Page 4 of A Song of Ash and Moonlight

“I hate you,” I whispered to the shadows, to the dead gods. That was my prayer. Either whatever remained of them after the Unmaking had planted the lie of this boy in my mind and let me believe it for thirteen years—the theory held by my skeptical family—or those same god-scraps had brought the shining boy to me, helped him save my scrawny eleven-year-old self, and then torn him away from me before I could even learn his name.

Raging at dead gods about the mystery of my strange childhood savior was far less dangerous than allowing myself to rage at them for the other thing, the unnameable thing in the shape of my mother.

My gorgeous mother with cornflower-blue eyes, hands rough from gardening, and a crease of hidden laughter carved into the left corner of her crooked mouth.

My mother, who had dressed our house in vines not once but twice—once just after she married my father, then again after the fire that had nearly killed us all. The scent of her botanical magic was earthy, floral, loam and lilies and honeycomb and something else, something bright and hot that I could never quite describe.

My mother, who had disappeared one night without explanation or apology, leaving me to pick up the pieces of our shattered household. I was the only one capable of setting aside my grief to do what was necessary, to keep the estate running, to keep Father from destroying himself. Mother would have known that, and she left anyway.

That rage was one I kept buried deep, even on my quiet morning walks. If I let it rise, it would destroy me, and my family could not afford my destruction.

I paused at the turn in the hallway, a staircase before me leading back to the ground floor and the start of my day. I closed my eyes once more, holding on to the memory of the shining boy leaning over me in the wet grass—the warm shield of his body protecting me from the fire’s glare, how bravely he’d led me through the flames. I ached with a pain I refused to name. I held myself very still and remembered the rasp of his voice.

The lump in my throat, the ache in my chest, thelongingI felt pulling at my fingers, as if I could reach out across the years and touch his hand again. Would this feeling of loss and heartbreak, this memory burning forever in my heart, never fade and leave me in peace?

Privately, shamefully, I hoped it never would.

I opened my eyes. The creeping pale sun had reached my toes. It was time to get to work.

I passed the porters standing guard at the front doors, ready to be relieved by the next shift. Tomas, Treska—I told them good morning and made myself smile. A grand, gilt-framed mirror hung on the nearby wall; I ignored it. Mirrors were not my friends. If I looked into this one, I knew what I would see: a skinny, pale woman with golden-brown hair in a severe braid, half-moon shadows under angry brown eyes, dull skin because it had been some time since Gemma had forced me to sit with her stylist, lips cracked because I bit them when I was thinking or worried, and I was always thinking or worried. Whenever I glanced at a mirror or caught my reflection in a window, I looked tired and irritated, because that’s what I was. Tired and irritated always, and longing to sleep, and unable to sleep.

So, there was no need to look at the mirror.

Quick footsteps behind me, scurrying across the entrance hall, alerted me to Emry, our newest housemaid, who by the look of things—copper pail of firewood in her hands, clean rag over her shoulder—hadn’t yet made it to my bedroom to start the morning fire. She caught me glancing back at her and ground to a halt, eyes wide with panic.

“My lady, good morning,” she said breathlessly, with a hurried curtsy. “And my apologies, I overslept the tiniest bit and—”

“Not to worry, Emry,” I told her, impressed by how warm and kind my voice sounded when in fact I felt the opposite. “We all oversleep sometimes.” Except I never did. “I won’t be back upstairs for hours anyway. You can skip my room today.”

She curtsied again, gratefully, her eyes shining. She mumbled a thank-you, and I managed to smile at her again, though it dropped as soon as I stepped outside. Truly, I didn’t care about the fire, andI wasn’t the slightest bit angry at her. In fact I was glad for her, and envious. I wished my busy mind allowed me to oversleep.

Then, inevitably, as I strode across the pebbled drive, nodding and smiling at every groundskeeper already hard at work on the landscaping, I thought of another person who found it easy to sleep: my youngest sister, Gemma. She wouldn’t wake for hours, and when she did, it would be to a warm hearth, full sunlight pouring through the windows, and her maid, Lilianne, coming in cheerfully with a hot breakfast. By then, I would have already finished my morning meeting with Byrn, our head groom, confirmed tonight’s supper menu with Mrs. Rathmont, and been halfway through my walk to the tenant farms at the border of our estate.

I knew I shouldn’t mind her sleeping in as much as I did. Her lover, Talan, who lived in hiding for his own safety and ours, had come and gone only the day before yesterday, a whirlwind visit that I knew very well was agony for both of them. It had broken my heart to hear her crying after he’d left, though she wouldn’t let anyone comfort her, instead shutting herself away in her rooms with only her dog, Una, for company. A few weeks past, Gemma had been the one to break theytheliadcurse and rip the Three-Eyed Crown from Talan’s head, all while fighting Kilraith’s brutal assault. We had all helped her—Mara, the Bask siblings, and I—but Gemma had borne the brunt of it and now sported the glittering scars on her hand to prove it. She deserved some rest. I knew I shouldn’t begrudge her that.

And yet, I couldn’t help but burn. Resentment squeezed my chest into a fist. I wanted to punch something, but I didn’t know how to punch things, and I didn’t particularly relish the idea of a broken hand, though the thoughtwastempting. If I had a broken hand, I could lie in bed and heal. Someone else would have to take over my duties.

An absurd fantasy. Gemma couldn’t spend all day traipsing about our magic-drenched estate without getting at least a littlesick—another thing it was unfair of me to resent her for, especially since she never dared complain about it—and Father…well. Father was another problem entirely.

I turned off the drive and onto the groomed path that led to the stables. Only there did I stop under the guise of adjusting my bootlaces. I needed to wrangle my thoughts into a calmer state. If I started thinking about Father, about the Basks, about punching things and the Three-Eyed Crown and Kilraith—whatever he was, wherever he’d gone—I would never get anything done. I didn’t have the luxury of indulging in fear, in anger, in envy. I felt a twinge of love for my sister Mara, who lived far to the north at the Middlemist. As part of the Order of the Rose, she guarded us all against the Old Country and its ancient, wild magic. Mara would understand, if I ever confessed any of this to her; Mara knew what it meant to abandon emotions in favor of duty.

When I stood, my mind was quieter. The morning air held a welcome, bracing bite. It was early autumn; soon the sunlight would grow scarcer. I could already feel the weight of that bearing down on me, the certainty of darkness. I despised the fall and winter months, everything gray and dreary and draped in shadows, each day harder to greet than the last.

Osmund had followed me outside. A rarity—he was solidly a creature of the indoors. But there he was, sitting calmly in the dirt beside my feet, looking up at me with this keen light in his yellow eyes, as if he could hear everything I was thinking and found it all rather pathetic. He let out a grumpy, muted meow. Why had I stopped moving? There was work to be done.

He was right.

There was always work to be done.

***

At midday, I returned home from my morning errands to sit for a few minutes and eat lunch—with Father, I hoped, though recently I ate in our family’s private dining room alone more often than not, which normally would have been a small blessing. Quiet moments, for me, were rare; I hungered for them.

But Father had been strange of late. Evasive, taciturn. Even short with me, which was rarely the case. I was his favorite daughter, a fact I privately relished.

That afternoon, Father was nowhere to be found. The morning room was empty; the door to his private study upstairs stood open, hiding nothing. And yet I’d seen unfamiliar horses in the stables that morning while meeting with Byrn, and I could have sworn I heard carriage wheels turning on the drive while in the kitchens with Mrs. Rathmont.

As I settled uneasily at the dining room table and opened my notebook to look over the day’s remaining tasks, Gilroy, our butler, glided into the room carrying a silver platter of sandwiches.

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