Page 138 of A Song of Ash and Moonlight

Mara, leaning against the far wall, said it for me. “He loved Yvaine. Ankaret.”

“Loves,” I corrected her, looking up fiercely. “I don’t believe she’s dead, at least not truly. Maybe she’s dead in the sense that we can’t perceive her, but she’s not dead altogether, not destroyed.” I bit my lip, realizing how desperate I sounded. “‘Come and find me.’ She said that to me, right before the end. ‘Come and find me.’ Jaetris said he would come back in a different body. I believe him. Why would Yvaine have said such a thing unless she intended to return as well?”

This was the thing I’d been telling myself since awakening and realizing she was gone: that shewasn’ttruly gone, that this was all part of something grand and godly that we couldn’t yet understand.

Talan leaned forward heavily, elbows on his knees, and considered his hands. Gemma and Mara avoided looking at me altogether. Only Father, frowning thoughtfully, seemed willing to entertain the thought that I wasn’t just mad with grief and grasping for any comfort, no matter how outlandish.

“I suppose it’s possible,” he said. “Many things have happened of late that I would have deemed unthinkable not long ago. Your mother returning and being a god. All of you being…”

He couldn’t bring himself to say the word. He blew out an incredulous laugh and scrubbed a hand over his face. He looked old and tired, and yet somehow more himself than he’d been in years, and when I thought of Kilraith’s arrow trained on him in Mhorghast, how close I’d come to losing him—losing all of them—I almost couldn’t bear to look at him.

“Mother,” Gemma said thickly. The disgust in her voice surprised me. “Part of me really believed, right until the end, that she would come to our aid in Mhorghast, that we wouldn’t have to do all of that alone.” She shook her head and looked imploringly at Mara, at me.“Do you think she really is doing the right thing, the wise thing, by continuing to hide at Wardwell? Or is she simply—”

“A coward?” Mara finished. I couldn’t read her expression; I could see only how tired she looked, and heartbreakingly awkward, sitting there among all Ivyhill’s finery in her drab Rose garb. How brave she was. How brave we all were.

“It doesn’t matter if she’s a coward or not,” I said, realizing only as I said it that it was true, and that I could know this harsh truth, say it out loud, and still keep breathing, keep fighting. “We’ll drive ourselves mad trying to determine what’s going on in her head. What matters is that we can’t depend on her to help us reliably. She’ll come when she wants to, maybe.” I shrugged, feeling a little lightheaded with surprise, with relief, at my own matter-of-fact attitude. “We’re on our own, and we have been for a long time. Nothing has changed. Being angry with her is a waste of emotion.”

The room rang with quiet shock. It was as if a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders. Philippa had broken my heart as a child, but when I’d spoken of her just then, it had been with a sort of coldness, a detached clarity. I didn’t know what that meant, couldn’t untangle my motives—and I certainly didn’t dare look at my father to gauge what he thought of my little speech. But I did nudge my foot ever so slightly against Ryder’s, and when I felt him return the gesture, I realized that at least one thing I’d said simply wasn’t true.

I was not on my own, not anymore.

Gemma spoke next, briskly, brightly, as if she could lift the mood in the room simply by willing it. “Well, I suppose what we have to do, then, with or without Mother’s help, is find and destroy the other anchors of theytheliad, which are presumably giving Kilraith the power to move between realms with ease and gather followers.”

“And we must find the other gods before Kilraith does,” Ryder said darkly. “Or else destroy him before he can find them.”

“But how do you destroy such a creature?” Mara mused. “A being who was created by the gods and contains enough of each of their power that he can control them?” She crossed her arms over her chest, looking grim. “Either he’s truly that powerful on his own, or he’s using something that is. A tool. A weapon. Is it theytheliadanchors, or something else?”

Silence fell, perhaps the heaviest I’d ever experienced. These questions were impossible to answer.

We tossed ideas between us all through the afternoon until Ryder took my cup from me and told me softly that I was falling asleep sitting up. Gemma sent down to the kitchens for supper, but I was too tired to eat and too heartsick to remain conscious. I touched Ryder’s arm and leaned into him. “Will you come with me upstairs?” I whispered. I looked up at him, fresh tears building behind my eyes. I couldn’t seem to stop crying, and if I was going to cry, I wanted to be with him and him alone.

“Of course,” he said, kissing my hair. Then he helped me rise, and we were slowly crossing the entrance hall when Gilroy stopped us, grave and gray, his voice hushed. The whole house was hushed, despite the number of people in it; we were now sheltering dozens of citizens from nearby towns, and more were coming every day. Word had gotten out that the queen was dead. The air was thick with dread and sadness, and Ivyhill’s rooms were full of new beds. I felt guilty for leaving the care of all those people to the staff, but I didn’t think I was strong enough to shoulder their grief in addition to my own. Not yet.

“Pardon me, my lady,” Gilroy said, “but a messenger from the palace just arrived with this note for you. It seems to be from Lord Thirsk.”

Ah, Thirsk. I had wondered when I would hear from him. I took the letter from Gilroy and thanked him, and only when Ryder and Ireached the privacy of my rooms did I dare open it with shaking fingers and read it.

I looked up at Ryder, who waited tensely in the middle of the room. His worried frown was comically at odds with the purring Osmund, who lounged contentedly in his arms.

“What is it?” he asked.

“It seems,” I said quietly, “that the queen has named me in her will.”

***

At sunset the next night, I stood at the windows of my bedroom in the Green House, looking out over the capital city. From there, it looked almost peaceful: a quiet sea of flickering lights, and rooftops gleaming red and orange, pink and violet and gold. Ankaret’s colors. Yvaine’s colors.

But I had just been in the city, and I knew the true state of the people living in those shimmering streets. They were absolutely terrified. Their queen was dead. Something existed in the world that was strong enough to kill a queen chosen by the gods to protect them. A few of those imprisoned in Mhorghast had resurfaced—I didn’t know how; perhaps some last effort of Jaetris before his death—but many others had still not been found, and I feared never would be. And soon enough, the people of Edyn would know the rest of it—that the gods were reawakening, that they were being hunted, that the thing hunting them was also trying to tear down their last protections against the Old Country. The Middlemist, the Crescent of Storms, and the Knotwood were all in danger. Now that I had briefed the Royal Conclave on what had happened, they would brief the Senate, and truth would flood across the world. The armies would train and disperse, and the Senate would issue its draft to bring a slew of new initiates to the Order of the Rose.

Our world would be at war with the gods’ own angry son—our brother, in a way, as Gemma had pointed out with dark humor.

And yet, as I stood at the windows that night, watching the sunset splash its colors across the city’s towers and parks and the placid water in the bay beyond, all I could think of was the simple fact that I missed my friend. I missed Yvaine.

“Farrin?” Ryder came down the stairs, his voice hoarse with sleep. He hadn’t been allowed to accompany me to the reading of the queen’s will, and though I’d planned to give him a full report, that idea suddenly seemed almost too sad to contemplate.

Instead, I said it quietly, as quick as I could. “She gave me all her belongings. Everything, Ryder. The Citadel. The royal archives. Everything, to do with as I will.”

His frown deepened at this extraordinary statement, and he let out a soft, frustrated grunt. “That seems like far too much to place on your shoulders.”

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