Page 131 of A Song of Ash and Moonlight

Father, I thought, was beginning to understand. “It was only one of the guest bedrooms to us,” he said. “With bricked-up windows like all the others.”

I was relieved, of course. I wanted neither of them to see Gareth or me in such a state.

“It’s a game,” I breathed. “We’ll have to go through every room to find the way out, and each one of them will hurt me.”

“Hurt you how?” Father demanded. He looked ready to tear down the house with his bare hands.

I shook my head. I couldn’t bear the thought of describing anything I’d seen. I pushed past Father with a choked laugh, cursing our ancestors for building such a stupidly grand house—two hundred and fifty rooms. If we ever got home, I decided, I would seriously consider hiring an elemental with a talent for stonework to remake the whole thing.

The next room was one of the guest parlors. I grabbed the brass knob and threw the door open, secretly hoping it would knock flat some smirking past version of myself who stood on the other side, waiting for me.

But I had no such luck. On the other side of the door was a stage I knew well, a stage built specifically for me in the town of Derryndell. My parents had decided that for my first public performance, a smaller location would be ideal, instead of the crowded capital or one of the bustling coastal cities. But hundreds of people had come anyway, from all over the continent. They’d heard of the Ashbourne girl with the voice sweeter than an Olden siren, with fingers more dexterous than any of the great master pianists.

I stood frozen at the threshold, watching my fourteen-year-old self sit down at the piano—my own piano, my lovely cherrywood girl. I saw that Farrin take a deep breath and square her young shoulders, and panic bolted through me like a spooked horse, just as fresh and terrible as it had been that day.

“No, wait!” I cried, rushing across the stage. I tried pulling her from the piano bench, and when that didn’t work, I tried pushing her, ramming against her side. It did nothing. She began to play; her small fingers danced across the keys with precision, grace, confidence. I could feel her little heart pounding, the delight and nerves bubbling inside her. Her first performance outside of Ivyhill, and there were so many prestigious figures in the audience—the queen’s court composers, members of the royal orchestra, soloists and singers and revered instructors from as far as Aidurra and Vauzanne.

And then, only a few minutes into her performance, it happened. The listening crowd grew restless. They whispered, they sighed, they burst into euphoric laughter. I couldn’t stop myself from watching them as they rose from their seats and surged toward the stage—a whole wave of them, confused and blubbering, reaching for the girl atthe piano. She didn’t notice them at first, content in the cocoon of her power.

I screamed at them and threw myself in front of her. But they raced past me, through me, and lunged at her, at her instrument. They pawed at her and pleaded with her. Old men and young men, women and grandmothers and children, all of them desperate, adoring, insatiable. They would tear her apart if it meant keeping a piece of that music with them forever.

It happened so quickly and was such a shock that our house guard didn’t respond right away. Father was the first one to reach her, Gareth just behind him. Gareth swept her away, sheltering her against his body, and Father pounded twenty people flat before the guards were able to push through the teeming masses and join him. A hundred brawls broke out; the music hadn’t driveneveryonemad with ardent devotion. Some desperately fought for order. Soon the stage was swarmed, and I watched in horror as those grasping hands began to tear bits of flesh from Father’s body, from Gareth’s, from mine. My admirers trapped us in the wings, and their cries were fervent, wet prayers.

I backed away, tripping over my own feet. I stumbled into Father and turned to hide my face in his sleeve.No, I thought frantically.Real.I gasped out a fragment of song, fighting hard to steady it.

Father held me with his free arm. Little Farrin, in his other arm, was crying.

“What do you see?” I whispered.

“A guest parlor,” Father answered. “What doyousee?”

I looked up at him, and I thought he might have seen the answer in my eyes. Surely he remembered that day as vividly as I did.

His face was a stony mask, but his eyes burned. “Shut the door,” he barked at Ryder, and the boy obeyed, closing the bricked-up room away from us.

In the next room, what awaited us stopped me cold and tore an angry sob from my throat. It was a pleasant spring day at Ivyhill, full of birdsong and tender blooms, and all of us stood at the house’s open doors, watching the Warden take Mara away. Gemma wailed, Mother cried behind her hand, and so desperately sad, so shocked, that she couldn’t find her tears. I remembered that feeling of the world closing in on me, could feel it tightening my throat even now. And then there was Father, trying in vain to comfort us all. “It’s an honor,” he told us, standing tall, dry-eyed. “The Warden thinks she will pass the trials more quickly than any Rose before her.” But he couldn’t fool me even then. I heard that gruff note in his voice and saw the hard set of his mouth.

I stared after the departing carriage, watching in horror as the Warden crawled out the window, spiderlike, and crouched on the roof. Our eyes met across the growing distance between us. She smiled and stood, and then the severe dark shape of her bloomed into a winged shadow with round yellow eyes, stern and staring. She was no longer the Warden, but instead an owl with gleaming talons and a shrieking cry, looming with huge dark wings over the carriage that took my sister away from me.

I turned away furiously, snapped the door closed, and sang the cheeriest tune I could think of.No, I thought.You won’t beat me. That isn’t real. This isn’t real.I wouldnotbe trapped in a maze of my own home. It wasmyhome,ourhome, not his.

I thought I heard a curl of laughter at the back of my mind. I wasn’t convinced by my own trembling bravado, and neither was he.

On we went through the house, each room a nightmare of memory. In another bedroom, the artificer worked to stifle Gemma’s power—power that I now knew had been unstable because it came from a woman with an awakening god living inside her. Mara and I were in my bedroom, holding on to each other tightly as Gemma’sscreams rang through the house. Father had wanted to send us away while it happened, but Mother had begged him not to. If she had to sit and watch one daughter be cut open, he would not deprive her of knowing that her other daughters were safe and unhurt and right upstairs. Young Farrin’s and Mara’s bodies began to peel open before my eyes, as if the artificer’s knives of magic were carving into them too. I turned away from their screams and shut the door behind me.

The art gallery, my father’s study, every guest room, every parlor. Myself at every age, at every moment of humiliation. Every day of anguish I’d ever known unfurled before me, each one wounding me anew. I pushed my power to its limits, singing desperately through each plunge of dread and embarrassment.Real, I thought.Truth. Clarity.Midmorning sunlight burning away a damp fog. A single drop of clear water clinging to a trembling leaf. My piano’s keys under my fingers, Osmund pressing his silken head against my neck before settling down beside me to sleep. Gemma’s summer-blue eyes. Mara’s warm hand, worn and rough from her years of service.

And then, without warning, came Ryder.

I stumbled into the room in a state of numb terror, my song pouring automatically from my tired lungs. Then I saw what awaited me and my voice died in my throat.

It was the little room in Ryder’s stable—hisroom, his haven. There were my clothes hanging to dry; there was the glowing stove, the little bed. And there I was, naked, my back to Ryder as he assessed me with cold appraising eyes. Every lump on my body, every dip and imperfection—he saw them all, and so did I.

I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. I watched myself step away, shivering, and reach for Ryder’s clothes that lay abandoned on the floor.

“I can’t,” I told him, my voice small and frightened.

He caught my wrist and pulled me back against him. He kickedthe clothes away, then shoved me toward the wall, where a mirror stood. A distant part of me knew such a mirror didn’t actually exist in that room, and yet as I stared at it, I believed it. Ryder made me look at it, holding my face hard in his hands. I struggled, I kicked him. He pulled back my arms and held them, grinned meanly at me in the mirror.

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