The hours stretched by in agony; at some point during that torment Freyda found me, and after five minutes of huddling against me, chirping mournfully into my feathers, she hopped onto the cot’s edge, putting her small body in front of me like a shield, and watched Nanette’s every movement with murderous golden eyes.
Before I left the infirmary, Nanette folded two jars of the balm into my hands, her knuckles brushing against my talons.
“Apply it every few hours if you can,” she said, her chin tremblingever so slightly. “Get someone to help you. In a day or two, it will hurt much less.”
I thanked her, the words dropping like stones, and tried to recall a time I’d seen Nanette look so obviously near tears. I couldn’t think of a single one.
***
After my public humiliation, the Warden was all too happy to send me to Big Deep with a detachment of Roses at my side. She gave us permission to use one of her private greenways, which would deposit us only a few miles from the Fontaine estate. I could see it in her eyes as she dismissed us, feel it in the way her gaze burned into my back: she wouldn’t trigger the other Roses’ transformations yet. She wanted me to arrive at Big Deep in disgrace, surrounded by ordinary women.
I resolved to disappoint her. I would not be disgraced by this form; I would wear it proudly. She wanted me to cower in shame, hide myself from everyone who loved me. But I would stride into Big Deep with my head held high.
Despite the turmoil of the Mist, our passage was smooth and quick. The Warden’s greenways were always impeccable, no matter the state of the world beyond them. By the time we arrived in the south, I had paved over my every thought and feeling. Cool stone, impervious, all the way down.
Brigid touched my arm. She was part of our detachment, of course. All of my friends were: Cira, Danesh, Caralind, Nesset, plus five recruits, freshly bound and eager for battle. The Warden had chosen wisely. The Roses who cared about me most would have to witness my mortification and feel my pain themselves, and to the recruits I would be a warning: defy the Warden and suffer. Not even her favorites were immune to her fury.
“You can go ahead if you’d like,” Brigid said quietly, nodding south.She handed me the little pouch that contained the jars of Nanette’s balm. She had insisted upon carrying them; anything, she’d said, eyes bright, to make my passage even a little bit easier. “You’ll be much faster flying.”
She tried to sound sunny about it, but I knew better. She’d been miserable for three days, ever since the Warden’s punishment. She’d slept outside my door in the barracks with Cira every night, just in case I decided to let them in. And this—this offer to let me arrive alone so I could slink into Big Deep unnoticed, like a coward—this was pity and a plea for forgiveness. For not somehow stopping the Warden, for not insisting on being part of that torture right along with me. Part of me wanted to reject it on principle. If I couldn’t be comfortable, then no one else would either.
But in the end I couldn’t resist. The thought of how Gareth would look at me was like a knife driving into my heart. It would be better for both of us if he saw me alone.
“You shouldn’t feel sorry for me,” I told Brigid, not looking at her, “nor should you be sorry. Find me when you arrive, and I’ll show everyone to their rooms.”
“Mara,” she began, her voice heavy with sorrow.
Cira, on my other side, approached with light, careful footsteps. She would probably try to embrace me. The girl loved touch; fierce as she was, she often crept into my room at Rosewarren and snuggled up to me when she couldn’t sleep. She said I reminded her of her mother.
“Freyda, stay with them,” I ordered, without a glance at my familiar. Then I took the pouch from Brigid, launched myself into the air, and flew away before any of them could reach for me, or say another word.
***
Before leaving Fairhaven, during those three days of preparations, Gareth had drawn an elaborate map of Big Deep for us to study.
The town itself was two miles away from the Fontaine estate. In addition to five guest cottages, the stables, and the extensive grounds, there was a great house that boasted fifty rooms. The estate sat on a tract of high, flat land at the canyon’s heart with ridges and cliffs all around and a drop to the canyon floor only half a mile from the eastern lawn.
During my flight, as I scanned the canyon and its rivers, I ran through the map in my mind twenty times without pause. The Lower and Upper Army detachments, which would arrive in waves over the next few days, would set up camp on the woodsy back lawn. At the back of the lawn, after a sudden sharp slope, was a narrow but deep river that would serve nicely as a natural line of defense. Father had returned to Wardwell with Gemma and Talan; when they arrived at Big Deep with Mother, she would stay in the house’s disused west wing and erect protective wards to hide her presence. In the east wing, Gareth and his team, including Ankaret, would begin the transference process to move Neave from Lily’s body into Alastrina’s, and a detachment of Roses and Upper Army soldiers would guard them in rotating shifts. Underground tunnels connected the house’s basement to a cavern underneath Lady Fontaine’s shooting range, where they would all shelter with my mother, if need be.
And in the attic—which took up the entire top floor of the house and was, according to Gareth, depressingly empty because his mother had once burned all their family memorabilia in a drunken rage—my sisters and I would destroy the goblet, the key, and the crown. Ankaret seemed to think that we were perfectly capable of doing so and promised her guidance, if not her power. We had to conserve that as much as possible; she would need it all for the transference.
Reciting the plan and envisioning the map soothed me. This wouldbe a battle, and I’d fought in hundreds of those. My body knew how to fight, I told myself, both in this form and my human one. Nothing else mattered. Nothing but the fight, my friends, and my sisters and all the ways in which I could help them.
And Gareth.
When Big Deep appeared, I focused on matching up my view of the estate to the memory of Gareth’s map. There were the guest cottages and lawns, there was the river, and there, at the heart of it all, stood the house. My heart sank at the sight of it. Vines covered every inch of the brickwork, but they were nothing like the manicured green leaves of Ivyhill. They were wild, tangled, and gave the house the look of a hairy creature that had recently crawled up from the mud. The windows were filthy, the lawns overgrown.
The house’s appearance in and of itself didn’t bother me. The structure, Gareth had reassured us, was sound, and from a tactical perspective, the estate was ideally located. To reach us, Kilraith and his forces would have to contend with the canyon’s deep chasms and unfamiliar terrain.
But thinking of Gareth here—as a lonely child, and now as a man returning to a place that held nothing but bad memories—was enough to make me forget my own shame for a while and imagine his. I still had much to learn about his home and his parents, but I knew enough. He would hate for us to see this, even though coming here had been his idea.
He would hate formeto see it.
I landed by the river to splash cold water on my face and then started trudging up the great rear lawn, which buzzed with activity. Gareth had hired groundskeepers to trim the grass, and the soldiers Generals Haldrin and Pallien had promised us were already setting up camp by the dozens.
I felt their eyes on me as I strode toward the house, my pouch ofbalm in hand. I’d thought the walk would be a good idea, that it would grant me a last few minutes of peace before I had to face anyone. But even though the soldiers’ glances were quick and unbothered—they knew Order reinforcements were coming, and they’d seen Roses all their lives—I nevertheless felt cracks beginning to form in the stone of my calm. My heart started to race; my talons left a path of small divots in the newly shorn lawn. Something about the harsh winter sunlight beaming down on me left me feeling exposed, even ridiculous.
A bead of sweat rolled down my neck and into the downy fuzz covering my bare breasts. I was hardly embarrassed about my nakedness. Whenever we transformed, the process shredded our clothes; we hardly ever wore armor or even simple garments into battle. There usually wasn’t time to don them; clothes were impractical. And some stubborn part of me thought that choosing not to cover myself was a gesture of defiance toward the Warden, even though she wasn’t here to see it. She would have expected me to hide this body however I could, for as long as I could. So, then, I would refuse to.
