“Leave me,” the Warden said, saving me from myself. “I need to clean this up. And there is much to do.” She brought a shaking hand to her temple, pressed her fingers to her hairline as if to stave off a headache. “Always so much to do,” she repeated quietly.
I turned and fled up the stairs. Only when I burst out of the Stillhouse and my boots touched the grass did I feel like I could breathe again. Freyda swooped down from the trees, and when I opened my arms she came to me, fussing at me as if I were an errant child. I held her to my chest and pressed my brow to her silken head until my eyes were dry once more.
Chapter 2
After three afternoon training sessions with new recruits and an evening patrol to assess the state of the Mist in my assigned territory, I was in no mood for company.
I’d sustained a nasty knock on the head from a terrified young mountain nymph who’d fallen through a hole in the Mist and had been only too happy to be driven back into the Old Country where she belonged. My joints ached, and I’d been unable to stomach lunch or dinner after the incident with the Warden, so I was ravenous. The idea of a quiet few minutes in the privacy of my room with some stew—and more importantly, some bread—was the only thing keeping my legs moving forward.
But my room was occupied.
Cira and Brigid turned as I opened the door. Cira was sitting cross-legged on my bed, and Brigid was reading in the corner chair. Both of them were in their nightclothes, and both of them looked far too eager for such a late hour.
“I know, it’s late, but don’t kill us just yet,” Cira said, holding up two sealed letters with a grin.
My breath caught. “Are they from…?”
Brigid closed her book and smiled. “They are. Both of them.”
I set my dinner on the bedside table and took the letters from Cira with suddenly shaky fingers.
“You’re trembling,” Cira observed. “What happened? Is Nerys—”
Brigid hushed her with a sharp hiss.
The first letter I opened revealed Gemma’s handwriting, the second Farrin’s. I held each of them for a long moment before I could bring myself to start reading. The sight of their penmanship alone was enough to make me feel weepy again, and I’d already felt weepy more than enough for one day. I wasn’t used to the feeling.
“Can you tell us what they say?” Cira asked.
Brigid made an irritated noise.“Cira.”
“I was justasking.”
Quickly, I read each note three times. I could hear their voices in my head—Gemma’s clear as a bell, Farrin’s steady and sharp. Then I fed the letters to the fire and watched the flames until my sisters’ words were ashes.
“No news,” I said flatly. Farrin and Ryder were still in the capital, working with the royal councils to oversee military operations and secure housing for the refugees fleeing south.Come and find me, Ankaret had said before her death—and Farrin had tried, as hard as she was able to with all the world on her shoulders. But there had been no sign of our late queen in either of her forms. And Gemma and Talan were still searching the country for signs of the awakening gods, but they still had no leads, not even a whisper of one. Soon it would be winter; traveling would be more difficult and dangerous, even for them. The cold made people desperate. So did war.
And their letters hadn’t even touched on theytheliad, the curse that had allowed Kilraith to gain such strong footholds in both Edyn and the Old Country. Our theory was that five objects anchored the curse. The first was the Three-Eyed Crown, which had bound Talanto Kilraith and was now hidden at the university, being studied. Then there was the egg that had been hidden inside the human host of Jaetris, god of the mind, which my sisters and I had taken from Mhorghast. It too was safe in Fairhaven, the capital city.
Gareth and his team at the university had been studying each of these anchors for weeks—their markings, the strange movements of their clockwork parts, the shadowy images that darkened their jewels—and if their interpretation was correct, three anchors remained: a key, a goblet, and a black lake under a full moon, the only anchor that was not an object.
But scouring the shores of every lake in Gallinor had revealed nothing. I’d even led teams of Roses to Olden lakes—including the vast black lake at which the Order conducted our recruiting trials—and we had found nothing there either. I was beginning to worry that Gareth and his team had made a mistake, that the image of the lake was meaningless and there was an unknown fifth anchor somewhere for which we hadn’t even begun to search.
My worries these days were plentiful, and my concern for my sisters’ safety ate at me more than any other.
“Every day I worry the letters will stop coming,” I muttered to the fire. “Every day I wonder if I should tell my sisters to stop sending them. Contacting me puts them in danger. And if the Warden—”
I stopped, cursing my mistake. I hadn’t yet told either of them about my true lineage and hoped I would never have to. A fool’s hope, but I clung to it anyway.
“If the Warden what?” Cira demanded.
“Nothing.” I rubbed my forehead hard. “It’s nothing.”
“We heard you went to the Stillhouse today,” Brigid said. “What happened? Something did. I saw it on your face the moment you walked in.”
That question seemed safe enough. I turned to face them. Thefirelight kissed Cira’s brown skin, black braids, and bandaged shoulder with gold. Brigid, nearing thirty-five and the oldest Rose in service, was solid as a tower, tall, and pale with white-blond hair cropped short.
I could hardly stand to look at either of them, especially Brigid. A thirty-five-year-old Rose was unheard of. Her marvelous luck would run out one of these days, and I didn’t think I would be able to survive the blow.
