Her second day was almost over, and Emeline was no closer to finding the missing sheet music. She would have to go back to the king empty-handed. And once he realized she lied to him …
Emeline would never get the chance to find her mother.
If she’s even in the woods at all.
She opened the folded photograph, scrutinizing Rose Lark’s profile as she walked. Her mother had irises as blue as robins’ eggs, raven-black hair, and a lovesick smile.
But it was something else that caught and held Emeline’s attention. Her gaze dropped to the small black tattoo on her mother’s pale shoulder blade: a crescent moon.
Her footsteps slowed.
Marked by the moon …
The farm shrank, like the end of an old movie, the edges contracting into the center, the image narrowing to a pinpoint. The songs she’d spent the last week learning were all about the same muse: a woman marked by the moon.
It’s just a coincidence.
But the more she stared at her mother’s tattoo, the louder Tom’s confession reverberated inside her, and the less sure she was.
Was my mother the Song Mage’s muse?
Her heart was thudding hard when she arrived back at Pa’s house. Instead of going inside, however, she walked into the garage.
Towers of boxes loomed before her. Emeline waded into them, searching for one in particular. She pulled them down, one after another, reading their labels and shoving them aside.
She was down to the last few when she found what she was looking for: a rectangular box markedROSE,written in black Sharpie.
Emeline pulled it to the floor.
She had packed this box. After rounding up remnants of her mother lingering around the house, she’d taped it shut. Taped ittoowell. Almost as if she never wanted it opened.
Luckily, Sable’s enchanted knife sat snug against her hip, its sheath fastened to the belt of her jeans.
Drawing it, Emeline sliced through the tape, then resheathed the blade. Sitting cross-legged on the cold cement floor, she pushed back the cardboard flaps.
Inside were photos, jewelry, and a few summer dresses. All things that once belonged to her mother. Emeline started taking them out, not sure what she was looking for exactly, only that she was looking forsomething.Some clue.
In one photo, her mother’s head was thrown back as she laughed. Her long, lush hair hung loose and her cheeks were pink with joy. In another, she was grinning so hard, you couldn’t see her eyes. In a third, she’d just tackled a young Tom, whose back she now hung from as he recovered, grinning.
All too soon, the woman in the photos changed.
She was pregnant in these. Her cheeks hollow, hair stringy, eyes dull. That joyful spirit was gone, snuffed like an unwanted fire.
Did I do that to you?thought Emeline, touching the round bump of her mother’s belly.Did you not want me?
But of course she didn’t. It’s why she left Emeline screaming in her crib without a backwards glance.
Emeline set aside the photos, then pulled out more items. A bright yellow sundress. A fake pearl necklace. A handwritten note from Tom she didn’t read out of respect for his privacy.
Soon, she came to the bottom, lined with papers. A vehicle registration. Bills for the apartment she lived in. Why hadn’t she thrown these things out? Emeline was halfway through the papers when she spotted one last object, half hidden in the crease of the box: a copper hairpin.
Is that …?
Emeline picked it up, staring hard at the tiny butterfly on the end.
She thought of the Song Mage’s cellar. Of the twin butterfly pin she’d found on the floor, and how familiar it had been. Of the moldy mattress and the bucket and the manacles.
A sick feeling twisted her gut.
