The bird looked at me gravely. Then it stuck its neck out and pecked at my hat.
“I think it wants it,” Mom said. “Your hat.”
I scrubbed at my stinging eyes. “Why do you want my hat?” I said.
It cocked its head impatiently.
I thought of Berron wearing his hat, staring at himself in the mirror and being so pleased, and my stomach lurched. I took the hat off. “Here.”
The bird seized it in its beak. It looked around—at Poppy, at Mom, at me. At the sun. Then it flapped its wings and soared away, its reflection glinting in the windows of the surrounding buildings, finally dissolving into the bright sky over Bryant Park.
Hat and all.
20
Berronwasgone.
In the month that passed since the Arcade fell, my mother stayed in town and ran the restaurant until I could be trusted not to fry my tears on the griddle, or wield my chef’s knife so hard I nearly split a cutting board.
The Princess traded her gold robes for white, and led her people in strange rituals I didn’t understand but participated in all the same.
Berron couldn’t help me hide the unseasonable greenery anymore; it fell to me, and the Princess, to walk the streets and make the magic sleep as it should. In the gray and the snow of New York, she was a sad but beautiful vision, almost ghostlike.
Jester wore his little jacket and tiny snow boots. The sight of him in his winter gear was the only thing that kept my heart from turning to ice.
The Princess didn’t say much.
Neither did I.
When our task was done, she ushered me back to the hidden portal in Gramercy Park. Jester’s leash tangled briefly in the leaves. The ice-coated branches stung when they hit my cheeks—or they would have, if my cheeks weren’t already numb.
Numb, as I had learned, is a haven. A refuge.
And a hell.
When the worst happened, when it was so new I leaned on Poppy for comfort, she saw it all. I had to pull away because I couldn’t stand to put her through the howling abyss in my head.
She understood. She was too kind not to, and that made my self-imposed withdrawal hurt even more.
They were too good to me. All of them. My mother, benevolently bossing everyone around. Poppy, walking the dogs when my body was too heavy to drag out of bed. Daniel, rolling up his sleeves and pitching in at West Side Sandwiches. James, making sure to shove a plate of food at me; and Jessica, needling me until I gave in and ate. Victorine, sitting beside me in silence, because sometimes that’s all you can do.
And Jester, of course, whose doggy life went on as usual but for the strange times he would look out the window as if expecting someone familiar to arrive; or when he flung himself heavily across my lap and looked at me with dark, wise eyes.
I stepped into the Forest of Emeralds. Ice crunched in the grass underfoot. The weather reflected the season, or the Princess of Arrows’s mood, or both. Dead leaves dropped like confetti at a funeral. Another reminder that this was Berron’s true home; that he was a prince; that I’d lost him—and it was all my fault.
“It was not your fault,” the Princess of Arrows said, reading my face as easily as Poppy read minds.
I was too polite to argue. But if I let her try to soothe me, I would hate myself. She lost her brother, after all. I lost… a friend? Because I was too much of a coward to let it be anything more?
I hated myself anyway.
We walked on in silence, a strange bird calling out overhead, unseen. Jester romped and sniffed, tugging me to move faster along the path.
After we passed through the apple orchard and reached the Fortress of Apples, the Princess stopped. “May I offer you a hot drink?”
The stone doors on the lowest level of the Fortress wrapped around out of sight. One of them was Berron’s, where he’d offered us tea and had a rousing argument with Daniel. I squeezed my eyes shut, then blinked furiously. “I’m good. Thanks.”
“Do you wish me to accompany you?”
