I’m still turninghis words over in my head as I pack later that evening. The recruitment center gave me a duffel bag, scuffed and stained with goddess-knows-what, but now I have the beautiful new rucksack that Lee bought me, so I fill that up instead.
The rucksack is open on my bed, and I’m sorting through my meager belongings in Saela and my shared chest of drawers, trying to decide whether to take anything sentimental or to just stick with the essentials, when I hear the door to my bedroom creak open.
Mother stands in the doorframe holding something that sparkles in the lamplight. I start to rise but she gestures for me to stay, and instead of crouching back over my bag I sink all the way down to the floor, wrapping my arms around my knees.
Mother comes over and sinks down beside me. Her eyes are clearer than I’ve seen them in a long time.
“I have something for you,” she says, and tips her hand over mine so that the shining object pours into my open palm.
It’s an ancient-looking necklace, with a teardrop-shaped opal pendant set in gold, and a delicate gold chain that’s been burnished by age. I’ve never seen it before, which is odd. I thought I knew every inch of our house, especially everything that might be valuable enough to sell should times demand it.
Carefully picking the pendant up between two fingers, I hold it to the light. It’s as if a rainbow has been frozen into ice and then polished and chiseled into a precious stone.
“Where did you get this?” I turn the piece over in my hands, looking for some clue to its origins.
“It’s for protection,” she says. “It’s been in our family for generations, passed down from woman to woman for I don’t know how many years.”
“Mother.” I turn to her. “You need this more than I do. You should keep it. It’ll only get broken, where I’m going. A war is no place for an heirloom.”
She looks like she’s going to argue so I press the necklace firmly back into her hands, wrapping her fingers closed around it, then lean over to kiss her cheek.
“I’ll feel better knowing it’s keeping you safe, Mother. You can give it to me when I get back.”
Mother nods, and her shoulders slump, the fight going out of her. She stares straight ahead, across the room—across at Saela’s empty bed.
My head throbs. “I’m going to find her. I promise.”
She makes a small noise, like a trapped bird, but whether she’s assenting or contradicting my claim, I can’t tell.
I can’t believe I’m abandoning her here. Alone. But what else am I supposed to do? I can’t just give up on Saela.
It’s awful to even admit to myself, but there’s some dark part of me that made that impossible calculus. Weighed my mother’s needs against Saela’s; made myself choose between them.
Saela… she’s my sister, but I practically raised her.
She’smine. My responsibility.
And she’s supposed to have a long life of happiness ahead of her, not whatever misery awaits her in Astreona among the Siphons.
A large part of me wonders whether these might be some of my last moments with my mother, with her illness so bad. Even if I make it back…
No, I can’t think that way. There can’t be any “if.”
“I’ll bring her back,” I say loudly, not sure which of us I’m trying to reassure more.
CHAPTER SIX
Reporting to the army recruitment base is the closest I’ve ever been to going inside the castle.
The base is set up right inside the castle’s outer walls, taking up half of a massive courtyard within. I step carefully over icy flagstones, all of them smooth and flat from centuries of feet and hooves and paws.
The permanent army building, which probably houses offices or barracks for officers or something, is a squat, single story wooden structure, flush against the inner courtyard wall. In every direction, huge tents have been erected to create more space to process recruits, each of which sports heavy canvas walls that barely move in the frigid dawn breeze. Each is painted with the royal coat of arms—a snarling direwolf on a shield, a sword crossed with a spear behind it.
The sun is barely peeking over the horizon but the courtyard is already swarmed with other recruits, most looking just as lost as I feel, if not more so.
My ears perk up at the mix of accents around me—familiar drawls from here, the royal city of Sturmfrost, but also spiky, harsh accents from the seven other fiefdoms throughout our country of Nocturna, many that I can’t quite identify.
I’ve never left Sturmfrost, but we studied the geography of Nocturna back when I was in school and the part of me that craves adventure put the names of all the other fiefdoms in a bank and locked them away in my mind. The closest two, the other winter-dwelling fiefdoms, are Rabenfrost and Volkenfrost. And the most famous of all is Grunfall, all the way in the south, nestled into the River Sonnstrom. That’s where many of the battles have taken place over the years.
