Page 130 of A Song of Ash and Moonlight

“Farrin,” Father said warningly. I glanced back at him and saw the flames leaping closer. Soon we would lose the ability to go back upstairs. My mind raced. What was Kilraith trying to prove?

I tried singing down the wall for a moment longer, and just as I saw the stones begin to tremble, my younger self screamed. I whirled to see her awake and clinging to Father, her eyes wide with horror.

“Papa!” she cried. Her voice was hoarse, terrible. “Where do we go?”

He held her to him, looking desperately at me as a huge slab of ceiling caved in. Ryder grabbed my hand and yanked me forward out of its path.

“This way,” I said breathlessly, and then I raced toward the entrance hall. It was a pit of smoke and fire; through the mess, I saw one of the great staircases still standing. I scrambled up it, fear bolting through me like lightning. The others followed me, Father’s boots heavy on each step. My mind spun with panic. Where to go? This was some sort of game. I didn’t think Kilraith would have created this whole thing just to kill us. No, that would come later; this was a torment. A display of his power, of Jaetris’s power.

On the second floor, I ran for the closest door—one of the guest bedrooms—and threw it open, remembering the hysterical logic of my child self. Try every room, every window. A courtyard, a balcony,anywherethere was fresh air.

But on the other side of the door was not a bedroom. It wasn’t even Ivyhill. It was the Green House. It was Mother’s parlor. And there was my younger self, a little older now. Twelve years old and stone-faced, glassy-eyed. Osmund on her lap, she stared out the windows at the gardens beyond, where Gemma wandered in her nightgown, bawling piteously.

My stomach dropped. I knew this night. In truth, it could have been any number of nights after Mother left, all of them bleak and endless. Father had deposited us at the palace and gone to the city to drown his feelings in drink, in rich food, in anonymous arms he would soon forget. In defiance of his instructions, I’d taken Gemma to the Green House. There we would stay until he finally regained enoughof his senses to come find us. There we would stay, I remembered thinking, until Mother returned.

As I stared at twelve-year-old Farrin—her rigid posture, the stubborn set of her jaw—I felt unspeakably sad. I remembered that feeling. The determination not to cry. The loneliness opening like an abyss under my feet. Every shadow was a monster, every small sound a leaping hope.

As if responding to the frantic thrum of my thoughts, the scene before me began to change. The shadowsweremonsters, suddenly, toothy and reaching. The proportions of the furniture became grotesque, surreal, looming. My mouth went dry as I watched the shadows wrap around young Farrin. She didn’t move; she just sat there in silent acceptance. And then the floor dropped out from under my feet, and I was falling. An abyss indeed. Utter blackness, the air so stifling I couldn’t breathe, my pounding heart threatening to crack me open. I tried to look for Father and Ryder, for the soot-stained Farrin, but the force of my fall had me tight in its grip.

I squeezed my eyes shut and forced out a quiet song.Real, I thought shakily. I pictured the ground solid beneath me, the impossible hugeness of the northern mountains, the warm weight of Ryder’s body. Safety. Shelter.

Abruptly I juddered to a halt, and when I opened my eyes, gasping, swaying a bit on my feet, I was in one of the second-floor guest rooms at Ivyhill, staring at bricked-up windows and a burning bed.

Father was pulling at me, desperate, as my younger self screamed in his arms. Ryder was stamping furiously at the burning carpet.

“What are you doing?” Father cried. “This is not the way out!”

I turned to stare at him. “Did you not see the Green House? Didn’t you fall?”

“What? No!” His grip was iron. “Move, Farrin!”

I did, staggering out into the hallway after him just as the bedroom floor collapsed. The door slammed shut on my heels.

Ryder glared at me. “You’re not doing a very good job of helping us. Do you know the way or don’t you?”

I ran clumsily down the hall after Father. For a moment I locked eyes with my younger self, and her mouth curled into a sly smile. “Oh dear,” she said quietly, looking around us at the burning house. “What a shame.”

Kilraith.

I set my jaw and moved past them, ignoring the feeling of the little girl’s eyes boring into my back. The next door led to another bedroom. I had no choice. The air was cloying, darkening. I threw open the door.

And there was Gareth’s bedroom at his family home in Big Deep. And there we both were, young and naked and embarrassed, awkwardly detaching from each other amid damp, tangled sheets as the sunset poured through his windows.

Numb with shock, I watched myself totter out of bed and toward his bathing room. I remembered with breathtaking clarity the slight sting between my legs, and the nervous curiosity I’d felt upon noticing the spot of blood on the bed.

But then Gareth swung his legs over to sit on the edge of the bed and watch me leave. There was a terrible expression on his face, one of disgust and disappointment. He assessed my body coldly; his lip curled. He scrubbed his hands on the sheets and then stood and tore them off his bed in a fury.

I watched him in horror. No. That wasn’t what had happened. I had cleaned myself in the bathing room and then come back to bed, and Gareth had been standing there waiting for me, flushed and bashful, dressed in his rumpled clothes. He had held out his arms to me. “Please hug me,” he’d said, “and tell me you still love me.” And I had, and I did.

But this Gareth before me looked nothing like mine, untilsuddenly he did. My younger self came out of the bathing room, and he stood, flushed and bashful, holding out his arms. “Please hug me,” I heard him say, and I watched fifteen-year-old Farrin laugh through her confused tears and lean into his embrace, a warm hug of relief that I remembered well. But now it seemed different. Gareth’s shoulders were tense and square. He held me gingerly. Reluctantly?

Slowly I stepped back from them, tears burning behind my eyes. Wasthatwhat he’d done while I was in the bathing room? Wiped himself clean of me, scorning me,despisingme? And then he’d schooled his features to look like the friend I knew and pretended away his true feelings?

I staggered out of the room, blindly pushing Father and Ryder out ahead of me. I yanked the door shut and leaned on it, my throat aching with trapped sobs.

“Did you see any of that?” I asked hoarsely.

Ryder was bewildered, exasperated. “Seewhat?”

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