I swallowed the lump in my throat and shoved the vial into my pocket, right next to Kelda’s poison.
“I won’t,” I promised.
I threw the door open. The wind howled, carrying a new scent of rot from the valley. Without looking back, I ran. I sprinted into the gathering dark, towards the cliffs.
twenty-two
Lysa
Ihad been walking for two hours and my lungs burned with the icy damp of the ascent. The wind up here shrieked like a banshee, tearing at my cloak. The noise coming from the lower gardens made me skid to a halt. A riot of squeals and hisses erupted from the hedgerows.
“Oh, for the love of Gods,” I said, vaulting over the low stone wall.
A swarm of Garden Drakes the size of house cats and possessing the temperament of sleepy tortoises was reenacting a very small, very loud war. There were about seven of them, their jewel-toned scales flashing in the gloom as they dive-bombed the dormant rosebushes. An emerald-scaled drake responsible for keeping aphids off the prize climbers was trying to set a stone bench on fire. A ruby one had clamped its jaws onto the tail of a sapphire companion and was shaking it.
“Hey!” I shouted, clapping my hands. The sound was swallowed by the wind. The emerald drake hacked up a pitiful fireball that fizzled against the damp stone. It spun toward me, hiss-clicking, its throat glowing with orange light.
“Don’t you even think about it.” I stepped forward, my hand outstretched. “You are an agricultural heating unit, you overgrown lizard, not a weapon of mass destruction.” The drake launched itself at my shin.
I caught it mid-air, a risky move that would have lost me a finger if I hadn’t been fast. My hand clamped over its snout, and I pressed into the points behind its jaw. I didn’t use the full force of the Quieting, just a sharp, authoritative pulse.Sit. Be.The drake went limp in my grip, its eyes uncrossing.
“Better,” I huffed, tucking it under one arm. I pointed a stained finger at the others, who had paused their civil war to watch. “If Mrs. Crane finds out you lot scorched her hydrangeas, she won’t need magic to turn you into particularly gaudy backpacks. Do we understand each other?”
The ruby drake burped a puff of smoke and retreated into the hedge.
“Unbelievable,” I said, setting the emerald one down. It shook its head, looking dazed, and scurried after its friend. Garden Drakes were the backbone of Lumenvale’s horticulture, in this season they were living thermostats that kept the frost away from delicate roots. Seeing them this aggressive was unusual at the least.
But the moment I left the gardens and crossed the final rise toward the manor proper, the amusement evaporated. Stormgarde Manor was crumbling and bleeding. The majestic grey stone was mapped with jagged, weeping fissures. Thick, luminescent silver fluid oozed from the cracks. It dripped down the façade like infectious pus, gathering in glowing pools on the cobblestones. It was probably the waste, the physical byproduct of magic being filtered through a broken vessel.
“Fenrik,” I whispered.
In the courtyard, the shadows writhed.
Three massive shapes paced in circles. These were the biggest of the Sentinels, and these stone-and-magic constructs that guarded the Stormgarde line were no longer standing vigil. The lupine beast snapped its granite jaws at the empty air; the serpentine form lashed its tail, cracking the pavement; the leonine guardian clawed at the ground, gouging deep furrows into the earth. Their eyes should have been empty sockets of stone, but now they swirled with the same milky-white blindness I’d seen in the dead dragon in the village below. They were trapped in this nightmare too.
I shoved my shoulder against the heavy oak doors, bracing for resistance. Instead, the latch clicked with one eager snap before I even applied pressure, and the doors swung inward so fast I stumbled across the threshold.
The moment my boot hit the foyer tiles, darkness swallowed me, suffocating, smelling of rot. Then, above me, the massivetimber beams groaned. It was a human sound, the desperate exhale of a lung collapsing.
“I know,” I said. “I’m here and I’m so sorry.”
A single wall sconce to my left, which had been sputtering a sickly blue, roared into life. It flared a brilliant gold, the color of my own magic when I stopped fighting it. The light jumped to the next sconce, then the next, a domino effect of golden fire racing down the great hall, cleaving a path through the gloom.
Cold drafts plagued this hallway, biting at ankles and necks, but now, pockets of warmth bloomed against my skin.
“Miss? Miss Emberlin?”
The whisper came from beneath the grand staircase. I turned, watching the golden light spill over a cluster of shadows huddled in the alcove. Three figures were wedged into the space reserved for storing winter cloaks. A scullery lad composed entirely of elbows; an older chambermaid I recognized as Dorcas, clutching a feather duster like a mace; and young Tessaly, the girl from the greenhouse whose nose looked permanently smudged with potting soil.
“You came back,” Tessaly said. She scrambled out from the huddle, ignoring Dorcas’s hissed warning. “The Lady said you ran away. She said your magic broke the house.”
“The Lady lies,” I said, dropping to one knee. “What are you doing down here? You should be in the village.”
“Can’t,” the scullery boy squeaked. He pointed a trembling finger at the front doors. “Tried to leave an hour ago. The Wardsflared up—red and angry. Burned the soles off my boots when I stepped on the drive. Kept us in.”
“The house locked us down,” Dorcas added, her voice trembling but her grip on the duster unyielding. “It’s confused, Miss. Like a dog that’s been kicked too many times and doesn’t know who’s holding the leash anymore. The Hearthcraft in the kitchen is spitting boiling water, and the self-sweeping brooms are trying to barricade the windows.”
“It’s trying to keep you safe,” I said, though guilt twisted in my gut. The house was fighting Kelda’s influence, but its desperation was clumsy. “It knows something bad is coming, and it doesn’t want its family to leave.”
