Chapter Four
“If requested, you must do it straightaway,” Briar, the Night Crest, says that evening. She zips up the spiral stone steps, bedding in hand. I follow closely behind.
“Of course,” I say.
“No matter the ask,” she answers.
“I understand.”
“Do you?” She stops, facing me. The lines deepen around her mouth as she frowns.
I shrug. “I’ve been harmed in most ways.”
“They enjoy finding different ones.” To my surprise, Briar’s brown eyes soften, and she turns, climbing again. Over her shoulder, she quips: “The coin is good, but the price is high.”
I stumble, my hand bracing against the cool stone.
Could she get any more ominous? Yet the thought of Jeremee, all four limbs chained down in dues, is even more menacing.
It was almost too easy, submitting the paperwork to the teller today.
It was almost too fast, the way House Illusion accepted a new body for the same night.
At the top of the steps, we veer down the passageway that surrounds the Illusion House, and then Briar stops before a servant’s room.
“You can still visit the Nest, but once you take the blood oath of silence, you cannot speak of what you do and see up here at night. You can swear the blood oath now, or after we settle you.”
“After is fine.”
“This is your room.” She waves fingers over the lock, showing me the sleight of hand.
The door creaks open, revealing a room so narrow I could stretch out my arms and almost touch both sides.
But that’s not what snatches my breath. It’s the tiny window on the back wall, a bright square of light breaking up the stone.
Drifting forward, I breathe, “I have a window.”
“You do.”
“I haven’t…” My voice fails. While Base faeries work in the fields and Crests work upstairs, some Scarps go their entire lives without seeing the sun, especially those who launder, sew, and cobble.
The first time I felt the sun sink into my skin for hours on end was as a Day Crest when chaperoning Kassandra on walks through the Illusion courtyards.
Growing up, I would gaze at the stars on the occasional nights in the Peri when my parents were too busy making up to care about my whereabouts.
Now I can look at the blazing sky without perimeters.
Pressing palms to the stone, I peer through the open space, just large enough for my head. A cool late-afternoon breeze caresses my cheeks.
A lawn of cropped, pear-stained grass stretches away from the base of the House Illusion building to the inner wall that holds the state rooms—the coronation hall, the Great Gallery, the public kitchens, and more.
Halflings march along the tops of the battlements.
Some hold whips, the official weapon for the descendants of the House of Reign.
Others sling bows and arrows over their shoulders for the members of the House of Illusion, and a very few clutch the long staffs of the House of Healing.
Although I cannot see beyond the inner wall and its parapets, I know from my mother’s stories and my grandmother’s history that the palace farms make up the land between the inner wall and the outer wall.
Beyond that is the Peri, the faerie villages of Versara.
To the north is the Reign stronghold of Cont, to the west the Healing city of Remiti, and to the south the Illusion fort of Fraulus.
On the horizon is the purple smudge of the mountains and the tans of the Amyrian Desert.
And somewhere even farther beyond that, the mythical House of Death.
“Where are the state gardens?” I ask, surveying the barren turf before me.
“You’re looking at them.”
I jerk back into the dimness, gaping at Briar. “But it’s just half-dead grass! Where are the fruit trees? The herbs?”
“In my lifetime, I’ve only ever seen faeries watering and cutting the lawn. Pulling out anything else that grows.” Her austere expression does not falter.
That doesn’t make sense. In a valley kingdom surrounded by rough mountains and desert, surely every inch of land must be purposeful.
“Then what’s the point?” I exclaim.
“Perhaps that there is none.” She shifts, glancing at the door, then back at me. “Were you born into a palace family?”
I take the cue to switch subjects. “My mother was an Illusion Base, but my father was a fighter in the Peri. My mother and I moved between the palace and Peri until she became a Scarp in the kitchens and felt secure enough to stay in one place.”
It’s not the entire truth, but it’s an easier one. Even now, I still struggle to understand if she was running toward something, or away.
“You’ve been to the Peri?” Briar stretches out the sheets, and my mouth drops open—a superior making my bed? Tucking the corners under the cot, she asks: “What’s it like out there?”
The memories stumble back. “Sometimes there wasn’t enough food. There was thievery and fights everywhere. But once you were done with your tasks for the day, you could go home. You would just…be.”
“It sounds…”
Nice. It sounds nice.
It had been. When my father wasn’t around.
“Strange,” I supply.
“Strange,” she echoes, then straightens, falling into formality. “Are you ready to take the blood oath to Illusion and the Morella family?”
I nod.
“I must warn you that while night service is always challenging, the Morella family has a rotating door of attendants. More so than the other families in Illusion and even the other Houses.”
“You believe I should decline the blood oath and continue as a Day Crest.”
“No one will judge your decision.”
But I will, I think. I will judge myself.
Jeremee and Benji will collect debt rings as the interest builds, never able to pay enough at once to touch the principal loans. For them, the blood oath, the danger of night, is more than worth it. Kassandra already terrorizes me. May as well make more money off it.
“I will swear the blood oath to the Morella family to perform my duties as an Illusion Night Crest,” I say.
“And indulge their desires?”
“And indulge their desires.”
Briar nods, pulling an item from her pocket. A silver feather quill.
I glance at the door. “Where’s the teller?”
“It is unlike a normal ring. There is no debt attached to it, just the oath. As your supervisor, I will ink it, though it’s a unique process. More painful.”
Holding out my hand, I declare I’m ready. Briar grasps my elbow, pushes up my sleeve to the shoulder. A searing cut across my upper arm. I cry out, jerking away, but Briar holds tight and drags the sharp nib across the flesh.
“Why are you doing this?” I gasp.
Her mouth opens but only a grunt ekes out. She took a blood oath of silence herself.
“I’m sorry,” she grits. “It requires a certain amount of blood.”
I see it now. As the red nib rips skin, crimson sucks up the shaft of the feather, dyeing the barbs and vane from the inside out.
“Must you stain all of it?” I pant. She cannot answer but meets my gaze, as if to say Yes.
For the next few minutes, my new supervisor carves a ring deep into my upper arm.
It’s not the normal sting of a knife; it burns and wriggles, as if burrowing into me, worming up my shoulder and neck before settling behind my ear.
Blood dribbles down my fingertips and spatters on the ground. The room sways, but she holds me up.
Dark spots blot my vision.
Then I am sitting on my cot, sweaty forehead plastered against the cool stone as someone wipes a cold rag down my arm.
Blinking, I look at Briar, a healing kit resting on the cot.
When did she retrieve it? She smears salve on the injury and I hiss, flashing my incisors.
A natural sign of aggression I rarely give in to—one my father always did.
“I know,” she mutters. “I know.”
After wrapping the injury, Briar lowers me onto the mattress. I don’t protest. The room wavers, my head pounding.
“As we’ve both taken the blood oath and are sworn to secrecy, I can explain more when you’re ready.
For now, you must rest. We cannot call on a Healer because any magic done to the wound may interfere with the contract.
You can request a Healer once the skin has scarred to help with any residual pain, but not before then.
We have a few hours until evening service.
I will come check on you before then, and you can begin your first shift. ”
I nod, a heavy fatigue settling over me like snow. For a moment, I feel a brisk brush of hair from my forehead.
“Welcome to the night service, Avery,” she says.
A stubborn hope blooms. No one in my family has ever been a Night Crest before—and no one has paid off their debts. Maybe this life cycle, things will be different. Maybe I can save not just Jeremee and Benji but my descendants, too. My future children. Maybe it can all begin and end with me.
I do not hear the door shut as sleep pulls me under.