Chapter 24
Angry voices woke me, all of them muffled, garbled, as if I were underwater listening to the world above spin on without me. I came to slowly, struggling to find my fingers, my toes, my limbs. I listened for my pulse, heard the in and out of my breath. I ached, and my mouth was parched, but I was alive.
When I cracked open my eyes at last, I saw a ceiling overhead— elaborate white molding, a painted pastoral scene, Ivyhill’s ever-present glossy green vines. Vines my mother had made.
Mother. Philippa.
Kerezen.
Suddenly, everything I’d seen in Mhorghast came rushing back to me in a torrent of fear. I bolted upright and immediately regretted it; a sharp pain stabbed my temples, the worst headache I’d ever felt. For an instant, my vision went black, then returned fuzzily, a shimmering aura softening every edge and brightening every color. I caught my breath and realized I was on a couch in the morning room, with Gemma beside me. Across the plush green-and-ivory rug was another couch, on which Talan reclined, looking wan and sweaty but at least a little healthier than when I’d last seen him.
“Ryder?” I croaked, struggling to look around the room. Even with Gemma’s help, the effort was monumental. “Alastrina?”
“They’re both here and alive,” Gemma said quietly. My bleary vision made her glow like some dream creature. Her golden hair cascaded over her shoulder, bound with a silk ribbon; her dressing gown fell around her in emerald velvet folds. I gaped at her, marveling. I gripped her hand hard and leaned gratefully into her slim, sturdy form.
“Madam Moreen’s tending to Ryder over there,” Gemma continued, nodding at the corner of the room. “You suffered an arrow graze. Him, a few lacerations. Nothing too severe, thankfully.”
I shifted a little to look, and when I saw him, alive and whole, glowering up at Madam Moreen as she bandaged his left arm, relief swept through me and tears pricked my tired eyes. Ryder met my gaze from across the room. His whole self lit up when he saw me, his scowl softening to that tender expression I now knew so well—his face open and dear, the years falling away from his face so that he looked more the young man he actually was, and less the angry son forged in our fathers’ fires.
But then a shadow fell over his face, and he looked quickly away, frowning at the floor.
My heart twisted. How marvelous it was, how frighteningly precious, to be able to read another person’s face so well. He thought I was still angry with him, and of course I was , but… Gods, we were alive. At that moment, nothing else mattered. If I’d been able to stand, I would have thrown all my hurt and wounded pride out the window and run to him.
“And Alastrina…” Gemma’s voice trailed off.
Alarmed, I looked back at her. My vision was beginning to clear, and with it came a sort of creeping dread. “What is it? Is she hurt?”
“Not any worse than you and Ryder, at least not physically. But she hasn’t said a word, and only Illaria could get her calm enough for Madam Moreen to tend to her wounds. She wouldn’t even calm for Ryder—”
“Whoever you are— whatever you are—if you have the power to heal them all, as you say you do, then do it at once, right this instant, or leave!”
Father’s voice rang with fury, drawing my attention across the room to where he stood in the doorway wearing his travel cloak, boots, and riding gloves. He had said he would go to the capital to alert Yvaine and her councilors of what had happened; someone must have ridden after him and brought him back. Behind him in the entrance hall, armed and ready, hovered six of our house guards and our groundskeeper, Mr. Carbreigh, with his apprentices—all of them elementals with as much talent for combat using natural magicks as for crafting a topiary with simple shears.
And facing Father, I realized, my stomach leaden, was Philippa.
Her face was hard, and her green dress and gray coat were as simple as they’d been at Wardwell. And though the splendor she’d worn around her like a gleaming cloak when she’d come for us in Mhorghast was gone—that shining armor, her hair full of jewels—it still burned my eyes to look at her, as if some remnant of that godly glory still clung to her.
“I told you, I can’t,” she said, her voice flat and clean as a fresh blade. “I’ve already risked too much by going to Mhorghast and rescuing them. Even in the brief instant I was there, I’m certain they sensed my presence and knew me for what I was.”
“ Who knew?” I asked, pushing myself up onto my forearms.
She glanced over at me, her expression unreadable. “Everyone. Even the simplest of creatures there—your bird friends from Edyn—sensed it, even if they didn’t understand it. But those who did understand…”
She fell silent. My whole body turned cold. “Kilraith,” I whispered.
“He Who Is All, they call him,” she muttered in agreement. “Though I don’t know why. I sensed so many things in the moments I was there. So much agony, so much blood lust…”
Father was practically trembling with rage by the door. “As I said,” he ground out, “if you don’t intend to heal them, then—”
“You think I don’t want to heal them?” Philippa snapped. She glared back at him, her dark eyes flashing gold. “My own daughter, her lover, her friends? Gideon, I told you: We are being watched. All of Edyn is being watched. A god wandered into their midst and then was gone. They’ll sniff me out like a hound on a blood trail. Even my presence here is dangerous; the world will start responding to me as anything would to its creator, and people will begin to notice. And intentionally working magic would without question bring the wrath of Mhorghast down on Ivyhill. You are woefully unprepared for such an assault.”
They stared each other down, Father and Philippa, before Father relented at last and sank into a nearby chair, his head in his hands. He didn’t say anything more. My heart ached for him; I could only imagine what he was thinking, how it hurt him to see Philippa. His beloved wife had returned—not a trick this time, not Alastrina donning a cruel glamour, but perhaps something even worse. The wife he’d lost had come back and was no longer entirely herself. She was something more, something unignorably mighty. The whole room vibrated with her presence, as if some great drum were sounding in Ivyhill’s basement, its rumbles traveling up the walls.
Desperate to break the silence, I somehow found my voice. “You said you sensed many things while you were there. What were they? Is it information we can use? Weaknesses in Mhorghast’s perimeter, the city’s population, Kilraith’s location—”
A dark curl of laughter sounded from behind me, but when I sat up to find it, my heart pounding with sudden fear, I saw only Alastrina. She was curled up in a chair by the window, her arms bandaged and her feet bare. My breath caught in my throat. She had looked gaunt in Mhorghast but still vital enough. Now she looked skeletal—her eyes haunted and red-rimmed, her scarred face draped in harsh shadows.
“You won’t be able to find him,” she whispered. “No one ever has. You think you’re the first to try and crack the shell?”
She stared at us for a moment, her eyes glittering with tears, and then looked away, back out the window. Gemma’s friend Illaria, who was also one of our closest neighbors, sat tensely on a nearby bench. She wore her long black hair neatly tied back from her lovely brown face, and a belt of herb sachets and stoppered essences strapped to her waist. Gemma had said she would send for her to help Talan decipher the scents he remembered from when he found the moonlight road, but now it seemed she had another task. Alastrina gripped her hand tightly, as if Illaria’s presence were the only thing keeping her from being pulled back through the night to Mhorghast.
I shot Gemma a look, remembering her words from months ago. I may have to play matchmaker with those two.
But Gemma just shook her head at me, looking as bemused as I felt. I desperately wanted to ask Alastrina what she meant— You think you’re the first to try and crack the shell? —but I stayed quiet, chewing my lip. She was in no state for questions.
“There were thousands of beings there,” Philippa said quietly, as if she hadn’t heard Alastrina. “Perhaps three thousand in total, most of them Olden. Most of them willing, but not all. And of the humans…” Philippa’s voice darkened. “Most of them were unwilling, but not all. There were many deals being struck, many bargains being made. For wealth, for power, for flesh.”
“And Kilraith?” Ryder asked from his corner. Madam Moreen had finished tying off his bandages, and he stood up, bristling with anger. “Did you sense him among all those thousands?”
Philippa’s brow furrowed. She tapped her pipe against her teeth. “I sensed…a presence, certainly. A tremendous will. And it was familiar, which surprised me. This Kilraith…I do not know the name, nor have I met him, whatever he is. And yet…” Her expression grew more troubled, as if she were recalling a nasty memory. “And yet I know what I felt when I came to save you, my dear.” She glanced at me, her gaze a bit absent. “I felt a great power in that place, stretching into every corner. Like ward magic, in a way, only much stronger. And…” She went to the fire and lit her pipe, puffed on it in contemplation. “So familiar . Like seeing a face across a crowded room, and you know that face somehow, or at least you recognize shades of it. But you can’t put a name to it, can’t remember where you first saw it. A kindred feeling.”
“Kindred?” Talan turned toward her, his damp hair clinging to his forehead. “Do you think what you felt could have been the presence of another god?”
Philippa looked at him in astonishment. “Gorgeous demon. I’ll attribute that question to your tremendous loss of blood. Another god? Absolutely not. I would have known one of my own brothers or sisters immediately, without question. Would you have caught my Gemma’s perfume on the air and questioned that it belonged to her? Or would you know immediately, right down to your bones, the scent of your mate?”
Father shot to his feet. “All right, enough of this,” he spat. “You are no god . You are either Philippa Ashbourne, with her mind scrambled by some nefarious magic, or you’re a piece of nefarious magic yourself—a figment, or some glamoured impostor sent to confuse and distract us. Carbreigh! Captain Nomi!” he barked over his shoulder. “Confine this creature to the basement before she can say another word.”
“Why, Gideon Ashbourne,” Philippa cooed, still puffing thoughtfully on her pipe. “The mighty Anointed sentinel who boasts about his strength from coast to coast now sends his loyal house soldiers to fight for him? Are you sure you’re not the impostor, darling?”
It happened quickly. Father’s face twisted with rage. He lunged at her, his sentinel power booming out of him and rippling across the room like a hot ocean, stealing my breath and tipping every piece of furniture onto its side.
But Philippa didn’t move, didn’t even blink. With a breath, she grew taller, fiercer, the shape of her expanding to fill the room. Shadows shivered around her fingers as if they’d been drawn out of every nook and cranny to worship her. The fire in the hearth vanished; all the flickering candles in the room went out. The only light was Philippa—her eyes like torches, her skin like the sunset sky. Again I saw the faint glitter of jewels in her hair and the shimmer of mail across her bodice. Father came at her, but all his mighty strength was nothing. A flick of her hand, and he was down, sprawled on the floor with a huge gash carved across his chest. Blood spilled out of it, staining his clothes, the carpet, his skin. He gaped down at himself, gasping for air.
I tried to move but couldn’t; Philippa’s power pinned me to my seat. Instead I watched, tears streaming down my face from her unearthly incandescence, as she knelt at Father’s side. She watched him for a moment, something like sadness in her eyes, and then she drew her hand up his body, and he was well again. No gash, no blood. Only a rip in his coat where the wound had once been.
The fire roared back to life; the candles reclaimed their nervous light. The shadows returned to their corners, scurrying away like spiders. And Philippa was simply a woman in a green dress, crouching beside a speechless man who looked like he’d just learned that the sky was in fact the ocean, that up was down.
“So you see now,” Philippa said at last, “that I am what I claim to be. My story is a long one, and I won’t tell it all again right now. It’s far more important to tend to our wounded—which I suppose I should do momentarily,” she added, with an irritable look at my father. “Now that I’ve already had to use some of my power to demonstrate your foolishness, I might as well fix everyone up. So, for now, suffice it to say, I am here and I am real. I am your wife, the mother of your children, and I am also a god. This is no trick. And I don’t think you want to see what will happen if you or any of your staff tries to confine me again.”
She rose and settled wearily into a chair by the fire. The sadness in her expression was quiet, resolute, and though her face was ageless, her eyes held lifetimes. I shivered as I contemplated an eerie question: Someday, if I lived to see it, would my own eyes look like that? A god’s eyes trapped in a human’s face?
“Now,” she said, looking around at everyone, “while my power works to heal your wounds—it will be slower than I’d like, so as to hopefully not attract too much undue attention—let’s all of us talk. We have an invasion to plan.”
That startled me. Somewhere in the dregs of my exhaustion, I found a shred of my old anger, and it gave me the strength to speak. “I thought you were content to stay forever at Wardwell. You’re a mere shadow of your former self, you said. You fear Kilraith will want to use you.”
Her eyes cut quickly to mine. “And so I am, and so he most likely will. But I have had to show myself already, haven’t I, in order to rescue you and your lover from your own lunacy? First you two, then your father and his temper. A moonlight road.” She said the words scornfully, glanced at Ryder with an impatient curl of her lips. “I would have thought a daughter of mine and a man impressive enough to be her chosen mate would be able to resist the lure of a mere pretty trick of light.”
Ryder drew himself up, as if to defend our honor, but Philippa waved him silent. “To Wardwell I will return, hopefully before the enemy comes sniffing around to find me. There I will hide myself away for everyone’s sake. But first, since my cover has been so spectacularly blown, I’ll help you. Someone take notes. My penmanship remains atrocious.”
The comment was a stab to my heart. She had indeed always had sloppy penmanship, the sort of careless loopy lettering that as a child obsessed with neatness, I’d both abhorred and quietly admired. I glanced at Father. Ashen with shock, he had dragged himself back into his chair and now sat there in silence, his shoulders slumped, his whole posture defeated. Mr. Carbreigh and his crew, and the house guards, milled about uncertainly in the entrance hall.
Somehow I found the strength to rise. It was not a new thing, forcing myself into action to keep the house running when my father found himself unable to do so. I sent the guards away with instructions: continue patrolling the house and grounds; run drills using their elemental magic; reinforce the doors and windows; assign a partner to every staff member so no one ever walked alone.
Then I limped back to the couch and opened a drawer in the table beside it. A notebook lay within, along with a selection of pens. I opened the notebook to a blank page. When I looked up at Philippa, she was watching me fondly, a softness in her face that reminded me more of the mother I’d lost and less of the god who’d just saved my life.
I hardened myself against the pain screwing itself into my chest. “Well?” I said briskly. “I’m ready. Someone start talking.”
***
Hours later, I staggered upstairs in a bleary-eyed daze, wincing with every step. Philippa had sworn I would wake in the morning feeling like nothing had happened, and I suppose I believed her, but my head was full, and my hand ached from writing, and my heart felt too heavy to carry. War. Invasion. The words sat strangely in my mind, tilting my whole world out of alignment. Armies would be gathered—both the Upper, with all their Anointed and low magicks, and the Lower, whose soldiers possessed no magic and instead fought with conventional weapons. We would send for reinforcements from the other continents, Aidurra and Vauzanne. Troops needed to be sent to every village, to reinforce their borders and teach the citizens what to look out for, what to guard against. They would have to lock themselves inside during storms, ignore glimmers of light, never walk alone, and carry tokens of reality and reminders of danger wherever they went—pieces of home, paintings of loved ones, locks of hair, handwritten notes. Anything that might jog them back to themselves and break them free of Mhorghast’s hungry hold. Gemma had suggested hiring a crew of artisans to make more of the wooden tokens that poor Phaidra had given us before going to the Old Country—shapes that were dear to the owners, all of them carved from Edynic trees. They would serve as physical anchors to help people remember their homes—where they came from, where they belonged.
And then there was the Warden.
As I limped down the hallway of our family’s wing, I imagined with dread what the Warden would think of this. We would need to delay the draft yet again and ask her to send the armies any Roses she could spare. I could predict the response we’d get. And what do you think will happen if I send Roses to you and leave the Mist unguarded? Don’t you think that’s exactly what this Kilraith wants?
And it was quite possible she would be correct to fear such a thing. The more I thought about it, the faster my thoughts scattered and spiraled. Could we trust anything we’d seen in Mhorghast? Or was all of it—the arena, the gilded streets, the looming palace—an illusion constructed to divert our attention from what really mattered? Philippa didn’t think so; she insisted that even such an elaborate illusion as that would be no match for her godly senses.
“The same godly senses that you yourself compared to a child learning how to walk?” I had snapped at her, finally pushed past the edge of my patience by all the suggestions being thrown at me, the many tasks and questions I’d scribbled in my notebook.
Philippa had looked at me evenly through the veil of her damned pipe smoke. “A god learning how to walk is still a god, and more powerful than any Anointed human. Do not worry, angry daughter of mine. When I say that I would be able to sniff out a lie, I speak the truth. You can trust me.”
Trust . Another word that sat askew inside of me. Trust a mother who had left us without explanation. Trust a god who had, along with her kindred, created a curse as reckless and dangerous as the ytheliad .
Trust a woman who had happily spent years locked away from all memories of the life she’d left behind.
Trust a man whose greatest crime was saving my life and being afraid to tell me about—perhaps in part because he feared I’d react exactly as I had.
I sat in my room, Osmund purring obliviously in my lap, and pored over my notes. A hundred new things to do, a thousand messages to write. Supplies to gather, weapons to stockpile. The egg, the key, the goblet, the black lake under a full moon, the Three-Eyed Crown.
Those five things I’d written at the very end of my notes, each object underlined. I hadn’t mentioned them to Philippa, nor had anyone else. I’d been afraid to. Even looking at the words felt dangerous, as if rearranging the letters in a certain way would reveal some awful piece of spellwork that would activate upon being discovered. A silly fear; I scolded myself for it. Was I holding back information from her as some sort of petty revenge? You left us when we were children, so I won’t tell you about the strange images Gareth and Heldine deciphered from the Three-Eyed Crown’s shadows. How do you like that?
I laughed to myself, leaned back against my pillows, closed my eyes, and stroked the soft fur between Osmund’s ears. Philippa was staying the night to help Carbreigh reinforce the grounds. She would leave for Wardwell in the morning. I would tell her then, at breakfast. An egg, a key, a goblet, a black lake under a full moon . What did it mean? Were they anchors? Were they clues? Were they nothing?
The words cycled through my mind, making my heart ache. With my free hand, I held my notebook to my chest and pressed it hard against my skin, as if that would do something to soothe my aching heart. Because of course thinking about the crown made me think of Gareth. Gareth. Tears burned behind my closed eyelids as my mind summoned the image of his smiling, bespectacled face, his messy hair, his rumpled tie. I imagined him surrounded by books, chewing on a pen until it stained his lip. I refused to think of him in Mhorghast, enduring whatever cruelties might be done to him there—if he was still alive, that is.
I bit my lips raw, thinking the words over and over: Gareth is alive. Gareth is alive. I would absolutely not think of how I wished we’d managed to save him and not Alastrina. She’d been there for longer than he had; it was only fair. But then, Alastrina had been well taken care of—pet of a fae, a popular attraction. A warrior, a wilder. What creatures of Mhorghast would value Gareth’s sage mind?
I fell into a troubled sleep sitting slumped against my pillows, and when I jolted upright, my windows were soft with dawn and my skin was cold with fear. I lay there for a moment, my heart racing. Osmund was cleaning himself contentedly on the hearthrug. I heard no sounds of battle from downstairs, no cries of anger. And yet I couldn’t ignore the panic twisting in my stomach. Something was wrong.
I hadn’t ever changed into my nightclothes and raced downstairs in the ragged gown I’d worn to Mhorghast, just as Gilroy came into the entrance hall with the morning post. Ryder was behind him, tramping in through the front doors wearing dirty boots and smelling of horses.
“Ah, Lady Farrin,” said Gilroy genially, as if we hadn’t all stayed up half the night planning for war. “A letter has arrived for you from Fairhaven bearing the seal of the queen.”
And there was the reason for my dread. I knew it the moment he lifted the envelope into the air, the moment I saw the distinctive purple wax seal. I didn’t even thank him, just ripped the envelope from his hand and tore it open. I quickly read the hastily scrawled letter five times, my heart sinking so fast I felt dizzy.
Finally I looked up, tears in my eyes, and found Ryder standing tensely by the doors. He was focused entirely on me, his expression grim, as if he knew what I had to say before I even uttered the words.
“Yvaine is dying,” I choked out. “She’s bedridden, hardly talking, not eating. I’m to come at once to say…” I shook my head, unable to finish the awful sentence. “They think she may have only days left to live.”
I crumpled the letter in my fists, as if that could somehow render false the news it carried. As if pain and heartbreak could be banished with a flick of my demigod wrist.
I tried to anchor myself with the steady blue steel of Ryder’s gaze. There were so many things to say, and I couldn’t find the words for any of them. My heart still twinged with hurt and disbelief. This was a man for whom I’d bared my entire self—body and heart and mind. That he hadn’t told me what he’d done until Ankaret urged the truth out of him still ate at me, but what felt even worse was remembering the unfair accusation I’d leveled at him. You love my power , I’d told him. Not me . All the extraordinary kindnesses he had shown me, and in my anger the only response I had found was cruelty. Remembering how I’d lashed out, how the words I’d spat under those dark northern trees had seemed for a moment to strike all the light from his eyes, made it painful to look at him.
And yet I wanted no one else with me but him. Not for this, not for anything.
“Will you come with me to see her?” I asked him, tears hot at the back of my throat.
His grave expression softened. “I would go with you anywhere.”