Page 3 of A Song of Ash and Moonlight

No.The shining boy was running, and she was in his arms.

Her eyes fluttered open, and she saw a cloudy sky slashed in half. White light, cool and soft: the waxing moon. Then orange, shuddering, a whip of rage, heat bleeding into blackness.

Suddenly Farrin was lying flat on her back, smoke behind her eyes, smoke down her throat. The shining boy, leaning over her, smoothed the wet hair back from her face. Then he went very still, held his hand above her mouth for a moment, and let out a shaky sigh of relief.

“You’re breathing,” he said. “You’re going to be all right.” He sat back, made a strange sound. Maybe he was laughing? “You’re going to be all right,” he said again, his crackling, not-quite-a-man voice torn up from the smoke.

Farrin reached for him in confusion, seeing only the faint glow of him, the twin shadows of his strange, blacked-out eyes.

He found her hand and held it. Against the fire, his silhouette was a bewilderment: half shadow, half shine. “Star of my life,” he said, pressing a quick kiss to her knuckles. The kiss sent a shock through her tired body.Star of my life, she thought. What a pretty thing to say, and odd, since he was the one who shone.

Then the boy’s body went rigid beside hers. He released her and stood.

“I have to go,” he said. He sounded horribly angry.

Farrin reached for him, tried to protest. He was leaving her? But he couldn’t! Where was she? Where was her family? Where was her house? And her piano, and all her music, all the things she loved? If he left her, the fire would come. If he disappeared, so would she.

“I’m so sorry,” the boy said, quiet now, gentle, and he touched her face, his hot hand on her hot cheek. “They’re coming now. You’ll beall right.”

And then he was gone. Farrin turned to find his hand, the warm strength of him, and found only wet grass, cold earth. She managed to crack open her eyes, and through the crust of soot and tears, she saw the distant shape of Ivyhill. Her home, afire. Black and misshapen, outlined by a wicked molten pen.

She tucked Osmund under her chin and wept, and then her father was there, frantic, sobbing, pulling her up into his arms so fiercely that she dropped Osmund to the ground. And Gemma was bawling at their father’s knee, limp golden curls hanging in ruined ribbons, and there was Mara, ashen but dry-eyed, crouching to catch a disoriented, truly vexed Osmund before he scampered off into the night.

And Mama?

Farrin twisted in her father’s arms, heart in her throat, and found her at last—Philippa Ashbourne, her beloved mother, on her knees in the grass not far from them. She cried silent tears as she watched Ivyhill burn, her arms rigid at her sides.

Gemma clung to their father’s leg while Mara tried in vain to comfort her. Osmund yowled restlessly in Mara’s arms. A few of the servants found them and huddled in frantic conference with their father and the head groundskeeper, Mr. Carbreigh, who was an Anointed elemental. All of them gestured wildly at the distant fire, and, thus distracted, no one else noticed the change that came over Philippa Ashbourne.

But Farrin noticed. Farrin saw the moment when her mother became someone else—somethingelse. Farrin saw when Philippa stood and wiped her cheeks, her expression hard and mean and unfamiliar. The fire lit up her whole face, turning her eyes to twin flickering suns. She was incandescent with fury. Farrin could feel it, even half alive as she was. She knew the dips and curves of her mother’s body even more intimately than she knew her own, and as the flames roared on,Philippa Ashbourne’s body changed right before her eyes.

Every line of wrist and shin and rib became a weapon, every softness hardened to stone. The very air around her seemed to snap to attention as if suddenly shot through with deadly magic, and even though what had happened was a catastrophe, something so big and terrible Farrin’s mind couldn’t wrap completely around it, Philippa Ashbourne gazed upon the fire and smiled, wide and slow, as if she’d learned a most delicious secret.

And in that moment—so baffled and smoke-poisoned that later she would forget the whole thing entirely—Farrin, for the first time in her life, felt truly, unspeakably afraid of her mother.

Chapter 1

Every morning, before the rest of the house woke up, I walked the halls of Ivyhill to make sure it was still standing.

It was my favorite time of day. I never slept well, so finally giving up and getting out of bed after four hours of thin rest was always a relief. And no one was awake yet to ask me questions, to need something of me. The light was dim, the shadows thick. The only sounds were the patient ticking of clocks, the distant bustle of the kitchens, Osmund’s velvet paws trotting along at my side.

Ivyhill was its most beautiful just before dawn, and so was my mind.

On my morning walks through the house, I didn’t think of my endless lists of tasks, my notebook in my coat pocket, heavy with accounts and letters. Instead I thought of things I would no longer have room for in my mind once the sun rose. I thought of scampering along the hallways with Gemma and Mara when we were small, and how many wonderful hiding places my mother’s corridors of vines created. Sometimes—rarely—I thought of my mother herself, and how she had left us, and how completely I loathed her memory, how I longed to tear it out of me by the roots like a weed.

And sometimes, more often than I’d ever admit, I thought of the night of the fire, when I was eleven and Mother was still here and Father still smiled. I thought of the fire, and I thought ofhim: the shining boy. The boy who had saved me. It hurt to think of these things—my sisters, my mother, the fire. It hurt like picking at a scab, feeling the sting, watching it bleed anew.

But for reasons I couldn’t explain, thinking of the shining boy sometimes hurt most of all.

I had never forgotten the feeling of his strong hand holding mine, the safety of his arms around me, the kiss of his hand against my forehead.

I have to go, he’d told me.I’m so sorry. And I did believe that he was. That voice, which I remembered so clearly: rough with regret, shredded by the same smoke that had nearly killed me. I closed my eyes as I walked down the corridor that led to the guest rooms and let the memory of his voice wash over me. My hands were in fists, holding on to the memory with all my strength.

Where was he now? What would his voice sound like? How would it feel to be held by him now that we were grown?

If, in fact, he actually existed.

I opened my eyes, glaring at the carpet as I stalked down the hallway, despising myself for wasting time on a daydream and furious at the dawn light starting to creep through the windows. Many people prayed in the mornings, to mark the new day; well, so would I.

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