“I should send for my sisters,” I offered, not knowing what else to say. I didn’t know why I stayed; I only felt that I should, that something significant was happening here, right under my nose, though I couldn’t quite name it. “All three of us were present when we collected the crown and the egg. I suspect our combined power will be necessary to obtain the key as well.”
Because we are demigods.The words teetered on the tip of my tongue. The decision Gemma, Farrin, and I had made to keep that information from the Warden had seemed prudent at the time. The fewer people knew about us, and about Mother, the safer everyone would be. Power could be abused. Knowledge of power would make us targets.
But now I wondered if we were merely being selfish—or even worse, cowardly—by keeping our lineage a secret. Instead of tromping around the world searching for anchors and the ghost of Ankaret, we could have been holed up at Rosewarren all this time, or at Wardwell,putting every ounce of our energy into developing our power. How many dead Roses would still be alive if we had the full force of the Warden behind us, supporting us, helping us learn, perhaps even working side by side with Mother? Would the fire nymph child have lived? Would the littles who had burned to ashes? The griffin family we had slaughtered at Sablemire?
Petra had probably thought me a coward too in the last few minutes of her life. I set my jaw and pushed hard at the memory of her face. I needed to get out of this office. I didn’t trust myself to stay silent for much longer. A nervy feeling I couldn’t explain wriggled inside me like worms.
“Your sisters,” the Warden replied quietly, neither moving nor opening her eyes. “Yes, of course you must summon them. An excellent idea.”
First Posey had looked strange, utterly sapped, and now the Warden did too. The idea that something awful had happened during the oath was yet another worry I couldn’t shake. And if the Warden was indeed secretly with child, should she even have attempted such a rite?
I cleared my throat. “Madam, I don’t want to overstep, but is something wrong? You look unwell.”
She laughed quietly. “Iamunwell. And I won’t be well again until this war is over.” Then she opened her eyes, considered me for a moment, and came to me with a small smile. “My Mara,” she said, taking my face in her hands. Her fingers were as smooth and cold as Gareth’s had been warm. “You are sweet to worry. Do not fear for me. I am stronger than I look.”
Then she leaned close and kissed my cheek, and before I quite knew what I was doing, I was hurrying out of her office, out of the priory, and across the grounds to the aviary. Once inside the squat red-brick tower, I leaned back against the wall and pressed my palm to mycheek, as if I could trap the feeling of the Warden’s kiss like I would a fluttering moth.
It wasn’t the first time she had kissed me like that. She was a mother to us all. She hugged us, she kissed our cheeks, she stroked our hair. But this kiss felt rare and precious, like a promise or a good-bye, and it frightened me. Suddenly I was a girl again, frightened and awestruck, clinging to the Warden’s feathers on the night of my trials.
Freyda, who had been roosting on one of the many branches crisscrossing the tower, dipped down to alight on my shoulder and fuss with my hair. I breathed slowly, savoring the earthy scents of feed and warm feathers, and didn’t acknowledge my familiar until my pounding heart slowed.
“The Warden is fine,” I said. “The oath simply made her tired. We’re all going to be fine.”
Freyda gave an inquisitive chirp, but I said nothing more and instead strode beneath the branches to the far wall, where five Bask ravens roosted, preening. Ryder had wilded a dozen of them as a gift to the Order. Seven must have been out scavenging or on missions. At my approach, these five looked up and watched me with their eerie black eyes.
“I need you to retrieve my sisters,” I told them, “and bring them here as quickly as possible, along with Talan and your master. Speak of this to no other Rose and no other creature.” I glanced up at my familiar. In the absence of Ryder, her translation would have to suffice. “Freyda?”
Freyda ruffled her feathers irritably but obeyed, chirping at the ravens in harsh, rasping tones that mimicked their own cries. As one, their eyes shifted from me to her, and they listened intently for a few moments before launching into the air in a flurry of gleaming black feathers. I ducked outside and watched them go—one south, straight toward Farrin in Fairhaven, and the other four in different directions to search for Gemma and Talan.
Fresh snow had begun to fall, and the air held a sharp chill. I closed my eyes and prayed for the ravens’ safety—not to my aunt Neave, goddess of the beasts, or to my uncle Caiathos, god of the earth. Given how strange and shaken I felt, even thinking about the gods seemed dangerous, as if doing so would reveal Mother’s existence to an enemy I couldn’t see. Instead I prayed to the ravens themselves, imagining that I could imbue their wings with some of my own sentinel strength.Fly swift. Stay secret. Stay safe.
A sudden cold feeling on my nape made me whirl around, hand on the dagger at my belt. All my senses tingled with battle readiness. Someone was near. Someone was watching me.
But when I searched the nearby evergreens, I found nothing but a pair of round yellow eyes watching me from the Mist-draped shadows.
A little shiver raced through me. It was Chella, the Warden’s reclusive owl familiar.
I hadn’t seen Chella in weeks, which wasn’t unusual. She constantly patrolled the Mist, acting as the Warden’s eyes and ears. And when she was home at the priory, she rarely showed herself to us Roses.
But here she was, showing herself tome. In the wake of the Warden’s kiss, this felt remarkable, like a blessing.
Or a warning.
I took three slow steps toward her and bowed low in greeting, my heartbeat thunderous. When I straightened and looked back up at her, she was much closer, now staring at me from a branch of a nearby pine. I hadn’t heard her move—no flap of wings, no rustle of feathers. But there she was, her feathered eyebrows stern and fearsome, her great brown-and-gray body at least three times bigger than Freyda’s.
Her gaze held me rooted to the earth. Freyda, still perched on my shoulder, shrank back against me and buried her head in my hair. I wanted to reach up and comfort her, but my clammy hands felt heavy,weighted with a will that wasn’t mine, and I couldn’t lift them no matter how hard I tried.
A whine of fear, of warning, sounded deep inside my mind, bringing with it an instinct to run, but I didn’t dare tear my gaze from Chella’s. I opened my mouth to speak, considered bowing again—but before I could, the owl pushed off the branch and flew past me, scattering snow and pine needles. The tips of her wing feathers brushed against my cheek, right where the Warden had kissed me, and I couldn’t help feeling that I had been tested in some way. Tested, and found wanting.
Chapter 13
One week later, I was sitting in the corner of one of the Order’s many safe houses, very seriously considering the possibility of killing my baby sister.
The Order had many safe houses scattered throughout both Edyn and the Old Country, maintained and stocked by a rotation of Roses. I had never been to this one. It sat about seven miles west of Brightfell, a volatile mountainous region with nearly a thousand glacial lakes and waterfalls. In Edyn, winter was only just arriving; here, though, it reigned supreme. The vast forest surrounding the safe house was dense, quiet, and blanketed with snow. The Olden aurora was at its brightest this time of year, turning the sky into a shifting canvas of vivid color—aquamarine, violet, rose pink, sunrise gold.
Tomorrow our squadron would begin the search for Gothyn, the great fae city ruled by Lady Ifanna and the Cirrinoc clan. There were twelve of us: five Roses, including Danesh; Posey; my sisters and me; Ryder; Talan; and Gareth, to whom I hadn’t said a word.
And at the end of this long day of hard, cold travel, when we all should have been bedding down for the night, Gemma marched intothe center of the safe house’s main room and thrust a bottle of wine into the air.
