Page 177

“This is what they eat,” Ivy answered.

“You’ve seen them eating this?”

“Not yet. They only started coming around in spring. I don’t think they like getting this close to the house, so I take it to the yard. C’mere.”

The garden followed the manor around to the back courtyard and patio, overlooking a wide, perfectly manicured yard lined with shrubs. The last of the day’s rays colored the clouds with blinding oranges and purple undertones, splashing radiant light over the property like spilled paint.

“It was back here. They liked the flowers the gardener planted in the spring. He told me he uses something called compost.”

Lily scanned the grounds, meeting two pairs of hollow eyes hiding in the outer edge. “Do you see one now?”

“They’re not happy when it’s cold, remember?”

Lily hummed. “Can I see that book you were talking about?”

Ivy skittered away, and Lily leaned against the wooden beam of the pergola.

“Get out of the way, Lils! You’re blocking the view!”

Lily shot a scowl over her shoulder. Sterling laughed as he slid beside his company at the table under the connected veranda. Jarek looked almost exactly as he did the night they shared a drink in Gridian, except his gaze was steadfast, having found her long before she caught his. Dressed in his heavy brown jacket, black pants, and a white shirt, he plunged his brows when she noticed him. He bounced his foot, turning his attention to whatever Sterling was rambling about.

Ivy returned, fumbling through the pages of a large, leather-bound book. She offered it to Lily, who was immediately drawn to the illustration at the center of a block of text. A simple ink sketch of an animal resembling an emaciated hare stretched high, paws placed on the block containing its image, reaching for a bushel of berries dangling overhead. A pair of slender ridged horns tapered to curved points followed the length of its long ears.

Her memory flashed back to their last day in Acadia. To Luka helping that boy over the wall. To the little statuette with horns. But that wasn’t the most exciting feature.

It had a second pair of forelimbs and two sets of hollow sockets.

An ethae harvesting energy from a briar, the caption underneath read. Before the Guardian’s Corruption in 1407, it was common for farmers to leave offerings to these beings in exchange for a healthy spread of Ettan’s influence.

She lifted her gaze toward the tree line, spying her double forelimbed, eyeless creature.

It was an ethae, an entity more legendary than even Valen’s First Incarnation. She didn’t know much, but from what she remembered, ethae were beings only the aura-blessed could see.

Lily glanced at Ivy who smiled wide, golden eyes sparkling.

Brushing away the worry, Lily skimmed the entirety of the page, but found nothing else of note in the passage other than descriptions on how to keep crops thriving through winter. She closed the book. A Comprehensive Guide to Central Agriculture.

“Do you like it?” Ivy asked.

“I love it.”

“So I can have your coins?”

“After you’ve had a bath.”

Ivy’s excited shriek was loud enough to rattle every window in the vicinity. Sterling and Jarek both shrunk at the sound.

“What was that all about?” Sterling asked, watching Ivy scramble into the house.

“Mother hen business,” Lily said, flipping through the book as she followed. In a blink, the weight of it left her hands, the text her vision, and the whisper of her good mood from her person.

Jarek sat back in his chair and turned the book from front to back. “You gave her all of your copper, for this?”

“Now, now, I’m sure a basic knowledge of farming in these times is invaluable,” Sterling said, spinning a cork between his fingers.

“It’s for Luka.” Lily tried and failed to grab at the book.

Jarek clicked his tongue, arching a brow in time with a sly curl of his lips.