Page 25 of A Song of Ash and Moonlight

I sat back, buzzing with anger and horribly tired. I stared right at my father, who was looking at me as if he’d never seen me before, as if until now he’d dismissed my every worry, every frustration, as mere fits. As if he considered me a daughter who couldn’t possibly grasp the truth and would, in the end, see the error of her thinking and obey him, love him, as she’d always done.

“I wish the poison had killed me,” I said quietly, not realizing until I uttered the words that thiswasa dreadful wish of mine. The very thought brought me a strange sort of peace. No more notebook of tasks, no more sleepless, miserable nights in my bed, no more exhaustion. “I wish Yvaine had been unable to heal me. Maybe seeing my corpse at your feet would have been enough to make you see reason. Or maybe not.” I sighed, closed my eyes, clenched my jaw hard so my mouth wouldn’t tremble. “I think you’re too far gone for that. I think you’re a shadow of the father I once loved.”

I heard him shift and wondered if he might try to come sit beside me—to comfort me, maybe, or more likely to try and wheedle me out of the snit I was in, make me see reason. But there was only silence, stillness, and then, I thought, my heart hammering, a muted sound that could have been crying.

I curled my fingers into my skirts and kept my eyes closed. It was better in this place behind my eyelids. Warm and dark, easy to imagine myself far away from everything that hurt.

***

There were three ways to travel from the southern part of the continent past the Middlemist to the north: greenway, a combination of horse or carriage and ship, and luck.

A person could theoretically cross from the southern half of Gallinor to the north, or the reverse, by simply entering the Mist and somehow surviving the shimmering silver maze of it to emerge on the other side. Certainly people had managed to do so. But it was terribly easy to get lost and very likely that you would starve to death before you found your way out. Olden creatures could slip through the barrier between realms and attack you or eat you, or trick you out of your mind. Or a normal human person, lost in the Mist themself and mad from the loneliness of it, the strangeness of it, its whispers and suggestions, could stumble upon you and mistake you for a chimaera, or a shifter, a fae, and murder you before you could murder them.

These were only some of the stories my sister Mara had told us during her years serving the Order of the Rose, a sisterhood of women and girls bound to patrol the Middlemist and protect Edyn, the human world, from the Old Country, where the gods were born and their magic ran wild.

So, not once, then, had we tried traveling Mistwise. Not even my father was fool enough for that.

Fortunately, being an Anointed family rife with power and business savvy, friends of the queen and the envy of most, had afforded us the kind of wealth that allowed us to hire Anointed wayfarers. These were elemental humans, rare and expensive to work with, whose magic had a narrow but highly useful purpose: instantaneous transportation from one location to another using plant life as a conduit. There were thirty-six greenways that I knew about scattered across Ivyhill, though I’d long suspected that Father kept others secret from me. One of those known to me was located in a hidden lagoon, buried underwater amid ferns and water weeds. An inconvenient location, but that was the point. This greenway led to Ravenswood, the Bask family’s estate, and had allowed our family to spy on them for years.

But spying was not our purpose this time; we were visitingRavenswood as guests and allies of the family, and our goal was to discuss the safety of the realm. This was not an occasion for sneaking through greenways.

Carriage and ship it was, then, andgods, it was tiresome. Two weeks of travel, mostly through mountains—first the Little Grays in the south, and then, after two days traveling by boat through the Gloaming Sea, the taller, meaner Great Grays and their harsh northern winds. By the time we arrived at Ravenswood and I stumbled out of the coach, my legs stiff from our final day of travel, I felt ready to kiss the ground, even horrible and rocky as it was, laced with cold, black northern dirt.

Before I could, Ryder and Alastrina were striding forward to greet us, their parents and the entirety of their household staff arrayed behind them in splendid lines. Everyone, even the kitchen maids, was dressed in black, blue, silver, and rich shades of gray in tribute to the surrounding mountains.

“Lord Gideon,” said Ryder, approaching with his hand outstretched. “Welcome to Ravenswood. I hope your journey was swift and uneventful?”

Father glared at Ryder and then at me for making him do this. I glared right back, too tired to feel intimidated by that fearsome scowl of his, and we held there for a moment, neither of us blinking, until finally Father relented with a slight sag of his shoulders and shook Ryder’s hand. He looked murderous, his jaw clenched and his eyes burning with a thousand insults.

“Ciaran,” Father said in greeting with a hard little smile. He knew just as well as I did that this was not the name Ryder preferred. “Alastrina.” He kissed her outstretched hand; I held my breath, certain he would bite off one of her fingers. “Our journey was long but unremarkable,” he went on. Curt, stone-faced. “I’m sure everyone in my party would be grateful to be shown to their rooms with all due haste.”

Ryder nodded briskly and gestured over his shoulder at a tall, mild-faced man in a sharp black suit who I took to be the family’s butler. He clapped his gloved hands together, and the yard burst into activity. Our servants unloaded our coaches; our grooms unhitched our horses; the Basks’ aproned kitchen staff scurried back inside to continue preparations for supper while their household staff came to assist ours. As everyone bustled around me, I stood quietly and took it all in. Alastrina stiffly led my tight-lipped father toward Lord Alaster and Lady Enid at the front of the house. Gemma flitted about in her cheerful floral gown, introducing herself to everyone she could find, trying valiantly for cheer.

Gareth came up beside me to gaze up the rocky drive at the house. It was a huge, sprawling structure, all sharp dark towers and broad windows, gray stone walls and black slate roofs, windows bright with candlelight. I imagined it as a monster perched on the mountainside, looking down at us with all the warmth of a carrion bird. Near the house, two other families stood, as finely dressed as our hosts but looking uneasy, like children worried that their parents might start arguing at any moment. I knew them, of course. The Nash family hailed from the southeastern coast, and the Barthel family lived on the Northern Isles. A southern family and a northern one, both Anointed, the Nashes friends of my family and the Barthels friends of the Basks, just as Ryder and I had agreed in our letters—letters my father had refused to read.

“I trust you’ll tell me whatever I need to know,” he’d told me every time I’d tried to discuss the plans for our trip, falsely warm, not looking at me. We’d hardly spoken since our argument coming home from the ball.

I watched Lord Alaster lead him inside the house, dread churning inside me. Gemma hurried after them, skirts rustling, exclaiming in admiration over the house’s architecture. The Barthel and Nash families followed them with some reluctance.

Gareth whistled low and held out his arm to me. “Well. I, for one, expect this to be averyentertaining weekend.”

I grabbed on to his arm, fiercely grateful he’d come with us. His fathomless brain would be useful in our discussions; his Gareth-ness just might keep me from fleeing this place and running all the way back home.

Ryder strode up to us, looking grim and thoughtful. “Farrin. Professor.” Then his eyes met mine. “We should compare notes before supper. Alastrina and Gemma too. And you too, Professor, if you wouldn’t mind. An additional clear head would be appreciated, considering the circumstances.” He turned and gestured up the drive. “Our staff will show you to your rooms. We’ll meet in the west parlor in an hour. Supper is at eight.”

Questions crowded my mind. Not once in our correspondence since the ball had we spoken of his offer to teach me to fight, but suddenly, in the midst of this tense, solemn flurry of activity, I wanted nothing more than to try swinging my fist at him again. I imagined what it would feel like to make contact: bone to bone, flesh to flesh.

He glanced at me once more; his blue eyes seemed even brighter here, with the cold northern wind whipping at our faces. He saw my clenched fist, which I hadn’t realized I’d closed, and seemed ready to say something. Then he turned and strode toward the house, his dark dress coat swirling in the wind. A raven flew down from the trees to alight upon his shoulder and stared back at us, watching us with unblinking black eyes until they both disappeared inside the house.

***

That night, we all sat down to supper in the Basks’ cavernous dining hall, a grand but cold space with walls of black stone, a gleaming floor of blue tiles, sideboards heaped with food and candles. Gorgeous tapestries of northern mountain scenes hung from iron rods on every wall: abright blue lake framed by snow and fir trees; white wolves and shaggy reindeer; the goddess Neave soaring through the wintry sky with snow falling from her robes. On one tapestry, a band of fierce northern men rushed at a cloud of silver and gray with their swords raised. Out of the cloud reared monstrous heads, pieces of claws and wings.

The Middlemist.

I looked at that particular image only once before quickly averting my eyes. The sight of it left an uneasy feeling in my throat, like I’d swallowed too large a bite of food. I knew that Ravenswood sat much closer to the Mist than Ivyhill; from the top of their highest tower, Alastrina had said, you could see the Mist running silver across the horizon. But even so, why would any northern men have to fight monsters from the Mist? That was Mara’s duty, and the duty of all the other women and girls conscripted into the Order of the Rose.

I reassured myself that it was a symbolic depiction and tried not to think about it further. There was more than enough to face in this room without having to worry about an odd tapestry too.

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