Kneeling before the pair, I clasp on to Jae’s arm.
“I will fix this,” I say.
I speak my wish into existence, send my hopes along the planelike dead leaves floating down a stream. Jeremee and I lock gazes over his brother’s shoulder. He shakes his head, swallowing, and I know what he holds back for the sake of the child between us.
You can’t.
But I will,I think.I have to.
Even if it takes all my energy, all my time, my days, my body, my life—I will pay it all. I will free this family of mine.
Chapter Four
“If requested, you must doit 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 mountainsand 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.
