Page 74 of A Song of Ash and Moonlight

Shadows of memory darkened Talan’s face. “Something terrible,” he agreed, his fingers tightening around Gemma’s. “But Gemma saved me. And so did Mara, and Farrin. All of them did.”

Philippa beamed at us, a light from within making her skin glow. “Of course they did. My daughters, brave and strong, just as I always knew they would be—”

“Your story,” I snapped, interrupting her.

She blinked once and said, “Of course. Well, those were the first two blows, each unmaking me and remaking me at once. And then the third, perhaps the worst of all.” Her sad gaze moved to Mara. “My little Mara was taken from me.”

“From all of us,” I corrected. “You weren’t the only one to suffer when the Warden took her.”

“I concede that. But the blow of that grief—the third great one I had borne in only a small handful of years—it completed my Remaking, you see. I was no longer Philippa Ashbourne, not entirely. I was something else, something more. That day, watching Mara borne away in the Warden’s carriage, the tide of my self turned. I was more god than woman, more Kerezen than Philippa. Though I could not yet put the feeling into words, I knew the truth. I felt it in my marrow. My anger was volcanic. One daughter mutilated, another nearly killed, the last taken from me. If I had stayed, I would have hurt someone. I know it.” Her voice was low, thick, her amber gaze distant. “Gods are selfish beings in the way that beasts are selfish, concerned only with their own survival, the thriving of their domain, the marvel of their own strength, the safety of their young. If you’d seen me during my first life, creating and destroying with no regard for the consequences…”

Philippa shook her head wryly. I got the sickening sense that she wasamusedby whatever horrific memories she held.

“But humans are not this way,” she said, “and there was enough of Philippa left in me to realize that what I was feeling—this great uncoiling inside me—was dangerous. I contained powers I did not understand. I couldn’t remain at Ivyhill, or anywhere else that people lived. I had to explore myself, to learn what it meant to be a god—and to do that, I had no choice but to leave everything behind. My children, my husband, my home. And so I fled. I lived in solitude foryears, and with my strange twin powers—human and god, elemental and physical—I built this place, and I named it Wardwell.”

She gazed around the cottage’s main room, a lofty, airy space with greenery draped over every rafter. “Here, I am safe from myself, and so is everyone else. This is no longer a world made for gods, and yet here I am living in it. So I exist as I must, in solitude. My daily prayer is that enough of Philippa remains alive in me that I am content to stay here, tucked securely away. The day I become fully a god, leaving my mortal shell behind…this day is one I dread, and I hope it never comes. I hope to live forever in this strange peace I’ve constructed, a god in a human shell.”

She laughed quietly and held up her left hand, marveling at it. “I wish you could experience even a moment of how it feels to live like this, a vessel of mere flesh and sinew that contains godly amounts of power. To be two selves at once. To have memories of pushing babies from my body and also to remember crafting the first ancient humans with my own hands. Scooping up earth and water, mixing it with my let blood, sifting through the Olden realm for sinaelum and using it to weave a lattice, holding all the fragile pieces together. The first humans: limbs and scalps, breakable bones and pulsing hearts.”

“Stop it,” I whispered. I was shaking, revolted. Hearing such words coming from my mother’s mouth—frommymouth, mirrored on her face—made me feel sick. Philippa looked at me, serenely curious, perhaps waiting for me to say more, but then Gareth spoke. He hadn’t heard me; he was bursting with the same question that was turning over and over in my own mind. I could see it on his face, in his dazed, ashen expression.

“Does this mean,” he began, very quietly, “that Farrin and Gemma and Mara are all…”

In the end, he couldn’t say it. I could hardlythinkit; the very word felt monstrous.

“Gods themselves?” Philippa finished, with a quirk of her eyebrow. “No. There’s too much of their father in them for that. But it is not only Gideon Ashbourne’s blood pumping through their bodies. It is mine too. Philippa’s, and Kerezen’s.” She retrieved her pipe from its glass tray, puffed on it, blew out a curl of white smoke. As if all of this were nothing, mere frothy gossip after a dinner among friends. “They are both mortal and not,” she said simply around her pipe. “Humans and gods.Demigodsis the word.” She tilted her head, considering Gemma with fond amusement. I hated the expression, wanted to wipe it from her face with another jaw-cracking blow.

“Fae blood indeed,” she murmured. “Not a bad guess, Gemmy, but not the correct one.”

The use of Gemma’s nickname was the final blow. I couldn’t stand to be in that room for another second. I surged up from my seat and stormed toward the door. Mara moved to stop me, then relented. I burst outside into the world of green spring beyond the cottage. I didn’t stop to think where I was going, nor to consider if the magic boundaries of Wardwell would expand to accommodate me. I simply ran, tearing across the clover-soft lawn, through the vegetable garden beside the cottage, across the wildflower-strewn fields beyond. I ran as fast as my shaking body could take me. Tall grasses whipped past me; lazy bumblebees bumped drunkenly into my legs. The air smelled fresh and green, every petal and blade of grass sugared with nectar. I smelled honeysuckle, roses, jasmine. The sweetness made me want to cry; I let out an angry, gasping sob, ducked under a low branch, and hurried into the woods.

The shade of the pines towering overhead was a relief. The air was cool, less cloying. My side cramped; my lungs and legs burned. And still I ran, until suddenly I couldn’t. I stumbled down a slight rocky slope, tripped over a jutting stone, let out a sharp cry of surprise.

But I didn’t hit the ground. Ryder caught me before I could. Hewas breathing hard, though not as hard as I was. He held my arms, steadying me. He’d run after me into these strange spring woods.

I glared up at him, sweaty and on edge, my heart still pounding. I’d never seen anything as beautiful as his frowning, bearded face.

“You caught me,” I said, panting hard. I shoved at him a little, and he let me go. But I didn’twanthim to let me go. I went back to him, fisted my hands in his coat. “How did you catch me? How are you not evensweating?”

He raised one dark eyebrow. “Farrin, love, you’re not that fast a runner.”

And that made me laugh, though tears were not far behind. I relished the feeling of him lovingly tucking a strand of damp hair behind my ear, and then the relief of him being there—the sensation of his warm body under my hands, holding me up—pushed me over the edge of my anger into pure overwhelmed release. I hid my face in his chest and cried, and he asked of me no explanation, no apology. He simply held me, one hand cupping the back of my head, his cheek pressed against my crown. In his deep, gruff voice he told me again and again, “I’m here, Farrin. I’m here with you. I’m not going anywhere. Feel me, love.”

He pressed my palm flat against his chest, right over his pounding heart. “I’m right here.” He kissed my hair, rocked me slowly against him. “Farrin, Farrin.” His voice was like a strange, rough song, a lullaby under the trees. “Farrin in the forest light,” he said, a tender smile in his voice.

I clung to him as the pines whispered around us. A cool breeze kissed my skin, and I pulled back at last to look up at him, a hundred clumsy words of love on my tongue—but Ryder wasn’t looking down at me, as I’d imagined. He was staring past me, into the woods. His whole body tensed against mine.

“Stay very calm,” he said quietly, “and don’t move.”

But I’d already turned to see what he was seeing, fear bolting through me like lightning, and what I saw staring back at me—at us—was a blazing, familiar figure peeking out from behind a tree. White-gold flames, sparking wings, two eyes of cold blue fire.

My breath caught.The firebird.

Chapter 16

Ryder slowly reached for his crossbow, which he still wore across his back on a leather strap slung around his torso. I shouldn’t have been surprised that he still carried his weapons, though he’d long ago discarded his winter coat and now wore his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows. He took a thick black arrow from the quiver at his hip, nocked it. All the while his eyes remained trained on the firebird. Its flames shimmered and snapped as it crouched there behind the tree, apparently frozen in place—with fascination? With fear?

Or with the focused attention of a predator on the hunt?

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