Page 91 of A Song of Ash and Moonlight

“He’ll be all right, Gemma,” Ryder said. “A lesser creature would’ve broken during so many years in Kilraith’s service. Besides, he isn’t alone. He’s got one of my birds with him now.”

Gemma smiled at him in the mirror, her eyes bright. “And a Bask raven makes a fierce companion, does it?”

“You’re damn right it does.”

I looked up at him, a sudden rush of love warming me, distracting me from all my aches and bruises, and from the prick of nerves I felt as I remembered Philippa’s eager words.Fighting and creating glamours and making music—these things you can already do. But there is more buried in your power, and I can help you find it—

Was I wrong to have left her? If we’d stayed at Wardwell, started learning from her as she’d proposed instead of coming to the Citadel, would none of this have happened? Would Gareth and all the others still be here? Would Yvaine have stayed unhurt, untouched by Kilraith?

I swallowed hard against these questions, ones I couldn’t answer. An image came to my mind of Kilraith as a great wolf, trailing after us with sharp, tireless eyes, never quite catching us but nevertheless bringing chaos wherever he went. Whereverwewent.

But what was done was done. Wasting time worrying over the past would do nothing but hinder the future.

“One week, then,” I said softly, offering Ryder a brave smile.

He nodded at me, brought my fingers to his lips and kissed them. In his eyes, I read the same sadness I felt. A week apart, and the whole country a mess, and all I wanted was to crawl back into that bed we’d vacated only this morning. But our world needed us—whatever we were, whatever secrets our godly blood held—and the north needed Ryder.

“One week,” he replied.

***

When Gemma and I emerged from our family’s greenway hidden on the grounds of Rosewarren, we heard the protesters before we saw them: a muffled roar, constant but rippling, as if we were underwater listening to people howl on the shore.

Gemma leaned hard on me, winded from the passage through the greenway. “What is that?” she murmured. She looked behind us at the watery silver fog streaming through the trees—the southern border of the Middlemist.

But the noise was coming from the other direction. We hurried around the priory’s great walls of red-and-black brick to its front doors, and from there we looked down the rolling green lawn at the crowd gathered along its edge. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people swarmed the iron gates of the priory. But some sort of ward magic blocked their passage, obscured their figures. I couldn’t see faces or even distinct bodies, just a blur of colors and shapes that emitted a distant roar of muddied sound. Faceless figures crawled up the wall that surrounded the priory’s grounds and tried to jump to the other side; they battered at the gates with sledgehammers; they tossed stones and torches. But everything that touched the priory’s ward magic—every stone and torch, every body—was flung back, stunned and harmless, until someone in the crowd dared to try again.

My stomach turned as I watched them. Even through the ward magic, I could feel their fear scrambling up the sloped lawn, nipping at our ankles. Could they see us standing here, blurred and frozen, doing nothing to help them?

“Do you think she said anything at all to them before shutting herself away behind the ward magic?” Gemma muttered.

“I doubt she so much as posted a notice,” I replied. “‘Yes, we know there’ve been more abductions. We’re doing the best we can. Please come back later.’”

Gareth’s name turned painfully in my chest.Abductions.Such a clinical word for such a horrible thing.

Grimly, Gemma raised her hand to knock on the priory doors—but before she could, one of them swung open just enough to reveal Mara on the other side. The sight of her stunned me. She looked deathly pale and haggard, with deep shadows under her brown eyes that reminded me unsettlingly of Yvaine. She wore her hair slicked back in a tight bun and was dressed in Order garb of dark brown and charcoal gray: a long, square-shouldered jacket, knee-high leather boots. Worse even than the shadows under her eyes was that, with her hair pulled back and her shoulders high and sharp in that coat, she looked eerily like the Warden.

“Come in, quickly,” she whispered, and we obeyed at once. She shut the door behind us, pulled us into an alcove off the entrance hall, and gestured for us to be quiet. I listened past the pounding of my heart for the Warden’s steps gliding across the stone floor, but only silence met my ears. After a moment, Mara seemed satisfied.

“This way,” she said quietly. “I need your help with something.”

“Wait—” Gemma began.

Mara shook her head. “No time.”

I hurried around her, blocking her path. “Mara,wait.”

She could have evaded me or pushed me aside, of course, butinstead she only said, rather impatiently, “I had Cira beguile our family’s greenway with a spell that notifies me whenever it’s used. That’s how I knew you were here. And I’m sure I look terrible to your eyes, but I assure you I’m quite well. And most importantly, will youpleasecome with me without further delay? Later we can talk about whatever it is you came to talk about. But right now, I need your help.” She paused, her urgent expression hardening into something cold and careful. “Everyoneneeds your help.”

I exchanged a worried look with Gemma but said nothing more, instead stepping aside and letting Mara lead us through the priory. The dimly lit hallways buzzed with activity. Older Roses, fearsome and focused, strode off to what I assumed were various assignments. Younger Roses trotted after them, arms full of gear and weapons. From all corners came the distant, industrious clamor of weapons being sharpened, horses neighing out on the grounds, voices of girls and women shouting to each other.Throw it up here, quick, now, grab another one from the armory!

Every now and then as Mara led us quickly through the twisting corridors, their walls decorated with murals of Roses in combat, I felt curious eyes upon us, but no one stopped our progress. Perhaps by now they’d heard of what we’d done in Devenmere, or else they were so focused on their own duties that they couldn’t be bothered to stop and question us. And besides, we were with Mara.

Yet the longer we followed her, the more uneasy I became. She led us through a series of carpeted corridors, then out across one of the stone training yards, which bustled with horses and weapons and Roses in their browns and grays. We hurried after her to a small outbuilding a fair distance away from the priory, where we could hear nothing but our own footsteps—not the noise of the Roses readying for patrol or the crowd of people yelling in vain at the gates. Stately pines flanked the building, whispering ominously in the silvery wind.Once we were inside with the door shut behind us, everything grew still. The air was close and damp and smelled sour, like unwashed bodies.

Mara grabbed a torch from the wall. The flames cast harsh shapes across her skin, made the fresh slash on her face look doubly gruesome. “This way,” she said quietly, and we obeyed, though my body screamed at me to run and never come back to this place. Its stone staircases and winding corridors led us down into the earth, and the deeper we went, the fouler the air smelled. It felt like we were entering a tomb.

“Mara, are you taking us to the caves?” Gemma said at last, her voice a mere whisper.

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