Chapter 22
I ran to the house, woke Gemma, and quickly told her what I’d found. If she wondered why I’d been walking about the grounds in the middle of the night, she didn’t ask. She ran at once to fetch Gilroy and Madam Moreen.
Father must have heard me clattering through the house in a panic. He came out of his room with clothes thrown on over his sleep shirt—a coat, trousers, boots. His appearance caught me off guard; he looked rested and clean. His brown eyes— my eyes—were clear and sharp.
Hope fluttered in my chest as I beheld him. He looked so much himself, so different from the drunken, staggering man who’d yelled at me in the morning room and thrown his glass. But I pushed hard against the feeling, kept my face composed. As much as I wanted to—as much as I loved him, even with all his faults—I could no longer trust him.
In that moment, with the memory of Ryder’s despairing face so freshly seared into my heart, it felt like I couldn’t trust anyone, perhaps most of all myself.
“Talan?” Father asked quietly.
I nodded, joining him as he strode down the hallway. “He’s badly hurt. Gemma went for Madam Moreen. I can only hope that will be enough. I didn’t get a good look at his wounds.”
“Madam Moreen is one of the finest Anointed healers I’ve ever known. She will save him, whatever his wounds.” Father spoke with such confidence and moved with such fluid grace as we hurried downstairs that the eager child’s heart inside me leaped with happiness. Father knew what to do; Father would make everything right. But the woman I’d become was skeptical. Fleetingly, I wondered if I would always feel torn between these two parts of myself. Would I always be a creature of conflict, of contradiction?
“What did he say?” Father asked. “Did he bring news?”
“He says he found Moonhollow,” I told him, with some hesitation. “That was all he said before falling unconscious.”
Father nodded. He seemed utterly unsurprised, so Gemma must have told him some of what we had learned from Yvaine and from the harpy, Nerys. I wasn’t sure if I should be glad or angry.
“If it’s true, then we’ll have to move quickly,” he said. “Something could have followed him here. The way to Moonhollow could shift or change before we have the chance to go there ourselves.”
“Talan wouldn’t have come here unless he was sure there would be no danger to us,” I insisted.
“We can’t be sure of that. Even demons can lose their reason when badly hurt.”
At the bottom of the stairs, Father stopped me with a hand on my arm. Though his grip was gentle, I flinched at the contact nevertheless. At once, he let go and stepped away. He didn’t quite look at me, but I saw the remorse on his face. My two selves still warred—one full of pity, one flaring with anger. One desperate to return to Ryder, one dreading the next time I would see him.
“I must wake Mr. Carbreigh and his crew,” Father said quietly, “tell them to be on alert.” He glanced across the entrance hall at the morning room, where everyone was gathering. “I’ll be back soon.”
Then he left, sweeping out the front doors with a snap of his coat.
The ruckus had woken some servants—Lilianne, Gemma’s maid, and my own, Hetty, and two wide-eyed kitchen maids—but Gilroy ushered them away, his stern voice brooking no argument. I hurried past them into the morning room and shut the door behind me.
Talan lay on a broad table someone had dragged into the room’s center—Madam Moreen’s nurse, probably. Bili was also her son, a strapping young man with quick hands and an iron stomach whom Madam Moreen had trained at her knee since he was a child. He was brisk and efficient, though not as impressive as Madam Moreen herself. She was a ballast of a woman, slender but solid, with smooth brown skin like polished oak and eyes hard and clear as cut glass. She’d been with my family for as long as I could remember, and I’d never been so glad to see as her as I was in that moment.
She glanced up at me, frowning. Her pressed white nightgown was already splattered with Talan’s blood. “Good, you can help hold him, my lady. I’ll have to cut away the infected flesh before we can sew him up.”
I obeyed at once, my stomach turning as Talan’s body came into view. He’d been stripped of his clothes, though Madam Moreen had thrown a sheet over his lower half—a sheet that was already soaked through with blood. The wounds were worse than I had thought: huge gashes across his chest and stomach, some running ragged down his sides. Something had torn into him, leaving him in ribbons. And even worse, the edges of the wounds were a sick purple-green color, like a bruise—and the color was growing, spreading. The infected flesh , Madam Moreen had said. My gorge rose. Infected with what ?
“It’s all right, my darling,” Gemma was saying, her voice remarkably calm, though I saw the fear on her face, how her eyes glittered with tears. She held on to his left arm, her grip firm. “Madam Moreen is the best healer in Gallinor, better even than the queen’s healers. She’ll have you fixed up before morning. And I’m here, I’m right here beside you, and I love you, Talan. Do you hear me? I love you.”
He looked up at her in obvious agony, his breath labored. “Gemma,” he choked out. His eyelids began to flutter closed. “Gemma?”
“I’m here, my love, I’m right here.” Gemma looked up frantically. “Madam?”
“He’s lost a lot of blood, my lady. He’s bound to fade in and out. Bili, are you ready?”
Her son took a slender knife from the array of tools laid out neatly on a nearby divan. He opened a vial full of acrid-smelling liquid and doused the blade with it. A smell like burning filled the air. I knew what that meant; the knife had been cleaned. Now Madam Moreen could start cutting.
“My lady?” she said, with a sharp glance at me. “His right arm, please. He’ll fight us.”
I obeyed at once, grasping Talan’s upper right arm and holding on tight, hoping my grip wasn’t adding to his pain.
As if sensing my reluctance, Madam Moreen said, “Don’t worry about hurting him. The important thing is to get the poison out.”
At once, I recalled the queen’s ball. Whatever was in Talan, it looked far worse than the venom that had hurt me that night, and there was certainly far more of it. My chest ached with pity, with horror, and without even thinking, I began to sing a lilting tune, one of the thousand lullabies that lived in my mind’s catalog of music. In war, there is no room for grief or terror , Ankaret had told me. I thought of running at her through the trees at Ravenswood, dodging her fire, singing my battle chant as I thought one thing again and again, my music focusing the word into a blade: Stop .
My eyes burned to remember it. Not long after that, the precious new world I’d been building with Ryder had shattered under the weight of his confession and my own frantic, spitting anger. And there in the morning room, with a song in my voice and terror lodged in my throat and my heart breaking, it seemed impossible that I could rebuild it.
Then Madam Moreen began to cut, carving away dark ribbons of infected flesh. They wriggled grotesquely, as if they were alive, as if they contained some burrowing, wicked thing. She dropped them on rags held out by Bili. He hurried to the roaring fire and tossed the dark bundles into the flames. Horrible shrieks rang out from the hearth as they burned.
I fought hard not to be sick and breathed through the putrid stench filling the air, forcing myself to keep singing. I kept the notes round and sweet, the words lilting, thinking of spring rain and solid mountains, clasped hands and cool breezes. Tender things, strong things, images of healing and resilience and a refusal to break. I tried to sing each image into the notes and shape the music around every phrase as if they were spoken commands—firm but gentle, and unflagging. To focus in such a ceaseless way made my whole body ache with effort. Sweat dripped down my back, and my tired mind obeyed with increasing reluctance.
You must practice this. Ankaret’s words returned, a faint whisper in my mind. You have let it sit idle for too long. She had to remind you.
Tears ran down my cheeks unchecked. It was an assault—the heat, the agony in Talan’s cries, the memory of my fourteen-year-old self sitting down happily to perform her first public concert, knowing nothing of the violent scene her music would soon unleash. The humiliation of knowing I’d bared myself to Ryder only hours before, the shame crawling through me to remember how cruelly I’d spoken to him. The desperate hope that he did love me, that he would still love me, even after I’d accused him of such terrible things—all of these horrible thoughts sat like boulders in my chest. Would I lose Ryder now? Should I want to?
I wiped my face, set my jaw, and concentrated on my breathing. In war, there is no room for grief or terror. I reset my grip on Talan’s arm, glanced up at Gemma’s stricken face. I kept singing.
With my song in the air, Talan’s screams softened, and the strain on his face became a little less pronounced, but he still writhed, his entire body fighting to get away from Madam Moreen’s flashing silver knife. I looked over at her and saw the sweat dripping down her forehead as she worked. The fire in the hearth was huge, its heat oppressive, but I was glad for it.
At last she cut away the final bit of infected flesh, and Bili tossed it with disgust into the fire. An hour had passed, maybe two. I had lost all sense of time.
“You can ease up on him a bit,” Madam Moreen instructed us. Her son wiped her brow with a clean cloth. “He won’t have the energy to keep fighting us now. But my lady, if you wouldn’t mind continuing to sing?” She gave me a grim smile. “I find it relaxes me.”
So I did, disappearing into the song’s simple cadence as Madam Moreen and Bili worked with their vials and salves, their bandages, their needles. While Talan moaned in quiet agony, they washed out all his wounds and packed them with medicines, wrapped him tightly in bandages. When they finished, they bundled every bloody cloth into a clean sheet, then another one, then tied it all up tight. Only then did I allow myself to stop singing. I sat heavily in the first chair I could find.
“Take those out to the refuse pile and burn them all,” Madam Moreen told her son. “Every last shred of them.”
Bili nodded gravely and hurried through the open door. Father stood there, having just come in from the entrance hall. He stopped for a moment—appalled by the smell, no doubt—and then recovered himself and came inside, with Ryder right on his heels.
As exhausted as I was, the sight of him still managed to shock me. He wore traveling clothes in his typical black and midnight blue—coat, trousers, tall boots—and he had his crossbow, and knives at his belt. His dark hair was pulled back into a tight knot; his eyes were sharp, lupine. He was ready to fight.
Only when our eyes met did his fearsome expression falter. I couldn’t read the emotion I saw there. Regret? Apology? Defiance? I went around the table to Gemma and helped her sit. She was trembling, ashen, her hands red with Talan’s blood.
“Can someone bring water?” I asked sharply. And of course Ryder was the one to do it, offering a full glass before I’d even finished the question. I glanced up at him with a prickly glare, took the glass from him, and looked away. I helped Gemma drink, my heart pounding. My two selves began warring once again. One angry, one aching. One resolute in her rage, the other longing to go to him.
“Carbreigh and his crew are on alert, patrolling the grounds,” Father said, “and I fetched Lord Bask because I thought he should be here to hear whatever information Talan has brought us. And because”—he looked at me cautiously, a little hopeful—“I thought his presence might be reassuring.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that, didn’t know how I felt about it. Their clothes were dry; they must have come back to Ivyhill using not our greenway but the Basks’, which meant that Ryder had decided to trust my father with its location. Did he hope that would impress me? Soften me? And then there was my infuriating father, fumbling to do what he thought might make me happy. He wasn’t wrong, not entirely, but what did he expect me to say? Thank you? Now everything is healed between us?
Even though part of me longed to say just that, I fought against the instinct. A single clumsy kindness wasn’t enough to warrant forgiveness, no matter how desperately I yearned for such peace.
“We must move quickly,” Ryder said, breaking the awkward silence. “If Talan can tell us how he found Moonhollow—”
“Absolutely not,” Madam Moreen said firmly. “He needs to rest and remain under my close observation. I’m not accustomed to treating demons. His body may react adversely to the medicine, especially if he experiences undue stress. And besides all that, I don’t even know what attacked him.”
“It’s all right,” Talan whispered. He shifted on the table, his eyelids fluttering open. “I can talk. Ryder’s right. It’s important. And Madam Moreen should stay. She should hear…what got me…”
Gemma went to him at once. “Darling, you don’t have to—”
“You know that I do.” He smiled weakly up at her. “My fierce wildcat. Don’t worry. All of this looks worse than it is.”
Not one of us believed that, but Gemma didn’t argue. She bent to kiss his forehead, smoothing back his damp hair. “Fine.” Then she looked up at Father and Ryder, her blue eyes blazing. “But the moment you start to push him too hard, I’ll put an end to this.”
“And I’ll help,” Madam Moreen added irritably.
“I was caught in a storm past the Spine of Caiathos, near Marrowgate,” Talan began, his voice faint but steady. “I was chasing a rumor I’d heard of a great fire—maybe a Mistfire—that had run wild in the woods there, and a mighty elemental who had managed to stop it. I’d wondered if…” He paused, glanced at me, at Ryder. I suspected what he wanted to say—that he had wondered if this mighty elemental, talented enough to extinguish a Mistfire, could have been yet another god reborn. Caiathos himself, perhaps, living in a human body just as Kerezen now lived in Philippa’s.
“Well,” Talan continued, “the storm came quickly, as storms sometimes do, and this one was particularly fierce. I lost my way in the wind and the dark, and then thought I saw a path. A glimmer of moonlight like a road through the forest.”
He glanced over at his raven, who sat with regal indignation on a cushioned perch in the corner of the room, his broken wing bound. He let out a single cross chirp.
“Ianto tried to stop me,” Talan continued with a fond smile. “He tugged at my hair and sleeves, flew right at my face, but the moonlight road was calling me. It grew brighter and brighter, such a welcome sight in that howling storm. I had to follow it. Of course, I see now that it was pulling at me with some sort of magical lure. It wanted me to follow it, and I couldn’t resist. And suddenly I was there, like when you see something out of the corner of your eye—you’re sure of it—and then you turn, and immediately the thing is gone. That’s how quick it was for me, only when I turned to find the shape flickering at the edge of my vision, it didn’t disappear. It became…a city.”
He paused, recovering his breath. Gemma took his hand in hers. “Talan, please, it’s all right,” she said. “You can rest. We can talk about this later.”
“No, no. I’m fine.” He took a deep breath and continued. “There were gardens hanging from towering trellises. A sprawling city—or so it seemed at first. With each step I took, my perception of its size changed; it was as grand as the capital, then a mere bustling village. I did at least have enough sense to take on a disguise and decided I would explore and observe for as long as it seemed safe to do so. The sky was full of stars, the moon brilliant and huge. And there was a palace…a palace on the horizon, and then suddenly I was on its steps, and then the next moment it was far away again, like the distant shadow of a mountain. Then Ianto…he felt something. I don’t know what it was, but suddenly he stopped trying to fight me, and off he went like a shot. I followed him. I thought…”
He shifted, wincing, to look at Ryder. “I thought maybe he’d sensed Alastrina. One of your ravens, raised by the two of you… Your wilding magic runs thick in his veins. It’s possible, isn’t it?”
Ryder nodded once but said nothing. I wondered if anyone else could see past his rigid posture and stern glare to the terrified hope shining in his eyes. I clasped my hands in my lap and stared at my fingers. I would not go to him. I would not .
“I followed him through…gods, I can’t even describe it. A city of white stone, all of it gleaming in the moonlight as if lit from within. Great houses with no doors or windows, just breezeways and promenades open to the night air. Music everywhere, the streets running gold with honey and jewels, or maybe it was…I don’t know, maybe it was blood. The place kept shifting, you see. Whenever I looked at it just right, the surface of it flickered and changed, then snapped back to itself. Everyone dancing…grand theaters full of roaring creatures…humans fighting each other in pits…”
His eyes drifted shut, his face contorting in pain.
Yvaine’s words whispered ominously through my mind. Moon by day, fire by night. Come and dance. Don’t try to fight. The beauty of shadows, the garish sunlight. Spin for the watchers, their revels so bright.
“What creatures did you see?” Father demanded. “Olden creatures? And humans were their prisoners?”
Talan nodded weakly. “Yes, so it seemed, and then…they found me. A clan of them. Old family friends.”
His voice went dark there at the end.
“A clan of demons?” Gemma whispered.
“They sniffed me out. I don’t know how. They set chimaera on me—three of them, leaping down from the rooftops. They shouted awful things at me, curses that lashed at my skin like whips. Human-fucker , they said. Traitor to the blood. ”
Father looked away, his hands in angry fists. I didn’t dare look at Gemma.
“Ianto came back to me, helped guide me to the moonlight road. He wasn’t alone.” Talan’s voice came weaker now, his words less clear. He was fighting hard to stay awake, to tell us everything he could. “There were others—birds, creatures, forest beasts. They fought off the chimaera. They…they were helping me. Showing me the way out. The demons—gods, they were beautiful, shining like waves, all of them sleek as cats. They shot the creatures who were helping me. They fell around me, and I tripped over them. Someone must have been helping them help me. I can’t reason how else it could have happened. Some wilder instructing them to lead me out of there…”
Talan wet his dry lips. The room was deathly quiet; even the fire in the hearth had begun to die.
“But one of the chimaera got me before I found the road. I couldn’t disguise myself anymore. The demons pursuing me must have been working some kind of magic to stop me from doing so. I couldn’t even see the beast’s face, what aspects it wore. Its claws tore me open and knocked Ianto flat. There was venom in its claws, and teeth. The pain was…” He shuddered. “Lightning in my veins. I think one of the demons’ arrows caught it then, by mistake. Sending chimaera after me wasn’t enough for them, apparently. They wanted to make certain I was dead. The beast reared back, roaring. If that hadn’t happened, I think it might have killed me. The moonlight road wasn’t far. I could see it shimmering at the edge of my vision. I scooped up Ianto and crawled toward it. I crawled and crawled, and then…I was here.”
“Here,” Ryder repeated tensely. “You mean where Farrin found you, in the hedge maze?”
Talan nodded, squeezing his eyes shut.
I went cold with fear. “But how did the road know to bring you here?”
He shook his head wearily, no longer able to speak.
“Such a powerful construction of magic as the road he described might have been able to read his thoughts,” Father suggested, “at least enough to take him where he wanted to go.”
“Maybe it was curious to see where that would be,” Gemma said quietly. “A demon trespasser someone clearly wanted to help? The road—or whoever made it—might have wanted to know more about that.”
Father burst into action. “Gilroy?” he shouted.
A moment later, our butler entered the room. In his sleeping cap and dressing gown, he looked too dear, too vulnerable. Everything suddenly felt that way, as if the whole fa?ade of the house had been torn down to reveal the fragile people cowering within.
If Gilroy was surprised by the state of the room, he betrayed nothing. “Yes, my lord?” he said smoothly.
“Wake everyone and arm them,” Father said. “Carbreigh’s crew is already patrolling the grounds, but I need the household on alert as well. Organize shifts, post staff at every window and door. I trust your and Mrs. Seffwyck’s judgment. I’ll be leaving soon for Fairhaven and will come find you before I depart, give you further instructions.”
Gilroy’s eyes did widen a bit at that, but he paused for only an instant before replying, “Yes, my lord,” and hurrying out of the room.
“Fairhaven?” I asked.
Father nodded. “The Royal Conclave needs to know what’s happened, as does the queen. They’ll want to know everything about Moonhollow and ready the Upper and Lower Armies to invade. It will take time to put together such regiments, with everyone scattered in the wake of the abductions. Farrin,” he added, “you’ll go to Rosewarren, request aid from the Warden. The Roses should be prepared to join forces with the armies. We’ll coordinate from those locations. No doubt the Warden has means to communicate with the queen directly from the priory.”
I opened my mouth to protest—this was happening too quickly, too rashly. An invasion ?—but Father cut me off before I could speak.
“I know this seems extreme,” he said, “but we have to act now, before we lose our chance. Talan,” he continued, “tell me more about where precisely you were when you first saw the moonlight road. What were you thinking about at that exact moment? What was the temperature of the air? Were there any notable landmarks? Had you been in the proximity of any particular magic just prior to finding the road?”
Talan cracked open his eyes, his face horribly pale. “I smelled…fire and flowers. I smelled rain. There was cinnamon on my tongue. The sea roared and roared.”
“So you were near a coastline? But you said you were near Marrowgate.” Father looked impatiently at Madam Moreen. “Is he delirious?”
Madam Moreen raised her eyebrows. “Of course he is, my lord. He’s just had a pound of poisoned skin cut off of him and has lost gods know how much blood.”
“I’ll send for Illaria,” Gemma said quickly. “Talan’s delirious, but he’s also a demon. His mind is strong. Some of this might actually be valuable information, and if anyone can decipher gibberish about scents and flavors, it’s her.”
Father looked unhappy but didn’t push Talan further. He looked up at me. “You’ll go to Rosewarren?”
“And tell them what?” I said. “You speak of an invasion, but we don’t know yet where to send anyone.”
“Tell them to be ready. Mobilize their soldiers, bring them back from their assignments. It’ll take time to rally our forces, and hopefully by then Talan will be well enough to tell us where to send them.”
Their soldiers. As if the Order of the Rose didn’t include his daughter in its ranks. But I couldn’t argue with him. These were Father’s strengths—his battle prowess, his strategic mind, his ability to act quickly. And he was right. The country was already wounded, its people frightened and grieving and scattered. Gathering forces strong enough to invade such a place as Moonhollow, a secret city hidden somewhere in the Old Country, would take time—and with every passing moment, things could change. The moonlight road could vanish, denying us access forever, or worse, Kilraith could come sweeping down it with an army of his own at his back.
I hurried up to my rooms and dressed quickly and warmly, gave a disgruntled Osmund a kiss, secured Ankaret’s feather in my bodice, and raced back downstairs. Ryder was waiting for me at the doors, armed and ready. I drew myself up as tall as I could, kept my expression flat. Am I that obvious? I’d asked him the first time we’d sparred. To me you are , he had answered.
“I suppose you want to come with me,” I said, sweeping past him without a second glance. My arm brushed against his as I crossed the threshold; I fought hard against the urge to close the distance between us.
He followed me, looming and quiet. “I’d like to, if you’ll allow it. If I sit still and wait, I’ll go mad.” He was quiet for a moment, then said, “Do you think it could have been Trina? Could she have wilded those animals to help Talan?”
The guarded hope in his voice threatened to crack me open. I braced myself against the feeling, and my voice came out sharp and mean. “How am I supposed to know that?”
He didn’t chastise me for the unkindness. Instead he said softly, “I’m so sorry, Farrin. I know you don’t have to accept this, but I’ll say it nonetheless—I’ve broken your trust. And I promise you, with everything I have in me, everything I am, that I love you not for your music but for your courage, your strength, for how fiercely you care for everyone around you.”
His gruff voice wavered, breaking my heart anew, and yet I said nothing. What was there to say? Everything was still too recent, too overwhelming—our naked bodies moving together in that quiet, cozy room; the shock of understanding who he really was, what he’d done. My cheeks burned, thinking of all the years I’d wondered about the shining boy, even pined after him. It was a mystery I’d thought I would never solve, and all the while Ryder had known the truth. And gods, how would I ever forget the devastated expression on his face as I shouted at him in the Ravenswood trees? As a boy, he’d risked everything to save me, and I’d returned that kindness by spitting all my thorns at him. So he had saved me, and hadn’t told me. So he had loved my music for years, and through it, had fallen in love with me. Were these really such terrible things? In his place, would I not have done and felt the same?
Exhaustion fell over me like a shroud. Everything had been easier before I’d known him, when I’d been alone, enduring all my worst moods without inflicting them on anyone else. Ryder certainly didn’t deserve them. When we got to Rosewarren, I’d have to rest, at least for an hour or two. My mind was fuzzy, my thoughts scattered. Maybe sleep would scrub away at least some of this awful ache.
“After I left, what did Ankaret do?” I managed to say. We were nearly at the hedge maze, the greenway to Rosewarren churning silently within.
“She left not long after you did,” he replied. “She told me…” He hesitated. “She told me she was sorry.”
“I’m not. I’m glad she told me the truth. I’m glad someone did. Now I know the real face of things.” Even I didn’t believe myself; the sound of my voice was brittle and tired in the quiet night air.
I plunged into the hedge maze, my side aching. I was walking too fast; my legs were shaky. But I liked the force of my heels digging into the ground and my fists punching the air, propelling me forward. I followed the maze’s winding path, ducked under the arbor heavy with vines. There was a slight dip in the hedge, where a familiar, eager magic pulled at me. To anyone else, it would have looked like just another stretch of immaculately groomed bushes. I stepped into the greenway without looking back. Ryder would follow, or he wouldn’t. What did I care? My mission was the same either way.
But I knew right away that something was wrong. I’d used this greenway to travel to Rosewarren many times. It was a fluid, easy passage, like floating on my back down a lazy river, and in only eight seconds, it always deposited me gently on the grounds of Rosewarren, behind the veil of chiming snow-blossoms.
This time, however, the passage was sharp, jolting, and all too brief. A blink, a heartbeat, and it threw me out. I landed roughly and banged my knee. Ryder came out just after me, hitting the ground with a slightly pained grunt.
We were in a tangled, brambly thicket. I winced at the prick of thorns and gingerly peeked through the branches. What I saw wasn’t Rosewarren; it was the nearby town of Derryndell, mere miles from Ivyhill. The night was quiet, the town asleep, but a few windows glowed with soft yellow light. Overhead, thunder rumbled. A flash of lightning illuminated a black line of storm clouds stretching across the sky to the east.
“I don’t understand,” I whispered.
“Maybe Talan brought some foul magic back from Moonhollow,” Ryder said, “or Mhorghast, or whatever the godsdamned place is called. It could have infected the greenway.”
“Or whatever sickness plagues the Middlemist—and Yvaine—has begun degrading other magical structures.”
He grunted. “A comforting thought. How far are we from Ivyhill?”
“Five miles or so.”
“We should start back before the storm gets worse. The greenway could work just fine next time, and it’s the quickest way to Rosewarren. Maybe this is only a momentary aberration.”
But I was only half listening, distracted by the line of dark clouds leading east—almost like a black road, or a shadowed forest path. I shivered at the sight of it, my heart racing. It was as if some switch had been flipped deep inside me, shifting the mechanism of my body from one state of being to another—watchfulness to eagerness, caution to easy courage.
“ All the storms that now live are his ,” I said. “That’s what Ankaret said. Follow them to the place where they are born, and you will find his city. ” I turned back to look at Ryder, beaming. “If we follow this storm, we’ll find the moonlight road. I’m sure of it.”
“And do what when we find it?” His eyes gleamed in the storm’s strange light. “We can’t go traipsing into an enemy city by ourselves.”
“No, of course not, but we can test the theory and determine whether or not this is a reliable way to find the road. If it appears, we’ll take note of where we were, how we found it, the state of the storm. We’ll bring that information to Rosewarren and send it to the capital.”
Ryder said nothing, glaring out at the dark landscape.
“I know you want to,” I told him. “You’re worried about Alastrina. If she did help Talan escape, she could be punished for it. Don’t you want to do whatever you can to help her?”
It was a cruel thing to say, but at that moment I would have said anything to make him agree with me. I wasn’t tired anymore; I felt no despair or anger. Instead I felt ready , like a hook in my heart was tugging me out of a mire toward fresh air.
I saw the moment the feeling took hold of him too—his angry brow smoothed out and his tense posture relaxed. A twinge of warning tickled the back of my throat, but I had no Ianto to try and stop me, no Osmund or Una or Freyda with their clear animal minds, so I ignored it.
“All right,” Ryder said, giving me a hard little smile. “Let’s try it.”
I grinned up at him and took his hand, tugging him out of the thicket and into the open air. The wind hit us like a wall, knocking the breath out of me; cold, hard sheets of rain pelted us, soaking us through in seconds. But I hardly noticed any of that as we trudged across the sodden fields of Derryndell, keeping the line of storms in our sights. We were on a path I had never traveled before, and instead of feeling frightened, I felt giddy, triumphant. At the other end we would find Gareth, and Alastrina, and all the others who’d been taken. They’d been waiting for us; they would be overjoyed. I could see Gareth’s smiling face, Alastrina’s exasperated smirk. Took you long enough.
My teeth started chattering, my body responding to the storm even though my mind couldn’t be bothered to. Soon I lost sight of Derryndell, the trees and the fields and the sky and its clouds all melding into one massive dark shape. I laughed through the awful cold, spun around to smile up at Ryder—and then I saw it, a glimmer in the corner of my eye.
I froze, afraid to blink, afraid to move. If I so much as breathed, I might lose it.
But Ryder had seen it too, and after a moment he seized my hand and ran toward it, laughing, as carefree and silly as a boy. My whole heart ached with love for him; was this what he could have been, had he grown up in a different house with a different father? Was this what I could have been? An untroubled girl so happy she could skip through even the fiercest storms and not be afraid?
The glimmer grew brighter and became a shimmering swath of moonlight rippling across the ground. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen; tears pricked my eyes as I took my first steps along it. A soft warmth bloomed through my body. I was skipping across a sparkling lake; I was lighter even than the birds. The whole world was silver and soft, and Ryder’s strong, steady hand was around mine. I’d never been happier.
Then came another flicker of movement at the corner of my eye—this one darker, the dart of a shadow. It pricked the bubble of my happiness, and in that brief instant of clarity, I dug in my heels and pulled Ryder to a stop.
At once the world shifted, as if it had been tilted on its side and was now righting itself. The path of light under our feet faded, leaving us standing in an ordinary field under an extraordinary sky, with a huge, brilliant moon and more stars than I’d ever seen. Underneath it all stood a small but grand city, and gardens, and a palace, all twinkling with as many lights as the sky above held. The air was full of music—pipes and drums and fiddles—and distant singing, distant screams. Some of delight, some of pain.
It was like being dashed with ice-cold water. Gareth. Alastrina. I froze, Ryder’s hand gripped in mine, both our palms clammy with sweat. Only then did we understand what we had done, what had been done to us.
Like Talan, we had taken the moonlight road—or it had taken us . We had found the city of Moonhollow.
The voice of Nerys the harpy hissed through my mind, correcting me.
Mhorghast.