Page 62 of A Song of Ash and Moonlight

“Wrong,” I finished, turning to face my sisters with my arms crossed over my chest. A lump ached in my throat. “It feels wrong.”

“It would feel worse to do nothing in the name of protecting her and then watch the world crumble around us,” Mara said bluntly.

“Of course I agree,” I whispered. “Of course I’ll do what I must. I’m sorry.”

“There’s no need to apologize. We can’t look back and rue our mistakes, especially the ones we make out of love. That’s one of the first things I learned during Order training. We can only look forward. Anything else is a waste of time, an opportunity for evil to take root. To that end, there’s something you need to see.”

Mara retrieved a simple canvas bag from a chair in the corner. Out of it she drew a small leather-bound notebook. She opened it and began to read.

“‘I dream of gardens that go on forever,’” she said. “‘I dream of dancing with bleeding feet, but I feel no pain, and my steps paint the world red as rubies.’”

She turned the page and continued. “‘My father disappeared three days ago. I don’t think it was like the others, who were taken all at once. I think he meant to go. I found a letter in his desk two days after he left us.I’ve been chosen. I must go. Don’t worry for me. There I’ll be a king. I’ll be a pet of the gods’ true children.’”

Mara turned another page. “‘I have to find it,’” she read, the words made all the more horrible by the matter-of-fact calm in her voice. “‘I have to go to Moonhollow. Don’t you understand? They’ll paint your body with starlight from head to toe. They’ll feed you petals drizzled with honey, every drop squeezed from the bones of the gods. Let me go. Let me go!’”

She closed the notebook. “That last one,” she said, “was thetestimony of a woman from the village of Cawder, on trial for murdering her brother. She’d been sick for some time, plagued with visions that left her bedridden. They were driving her mad, leaving her unable to work or walk or eat. Her brother, who was tending to her, tried to feed her lunch one day. She attacked him and fled through the village, laughing, covered in his blood, until neighbors managed to apprehend her and bring her to the local arbiter’s council.”

My heart pounded. I couldn’t think of what to say. The words she had read wriggled through my mind, restless and repulsive.

“So it’s gotten worse, then,” Gemma said solemnly. “Everything you showed me in the caves earlier this summer: the Mistfires, the spreading sickness, the visions…”

Mara nodded. “But as the visions grow in strength and numbers, so does our knowledge of what the people suffering from them are seeing. Moonhollow.” She frowned. “And Talan thinks this northern forest could be hiding such a place?”

“He can’t be certain, of course, but—”

“But it’s worth investigating.” Mara tucked the notebook back into her bag. “I’ve not heard of this forest myself, but the Order seldom sends me that far north of the Mist. And if it’s powerful enough magic to keep even a demon from passing its borders…”

“What if Kilraith is there?” I said quietly. None of us had yet said his name, and the moment I did, we fell silent and waited, listening for approaching malevolent footsteps. But the only sounds were that of the bustling tavern downstairs, faintly jovial.

Mara broke the tense quiet. “If he’s there, we’ll do our best to apprehend him,” she said briskly. “The Warden will want to question him. Even if he isn’t behind the abductions himself, I suspect he’ll know who—or what—is.”

I stared at her. “Apprehend him? We barely managed to escape from him during our last encounter.”

“We’ll kill him if we have to, then. Clearly we’re capable of besting him. We’d just have to do it again. And though I’d hate to lose the opportunity to question such a creature, if he’s dead, that means one less demon-enslaver in the world. So even if he knows nothing of Moonhollow, if we can’t safely transport him back to the priory, I for one will be glad to be rid of him. Anyway, this is merely a fact-finding mission. We’ll investigate the forest, try to unearth at least one more piece of this puzzle. We won’t necessarily be battling anyone.”

“And if we do have to fight, we can, and we will,” Gemma added, “just as we did in the Old Country. Our fae blood—”

“Oh,pleasedon’t start with that right now,” I burst out angrily, and my desperate panic must have flared in my voice, because Gemma said nothing else on the subject. She exchanged a pointed glance with Mara; I wondered ifbothmy sisters had been secretly corresponding with Aunt Felicity and gods knew who else from our mother’s family, trying to find answers to questions I was too frightened to ask.

After a long silence, Mara said simply, “We should sleep now. It’s late, and we must leave at dawn.”

She was right, of course. Both of my sisters seemed more and more often to be right, as if they’d each grown in ways I hadn’t yet managed. The feeling left me mortified, and I yearned for solitude, but I couldn’t bear to leave them here without me. I would miss something important, something irreplaceable; the last time we’d been together like this had been just after returning from the Old Country, all of us exhausted and wounded. At least tonight—at least for one more night—we were well. I’d be a fool not to cherish it while I could.

So I lay flat on my back in the bed between them, letting the low sounds of their voices wash over me. Mara told a funny story about a laundry mishap at the priory; Gemma laughed quietly into the darkness. Freyda perched on the headboard above us, a tireless sentry.

Just before drifting off, I reached out to either side of me and touched my sisters’ arms, too tired and full of longing to be afraid of my own awkwardness, my own bashful, uncertain way of showing love. Gemma wrapped her smallest finger around mine. Mara folded my entire hand into her own. I fell asleep with an ache in my chest, a small, contented hurt.

***

The next day, Mara took all of us north through a series of greenways belonging to the Order. At every exit, my whole body tensed, ready to fight or run depending on what greeted us—patrolling Rose or Olden foe—but we passed through each greenway unbothered. Clearly Mara knew which passages to take, and when, so as to evade her fellow shieldmaidens. By the time we reached the northern village of Vallenvoren, which sat tucked into a valley choked with huge pines, I was exhausted from the sheer strain of constant apprehension, though we’d left the Mist behind ages ago.

We stepped out of the last greenway into a tangled thicket overgrown with brambles. Mara hissed in apology and whacked at the mess with her sword.

“Clearly, no one has used this particular greenway in quite some time,” she said. “We’ve been too busy nearer the Mist to maintain our typical northern patrols.”

Gareth hurried after her, wielding his own sword—one of several weapons we’d brought with us from Ivyhill along with food, clothes, and healing supplies in case of disaster.

“Here, let me help you,” he said, with a gallant sweep of his blade—but it immediately caught in a snarl of thorns, and he had to jerk it free rather clumsily, his face flushing with embarrassment.

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