Page 89 of A Song of Ash and Moonlight

“Was that him in the dining room?” I choked out. “Was he inside you?”

“Just like Talan,” came a faint whisper from Gemma. She sat stunned on the floor, not far from me.

We shouldn’t have come. The realization was like a boot to the gut. All our work with the crown, our journey to Wardwell—we’d brought some invisible evil into the Citadel. Kilraith had been shadowing us, and now he’d followed us here. We should’ve listened to Thirsk, I thought wildly; we should’ve let Yvaine be. The feather pulsed frantically against the sweaty skin of my torso, its rhythm reflecting my own wild alarm. But what could a firebird do to help a woman who’d already been burned?

“Oh gods, Yvaine, I’m sorry,” I whispered, and then I heard her draw in a wheezing, thin breath, and my whole body flooded with white-hot terror. “Yvaine? Please, stay with me. Yvaine!” I shouted for Thirsk, for the guards, for anyone. “Send for healers, now!” I screamed, but they were already there, six of them bustling over to us in their white robes, their faces grim and drawn. They lifted Yvaine’s body onto a canvas stretcher, and though I tried to go with them, I could barely stand and instead fell back, furious and desperate, into Ryder’s arms. I watched them carry her away, and it was then that I began to understand that somethingelsewas deeply wrong.

The royal beguilers were huddled together in frantic conference beside a pile of smoking rubble. Some were weeping; others, stricken, wandered about the room, calling out, “Brogan? Brogan!”

Brogan—the head beguiler, who’d been working for months to keep the Citadel safe from the sinkhole’s inexorable expansion.

One of the beguilers wept into her hands. “He’s gone,” she said. “They took him!”

They?At first the word didn’t make sense to me. Then I remembered the shadows. Clarity smashed into me like a falling rock. I remembered the message of Uven Lerrick in the Basks’ beguiled mirror, that day at Ravenswood when Alastrina had disappeared.One moment we were all here, and the next, a great rush of shadows washed across the room, and I felt horribly cold, utterly disoriented, my sight gone, my hearing gone. Then the shadows vanished, and my Dornen was no longer here.

He just…hedisappeared.

Just then, Gemma let out a strange noise, a strangled gasp of horror. “Gareth?” she whispered.

I whirled to find him, heart in my throat. I looked wildly around the room for a familiar blond head, a lanky frame in a gray suit. He’d come downstairs with us. I’d seen him only moments ago. He had been helping Brogan—

With a lurch of fear, I realized the truth without even having to search the room. Gareth could have been injured by falling debris, I reasoned; he could have been knocked off his feet in the chaos and now lay unconscious in the dark somewhere.

But even as the thoughts came to me, I knew them for lies. I couldn’t pretend away the sudden emptiness in the room, the obvious void at my side.

Gareth—my brilliant, infuriating, dearest friend—was gone.

Chapter 19

We went looking for him at once, but hours of tearing through the Citadel calling his name, searching every room, peering into every dark corner, yielded nothing. Everywhere we went, servants wailed through the halls, calling after their friends and sisters and lovers, now gone. Advisers and senators, councilors and archivists, the royal beguilers, the royal cooks, the royal astronomers—all of them were bereft, tumbling through the marble halls like lost children. Everyone had lost someone—or knew someone who had lost someone—during that brief instant when shadows had snapped through the Citadel, before Yvaine had closed the sinkhole and driven them away. The air in every corridor was sour with terror.

At last, I could walk no longer. Ryder, who’d been beside himself—trying to no avail to get me to stop and rest—noticed me fading the moment before I whispered, “I can’t.”

My shaking knees gave out, and he was there before I could fall, as he always seemed to be. Gratefully I leaned into him and closed my eyes, trusting him to lead me to a place I could sit.Gareth, Gareth.I whispered his name into Ryder’s sleeve, as if that would somehow call him to me, though it was shatteringly clear that he was gone, thatdozens were gone. Dozens from this palace alone. Then the pain I’d been fighting off reared its head and said,No more.

Blackness rose up to claim me, and when I next opened my eyes, I was in my rooms, on a velvet sofa by the windows. Gemma sat beside me, cleaning the dried blood from my skin, her hair drawn up into a messy bun and her expression troubled.

I soon understood why. “Lord Ryder, wemustdo this,” came an angry voice from somewhere in the room. I turned, ignoring Gemma’s murmur of caution, and saw Ryder and Thirsk by the door. Ryder loomed; Thirsk bristled. His head was bandaged, his white beard singed. He saw me staring and hurried over, looking relieved.

“Lady Farrin,” he said, “I’m glad to see you awake.”

I cut him off. “Yvaine? Is she well? Is she—”

His expression softened the slightest bit. “The queen is alive. But her wounds are grave. She has told us she will heal, but it will take days.”

I sank back into the couch, squeezed my eyes shut. She was alive, she was alive—a joy I would hold fiercely to my heart.

Thirsk cleared his throat. “I’ve come to tell you that we must enact the draft at once. The Citadel is in an uproar, the city even worse. In the queen’s absence, I must use my authority as her speaker and issue an order to the Senate. They must institute the draft immediately—no more fussing over language and niceties—and dispatch soldiers from both armies to enforce it.”

His words washed over me like waves, dashing me against the rocks of my own pain. I struggled to sit up. “Absolutely not, Thirsk. We cannot ask that sacrifice of anyone right now, not when we don’t yet know the true reach of what’s happened.”

Past Thirsk, Ryder’s expression turned relieved. I felt a quiet thrum of pleasure; he and I were in agreement.

But Thirsk stood firm. “Lady Farrin,” he said coolly, “I hope you know I am here as a courtesy, not to ask permission. In the event thatthe queen is incapacitated—as she is now—I have the authority to act in her name. And in her name, I must do this. The country can sit and wait for action no longer.”

“Rash action is worse than no action at all. We must think of the days ahead—not just today, when everyone is frightened and grieving.”

A distant explosion drew our attention to the windows. Gemma helped me limp over to look outside, and what I saw left my skin crawling. Illuminated by the moon, the city was chaos; crowds flooded through the streets far below us and past the Citadel walls. Scattered flames burned, and protesters gathered once more at the palace gates. Distant rifle fire popped; I hoped it came from desperate citizens and not from the guards who’d taken oaths at the queen’s feet to protect them. A low drone of unrest rose up through the air to meet my ears: desolate screams, angry shouts. It was like an anthill disturbed, all its glittering inhabitants spilling out in confused disarray. Through it all, the bells of the Citadel chimed—not in warning now but in sorrow. Low, deep chimes, each separated by a few seconds. A death knell.

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