Page 21 of A Song of Ash and Moonlight

She whispered this in a rush, as if she knew she shouldn’t be confessing such things to me but couldn’t help herself. “Yours is the only true family I’ve ever known. I’ve always thought I should be part of it, which I know is absurd. But when I’m with you and your sisters, and most of all when I was with your mother, I felt not like a queen or some perverse, godly thing. Acreation.”

She spat the word, her eyes glinting with tears. I’d never seen her in such a state. Listening to her, I could hardly breathe.

“When I’m with all of you, I just feel like…a girl. A person. It’s such a relief. Next to all of you, my power feels muted. Easier to carry. And now she’s gone, and I can’t find her. If I try, I can find anyone, anywhere in the world. Did you know that? Thanks to our ever-wise gods”—the words sounded bitter—“I can do most things if Iput my mind to them, though sometimes it takes me far too long and I fall prey to exhaustion before I can properly finish. But I can’t find her. And I didn’t know you were here tonight. I thought the house was empty. And then I came in, and what a surprise to find you and Gemma here. What do you suppose that means?”

“So…you can’t read my thoughts?” was the only thing I could think of to say.

Yvaine shook her head and closed her eyes. “No, and it’s wonderful. Everything’s so quiet here. You’re all so quiet.”

Part of me wished to argue with her; she’d spent enough time at the Green House to know that when we were all together, my family was anything but quiet. But we weren’t all together, not anymore, and perhaps we would never be again.

So I said nothing else; listening to the queen had worn me out. The hot fist of anger I’d held tight in my chest all day melted away without me even realizing it. I watched Yvaine hug her knees to her chest and cry, and I slid into a fitful sleep. When I woke, there was a hot breakfast ready for Gemma and me—crisp waffles piled with fruit and icing sugar, frothy hot cocoa. The day was clear and bright, and the queen was gone.

***

Years later, as I sat with Yvaine, making sure she slept, I thought of that long-ago night, my eyes burning with exhaustion. It helped Yvaine to fall asleep near me. During each visit to the Citadel, I tried to give her at least one night of that: a peaceful evening in her rooms, just the two of us. She had no other friends, she had once confessed to me—no one she ever brought back to her rooms to simply talk, as people did. So on those nights, we sat by the fire and talked of everything and nothing, with herbal tea and a heaping plate of cookies, just as she and my mother used to enjoy. No official state functions, no harriedadvisers, no endless documents stacked atop her desk. Sometimes I played music for her, but more often than not, she was asleep before I could make the suggestion.

And tonight, with the palace’s lockdown bells ringing in my ears and guards hovering over us every step of the way, Yvaine was asleep in Ryder’s arms before we even reached her rooms. I watched him suspiciously as he settled her among the pillows of her bed; would he be overwhelmed by her nearness and try to take advantage of her unconscious state in some way? But he was entirely decent, even reverent, as if it were his own beloved he was tucking in, and when he came to me and said quietly, “Is there anything else I can do?” I could only shake my head and avoid looking at him, clutching my shawl tightly around my body. He’d seen too much of me tonight; I had this awful feeling that he’d been the one to tear open my dress and expose my poisoned skin.

Instead, I went to my sister, who stood anxiously with Gareth in the corridor outside the queen’s rooms. I held her to me for a moment.

“Are you all right?” I whispered. “All that chaos must have hurt you.”

“A little,” she lied with a brave smile. I could see on her pale face, in the shadows under her eyes, how awful it had truly been. “But Gareth’s going to find me some bread and cheese, and perhaps more than a little wine. I’ll be all right by morning, or well enough, anyway.”

I glanced up at Gareth. He was looking at me with a haggard expression, as if at any moment some evil might spring out of the shadows and throw me back to the brink of death. “Farrin, I thought you were…” He lost his voice, cleared his throat, tried again. “I thought I’d lose you without us getting a chance to—”

“Please don’t,” I said wearily. “I’m fine now. Everything’s fine.”

“Were you going to say, ‘without us getting the chance to declare our undying love for one another’?” Gemma asked blandly.

Gareth and I both made faces at her, though I knew we were bothgrateful for the distraction. I sent them on their way, and hours later, when I’d changed into a plain nightdress from Yvaine’s closet and was about to nod off at last, Yvaine stirred beside me in her bed and whispered, “Thank you, my friend. I feel safer when you’re here.”

I stroked her hair until she quieted, her breathing even and steady. The tiny silver locket she wore under her gown had slipped out onto the pillow. Carefully, I tucked it back into her bodice. I didn’t say what I wanted to:What does it mean to feel safe?Gods knew Ishouldhave felt that way, ensconced in the queen’s bedroom, but I only felt restless and tired, heavy with questions. I tried to remember the last time I’d truly felt safe, like there wasn’t some awful thing crouching on the edge of my vision, and couldn’t find the answer.

I left Yvaine in her bedroom, slipped past the guards at the door, and wandered the royal apartments. There were guards everywhere, at every door and patrolling the hallways, but they didn’t bother me or ask me where I was going. They were used to me and I to them. It was nearly five o’clock in the morning, and Yvaine’s rooms felt gray and strange, every gleam of glass dulled, every fine fabric brittle under my fingers. It was as if the place itself was holding its breath, waiting nervously for Yvaine to open her eyes and for everything to be as it had once been.

The idea frightened me. What did the rooms know that I didn’t?

I couldn’t bear to be there any longer. I scribbled a note and gave it to one of the guards so Yvaine would see it first thing.I’ve gone to my music room, it read.Ring for me when you wake.

Then I left her rooms and hurried downstairs to a lower floor of the queen’s enormous tower, where years ago a suite had been set aside for my use. There was a ballroom, small but lovely, ornamented with mirrored walls and elaborate gilded scrollwork, velvet sofas, tasseled rugs. Beside the ballroom, there was a small chamber holding only a sleeping couch and two walls jammed with books, and outside the ballroom, flowers curtained a stone veranda.

All of it was for me, a private hideaway that the queen had gifted me after the disastrous public concert I’d given at age fourteen. All those people screaming for me, screamingatme, rushing the piano to get at me, throwing themselves at me in fits of ecstasy. Ten years later, I still shuddered every time I remembered it, but here I could perform without fear, without an audience.

I sat at the piano in the center of the ballroom—a lovely instrument, petite and glossy white with gold ivy vines painted on its every surface. I opened the lid, tried to ignore the sick feeling in my stomach, the dread quiet in the air now that the lockdown bells had finally stopped ringing, and started to play. I played all the joyful pieces I could think of—a delicate sonata by the Aidurran composer Dakesh Viliaris that had always reminded me of prancing show horses; a fiendishly difficult concerto by the court musician Alessande Bardata, written in celebration of her children, that always left me feeling thunderous and triumphant, my fingers sizzling with power; every rollicking reel the orchestra had performed at the ball. But I could only play a few bars of each before moving on to the next, dissatisfied.

An hour passed, and I pushed back hard from the piano, my shoulders tense and my stomach in knots, and instead tried the pretty green fiddle sitting on its pedestal at the far end of the room. But the strings felt stiff under my fingers, the bow clumsy in my hand, and even when I tried to sing, the notes felt intractable, like they didn’twantto leave my body. Terrible thoughts rose fast inside me, a confused barrage of images: Yvaine beating against her own magic, trying to tear it down; the stain of poison on my stomach; the cackling, bloody-nosed madman; my defiant, cowardly father.

The more desperately I tried to contain the images, the faster they came, and my voice broke off in the middle of “Willa’s Lullaby,” one of the sweetest folk songs ever composed, one I’d known my whole life—and yet suddenly I was so angry and muddled that I couldn’tremember another note. I stood there, staring at the mirrored wall, frozen with frustration. My reflection was everywhere; I couldn’t avoid it.

Maybe if you bedded a barmaid, came Gareth’s voice, much meaner in my head than it had actually been that awful day.

With a frustrated cry, I slammed the piano lid closed, barely restrained myself from throwing the fiddle across the room, and burst out onto the veranda. But the perfume of all those flowers was cloying, and I turned away from them so I wouldn’t start ripping them off their stems. I raced down the stairs, through the supple shell of ward magic that hugged the queen’s tower, and tore into the labyrinth of garden paths just beyond. An astonished guard standing at the entrance said, “My lady? Is everything all right?”

“Trouble sleeping,” I responded, my voice ugly and shrill, not convincing whatsoever. I must have looked like a madwoman. “Just need a walk.”

I took a few frantic turns, ducking under tree branches and shoving past more godsdamned flowers. I didn’t know where I was going; I just knew that if I stopped, I would scream. Another sloppy turn through a bush bursting with pink asters, and I slammed right into the chest of Ryder Bask.

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