Page 127 of A Song of Ash and Moonlight

“Then we’ll take advantage of that,” I said. “Entertain him so completely that he won’t notice how close we are until it’s too late.”

Gemma looked doubtful. “How are we supposed to do that?”

“I have some ideas,” Mara mused, her gaze distant.

I took a breath, then withdrew Ankaret’s feather from my dress and held it gingerly in my palms. It was the strangest thing I owned, and perhaps our greatest advantage. I could no longer keep it for myself. I remembered how Kilraith had pleaded with Ankaret as they had battled above the capital.Beloved, he’d called her.

I looked up at my sisters, who stared at the feather in wonder.

“So do I,” I said.

***

Two days later, the moonlight road came without warning.

We were all in the dining room, dressed and ready, existing in a sort of tense daze. The table was scattered with daggers and small pistols from Father’s collection of Lower Army gear—weapons we could easily hide in our boots and under our coats to maintain the appearance of revelry rather than combat. We had no way of knowing when Kilraith would send for us, or if he would even send for us at all. My mind raced with doubts. What if this entire thing was a trick? The road would never come, and while we were here waiting for it, something terrible would happen elsewhere. We were fools to enter Mhorghast without an army, without even a proper arsenal of weapons. Weeks ago, Gemma had described her panic to me, how episodes of it could render her numb with dread or frantic with fear. I thought I was beginning to understand what that felt like.

I sparred with Mara, desperate to calm my nerves. Nesset sat nearby, appraising us with narrowed eyes. The Warden had allowed her to leave Rosewarren after all. “A little too hastily,” Nesset had commented wryly. “She doesn’t care if I come back, but she’s more than happy for me to look after her favorite.”

She’d said it without any real feeling other than amusement, and ever since she had hovered around Mara with the air of a fussy nanny, hardly leaving her side. I was glad for her looming presence. She was tall and muscular and fearsome, her gnarled flower-woven skin as rough and gray as it had been when I’d first met her. She wore a plain dress with a bodice of tough leather, and her eyes darted everywhere—calculating, eager. Ready to fight.

Glad as I was of her presence, I tried not to look at her as shewatched me. I knew I was clumsy, that next to Mara I looked like a tottering kitten, especially with my fiddle strapped to my back. But I would have it with me in Mhorghast, and I needed the practice.

Talan sat with Father, both of them poring over the map of Mhorghast I’d drawn. We had studied it for nearly two days straight, and the longer everyone looked at it, the more nervous I became. What if I had misremembered something? What if the layout of the place had changed entirely and all our studying was for naught? I wished I’d been able to consult with Alastrina, but since Philippa’s departure, she’d fallen insensate, not responding to my singing, not speaking even to Illaria, who sat tirelessly with her upstairs. Gemma fussed around everyone, adjusting our fine dresses and suits and honing the minor glamours she’d put on our faces and hair. Every now and then, she sat to catch her breath, looking a little pale, and in those moments, no matter where she was, Talan found her at once and held her, murmuring to her until she’d regained her strength.

Watching them was a dual torment. I was worried for them both. Thanks to Talan’s demon blood, Madam Moreen’s excellent care, and Philippa’s careful, quiet power, he had healed quickly from his wounds. But for all his bravery, asking him to go to Mhorghast felt like asking a boy to return to a nightmare from which he’d only just awoken. And then there was Gemma. In Kilraith’s house of horrors at the Far Sea, she’d been extraordinary, pushing past her pain to fight as fiercely as any Rose. Even at the Citadel, without the Old Country enhancing her power, she’d torn trees from the grounds when Yvaine had attacked me, commanding their sprawling roots with ease. But I knew my sister. She was expert at hiding her hurts, and none of us knew what Mhorghast, what Kilraith, would demand of her, or of any of us.

Worst of all was the agony of seeing Gemma and Talan together—how sweetly they touched each other, how they huddled together asif they existed in a world that belonged to them alone. How easily Talan could make Gemma smile and ease her pain. How soft his eyes were when he looked at her.

Not so long ago, I’d known what that felt like. I’d known passion, tenderness, devotion, and then I’d pushed it away. My reason for doing so seemed even more foolish now, with Ryder gone. If I had known what would soon happen to him, I would have forgiven him at once, maybe even forgiven myself. I would have held him to me and never let him go, not until the turning of the world forced us apart. And now he was gone, and though I tried for fierce hope, it kept slipping from me, dislodged by horrible images. Ryder afraid and in chains; Ryder with his throat slit; Ryder with white eyes that didn’t know me.

Distracted, I didn’t see Mara’s staff coming at me. It clipped my leg and sent me stumbling to the floor.

Nesset clucked her tongue. “Good thing you fell on your knees and not on your back. That fiddle’s far too fragile for battle, and you’re such a slight thing, and too slow. You don’t need any extraneous weight dragging you down.”

I glared at her as Mara helped me up. I heard the judgment in her voice and her true criticism—not unkind, simply assessing.Iwas too fragile for battle, she meant. Yet another doubt slithered into my mind to join the countless others.

“I don’t know, Nesset,” Mara said briskly, readying her staff. “Cira’s fifteen and thin as a reed, and she’s knocked you on your ass more than a few times. I’d think you’d know better by now than to judge every fighter’s abilities by the same measure. And I think you’ll be glad to have Farrin’s fiddle with you, before the end. Not every weapon looks like yours.”

Mara shot me a small smile, and I returned it, raising my staff once more. I thought of Ryder’s steadiness, the solid bulk of him a ballastagainst the world, and tried to find some of that steadiness within my own teetering nerves. Ryder would want that for me; he’d want me to be sharp and alert. He would believe me capable of it. I took a step toward Mara, gripping my staff hard with both hands.

But before I could let it fly, Talan spoke softly from the table. “Wait,” he said. He stood, an odd expression on his face. He looked to Gemma, then took a breath. He looked remarkably unafraid. “It’s here.”

And it was, the shimmering length of the moonlight road unfurling down the front steps of Ivyhill like a silver banner. We loaded ourselves with weapons and went to it in silence. The household had been prepared for the lure of this eerie, gleaming path. Carbreigh and his crew of elementals, as well as our house guards, sternly held back the other servants and the few refugees from neighboring towns whom we’d welcomed into the house after the most recent wave of abductions. There were only six of them so far, but the lostness on their faces, the grief and fear they dragged through Ivyhill like stones, told me more would come. Whatever was happening, whatever Kilraith had planned, was only just beginning.

Nesset went first, followed by Mara. Talan took Gemma’s hand and followed. Unease coiled tightly inside me as I watched their shapes glimmer, fold in on themselves, and disappear. I felt none of the giddiness that had come with my first sighting of the road. It was simply there before me, a beam of light, waiting. No tricks, no coy glimmers at the corner of my eye. It had been sent with clear intent.

Father stepped up beside me. He was brimming with energy, the air around him snapping hot with sentinel power. It was a reassuring sight—the familiar neat cut of his beard, his flinty brown eyes, the grim set of his jaw; he was a soldier, and I was glad to have him with us—but when our gazes locked, a whole current of unsaid things passed between us, memories that hurt me to think of, even if I onlylooked at them sidelong. My wrists twinged with phantom pain, and the tender parts of my heart that had only just begun to heal with the balm of Ryder’s love ached anew. They remembered, and they always would, every fit of temper, every drunken stupor. Every blurry month of grief when Gemma and I hadn’t had a father, only a distant, brooding man stuck in the mire of his own sorrow and anger, forgetting he had daughters at all.

If we made it through this, would I somehow find the courage to tell him this? To confess how he’d hurt me, to tell him how close he was to losing me? Looking at him, I thought of Alaster Bask in his cold black house, little Ryder and Alastrina hiding in the cupboards. My eyes burned with tears I couldn’t afford.

“What is it, Farrin?” Father asked. The promise of conflict had brought him a clarity that had been all too rare in recent months. His voice was full of concern, and his gaze was bright and sharp. There were lines around his eyes, and I noticed for the first time that his golden-brown hair was beginning to gray at the temples. If anyone tried to hurt me, he would fight them to his death.

There was a lump in my throat—a knot of love, fierce and frustrated and tender. I gave my father a small smile. “Nothing,” I said. “I’m ready.”

Then I took a breath and stepped onto the moonlight road, expecting to find what I had seen before: a glittering city, gardens, a palace. Houses full of music and dancing; Olden creatures everywhere, both gorgeous and grotesque.

But the passage was swift, uneventful, and all that awaited us on the other side was a great dark expanse with seemingly no end. The ground was neatly cobbled, each stone glimmering with faint white light. Overhead shone the eternal moon. And beneath it stood three distinct shapes. Two of them I recognized. One was Talan’s house by the Far Sea. One was Ivyhill, its turreted silhouette unmistakable.

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