Page 116 of A Song of Ash and Moonlight

Father shot to his feet. “All right, enough of this,” he spat. “You are nogod. You are either Philippa Ashbourne, with her mind scrambled by some nefarious magic, or you’re a piece of nefarious magic yourself—a figment, or some glamoured impostor sent to confuse and distract us. Carbreigh! Captain Nomi!” he barked over his shoulder. “Confine this creature to the basement before she can say another word.”

“Why, Gideon Ashbourne,” Philippa cooed, still puffing thoughtfully on her pipe. “The mighty Anointed sentinel who boasts about hisstrength from coast to coast now sends his loyal house soldiers to fightforhim? Are you sure you’re not the impostor, darling?”

It happened quickly. Father’s face twisted with rage. He lunged at her, his sentinel power booming out of him and rippling across the room like a hot ocean, stealing my breath and tipping every piece of furniture onto its side.

But Philippa didn’t move, didn’t even blink. With a breath, she grew taller, fiercer, the shape of her expanding to fill the room. Shadows shivered around her fingers as if they’d been drawn out of every nook and cranny to worship her. The fire in the hearth vanished; all the flickering candles in the room went out. The only light was Philippa—her eyes like torches, her skin like the sunset sky. Again I saw the faint glitter of jewels in her hair and the shimmer of mail across her bodice. Father came at her, but all his mighty strength was nothing. A flick of her hand, and he was down, sprawled on the floor with a huge gash carved across his chest. Blood spilled out of it, staining his clothes, the carpet, his skin. He gaped down at himself, gasping for air.

I tried to move but couldn’t; Philippa’s power pinned me to my seat. Instead I watched, tears streaming down my face from her unearthly incandescence, as she knelt at Father’s side. She watched him for a moment, something like sadness in her eyes, and then she drew her hand up his body, and he was well again. No gash, no blood. Only a rip in his coat where the wound had once been.

The fire roared back to life; the candles reclaimed their nervous light. The shadows returned to their corners, scurrying away like spiders. And Philippa was simply a woman in a green dress, crouching beside a speechless man who looked like he’d just learned that the sky was in fact the ocean, that up was down.

“So you see now,” Philippa said at last, “that I am what I claim to be. My story is a long one, and I won’t tell it all again right now. It’s farmore important to tend to our wounded—which I suppose I should do momentarily,” she added, with an irritable look at my father. “Now that I’ve already had to use some of my power to demonstrate your foolishness, I might as well fix everyone up. So, for now, suffice it to say, I am here and I am real. I am your wife, the mother of your children, and I am also a god. This is no trick. And I don’t think you want to see what will happen if you or any of your staff tries to confine me again.”

She rose and settled wearily into a chair by the fire. The sadness in her expression was quiet, resolute, and though her face was ageless, her eyes held lifetimes. I shivered as I contemplated an eerie question: Someday, if I lived to see it, would my own eyes look like that? A god’s eyes trapped in a human’s face?

“Now,” she said, looking around at everyone, “while my power works to heal your wounds—it will be slower than I’d like, so as to hopefully not attract too much undue attention—let’s all of us talk. We have an invasion to plan.”

That startled me. Somewhere in the dregs of my exhaustion, I found a shred of my old anger, and it gave me the strength to speak. “I thought you were content to stay forever at Wardwell. You’re a mere shadow of your former self, you said. You fear Kilraith will want to use you.”

Her eyes cut quickly to mine. “And so I am, and so he most likely will. But I have had to show myself already, haven’t I, in order to rescue you and your lover from your own lunacy? First you two, then your father and his temper. A moonlight road.” She said the words scornfully, glanced at Ryder with an impatient curl of her lips. “I would have thought a daughter of mine and a man impressive enough to be her chosen mate would be able to resist the lure of a mere pretty trick of light.”

Ryder drew himself up, as if to defend our honor, but Philippawaved him silent. “To Wardwell I will return, hopefully before the enemy comes sniffing around to find me. There I will hide myself away for everyone’s sake. But first, since my cover has been so spectacularly blown, I’ll help you. Someone take notes. My penmanship remains atrocious.”

The comment was a stab to my heart. She had indeed always had sloppy penmanship, the sort of careless loopy lettering that as a child obsessed with neatness, I’d both abhorred and quietly admired. I glanced at Father. Ashen with shock, he had dragged himself back into his chair and now sat there in silence, his shoulders slumped, his whole posture defeated. Mr. Carbreigh and his crew, and the house guards, milled about uncertainly in the entrance hall.

Somehow I found the strength to rise. It was not a new thing, forcing myself into action to keep the house running when my father found himself unable to do so. I sent the guards away with instructions: continue patrolling the house and grounds; run drills using their elemental magic; reinforce the doors and windows; assign a partner to every staff member so no one ever walked alone.

Then I limped back to the couch and opened a drawer in the table beside it. A notebook lay within, along with a selection of pens. I opened the notebook to a blank page. When I looked up at Philippa, she was watching me fondly, a softness in her face that reminded me more of the mother I’d lost and less of the god who’d just saved my life.

I hardened myself against the pain screwing itself into my chest. “Well?” I said briskly. “I’m ready. Someone start talking.”

***

Hours later, I staggered upstairs in a bleary-eyed daze, wincing with every step. Philippa had sworn I would wake in the morning feeling like nothing had happened, and I suppose I believed her, but my head was full, and my hand ached from writing, and my heart felttoo heavy to carry.War. Invasion.The words sat strangely in my mind, tilting my whole world out of alignment. Armies would be gathered—both the Upper, with all their Anointed and low magicks, and the Lower, whose soldiers possessed no magic and instead fought with conventional weapons. We would send for reinforcements from the other continents, Aidurra and Vauzanne. Troops needed to be sent to every village, to reinforce their borders and teach the citizens what to look out for, what to guard against. They would have to lock themselves inside during storms, ignore glimmers of light, never walk alone, and carry tokens of reality and reminders of danger wherever they went—pieces of home, paintings of loved ones, locks of hair, handwritten notes. Anything that might jog them back to themselves and break them free of Mhorghast’s hungry hold. Gemma had suggested hiring a crew of artisans to make more of the wooden tokens that poor Phaidra had given us before going to the Old Country—shapes that were dear to the owners, all of them carved from Edynic trees. They would serve as physical anchors to help people remember their homes—where they came from, where they belonged.

And then there was the Warden.

As I limped down the hallway of our family’s wing, I imagined with dread what the Warden would think of this. We would need to delay the draft yet again and ask her to send the armies any Roses she could spare. I could predict the response we’d get.And what do you think will happen if I send Roses to you and leave the Mist unguarded? Don’t you think that’s exactly what this Kilraith wants?

And it was quite possible she would be correct to fear such a thing. The more I thought about it, the faster my thoughts scattered and spiraled. Could we trust anything we’d seen in Mhorghast? Or was all of it—the arena, the gilded streets, the looming palace—an illusion constructed to divert our attention from what really mattered? Philippadidn’t think so; she insisted that even such an elaborate illusion as that would be no match for her godly senses.

“The same godly senses that you yourself compared to a child learning how to walk?” I had snapped at her, finally pushed past the edge of my patience by all the suggestions being thrown at me, the many tasks and questions I’d scribbled in my notebook.

Philippa had looked at me evenly through the veil of her damned pipe smoke. “A god learning how to walk is still a god, and more powerful than any Anointed human. Do not worry, angry daughter of mine. When I say that I would be able to sniff out a lie, I speak the truth. You can trust me.”

Trust. Another word that sat askew inside of me.Trusta mother who had left us without explanation.Trusta god who had, along with her kindred, created a curse as reckless and dangerous as theytheliad.

Trusta woman who had happily spent years locked away from all memories of the life she’d left behind.

Trusta man whose greatest crime was saving my life and being afraid to tell me about—perhaps in part because he feared I’d react exactly as I had.

I sat in my room, Osmund purring obliviously in my lap, and pored over my notes. A hundred new things to do, a thousand messages to write. Supplies to gather, weapons to stockpile. The egg, the key, the goblet, the black lake under a full moon, the Three-Eyed Crown.

Those five things I’d written at the very end of my notes, each object underlined. I hadn’t mentioned them to Philippa, nor had anyone else. I’d been afraid to. Even looking at the words felt dangerous, as if rearranging the letters in a certain way would reveal some awful piece of spellwork that would activate upon being discovered. A silly fear; I scolded myself for it. Was I holding back information from her as some sort of petty revenge?You left us when we were children, so I won’t tell you about the strange images Garethand Heldine deciphered from the Three-Eyed Crown’s shadows. How do you like that?

I laughed to myself, leaned back against my pillows, closed my eyes, and stroked the soft fur between Osmund’s ears. Philippa was staying the night to help Carbreigh reinforce the grounds. She would leave for Wardwell in the morning. I would tell her then, at breakfast.An egg, a key, a goblet, a black lake under a full moon. What did it mean? Were they anchors? Were they clues? Were they nothing?

The words cycled through my mind, making my heart ache. With my free hand, I held my notebook to my chest and pressed it hard against my skin, as if that would do something to soothe my aching heart. Because of course thinking about the crown made me think of Gareth.Gareth.Tears burned behind my closed eyelids as my mind summoned the image of his smiling, bespectacled face, his messy hair, his rumpled tie. I imagined him surrounded by books, chewing on a pen until it stained his lip. I refused to think of him in Mhorghast, enduring whatever cruelties might be done to him there—if he was still alive, that is.

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