in sight, no relief.
I didn’t know if Gemma would follow me, and I didn’t care. I marched across the priory grounds, ignoring the chaos of the training yards, the Roses riding off into the Mist with their familiars scampering or flying alongside them. I could think of only one thing: home . That was where I was needed. That was where I could be of use. Not torturing harpies or appeasing cowardly mothers who scarcely deserved the title. Philippa. I said her name until the word mother disappeared from my mind. Philippa. Philippa. She was nothing more than that.
I reached our family’s greenway, hidden behind its curtain of beguiled, chiming snow-blossoms. A cardinal darted out of the blooms at my approach, brilliant red against the white petals. The sight of its feathers reminded me suddenly of Ankaret, and I realized with a hot prickle of shame that I wore her feather tucked into my dress, as had become my habit. Its presence was warm against my skin, a comfort I’d quickly grown used to. And yet I hadn’t thought to use it to call for help. Ankaret could have freed Nerys, could have reduced the Warden’s weapons to ashes.
As I pushed past the tinkling snow-blossoms, Ankaret’s bizarre, inhuman voice cooed in my memory. Someday you will need her. Use this to call her. She will hear you, wherever she is.
My head was heavy with all the things I could have done and all the things I shouldn’t have. I sent a bitter prayer to the gods— Keep Gareth safe —and let the greenway’s magic carry me home.