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But the girl had looked at me like she had seen something terrible.

And I could not quite shake the chill that had settled at the base of my spine.

CHAPTER 29

LILY

Evening fell on the sixteenth of February, and we dressed for war.

I found Claire in one of Diana's spare rooms, fastening Marigold into a dress the color of midnight. Black wool, simply cut, borrowed from someone taller and taken in with quick stitches. Marigold stood very still while Claire worked the buttons at her back, her young face pale in the lamplight. She looked like a girl playing dress-up in her mother's mourning clothes.

Except this wasn't play.

“Are we dressing for their funeral or ours?” I asked from the doorway, keeping my voice light.

Claire's hands paused on the last button. Marigold's eyes found mine in the mirror.

“Theirs,” Claire said quietly. She smoothed the fabric across Marigold's shoulders with a gentleness that made my chest ache. “We wore white when we were hidden. When we hoped they wouldn't find us. When we believed that if we were quiet enough, small enough, invisible enough, we might survive.”

She turned Marigold to face me.

“Black makes us invisible in darkness when we need to move unseen. Black is mourning for every sister they've taken from us.” Her voice hardened. “They have accused us of being dark witches. The women in black who meet in shadows and practice forbidden magic. So we claim it. We become exactly what they feared, and we make that fear our weapon.”

She paused, her hands still resting on Marigold's shoulders.

“White was surrender. Black is defiance.”

The words settled over the room like a vow.

Marigold lifted her chin. In that moment, she looked less like a child and more like the woman she was becoming, forged in loss, tempered by grief, ready to fight for the family that remained.

“They should be here,” Marigold said quietly. “Syra and Ysella.”

I crossed the room and took her hands in mine.

“They are,” I said. “They're why we're fighting.”

Marigold's eyes glistened, but she did not cry. She had done her crying. Now she was ready for something else.

Claire pressed a black dress into my arms. “Your turn.”

I found Adeline in the kitchen, sitting by the fire with her bandaged hands resting uselessly in her lap.

The burns had been tended by Mira and two other Menders, but there was only so much magic could do for damage this severe. The nerve endings were destroyed in places. The skin would heal eventually, scarred and tight, but the fine motor control might never fully return.

“Stop looking at me like that,” she said without turning her head. “I'm not dying. I'm just useless. There's a difference.”

I sat down beside her. “You're not useless.”

“Really?” She lifted her hands, wrapped in clean white linen that made them look like clubs. “I can't fight. I can't weave, not that I ever could. I can't even button my own dress.” Her voice was sharp, but I heard the crack beneath it. “I finally have something worth fighting for and I can't hold a bloody teacup.”

“Adeline.”

“Don't.” She shook her head. “Don't tell me it will be fine. Don't tell me I'm brave or strong or any of those useless words people say when they don't know what else to offer.”

I was quiet for a moment.

“I was going to say that your tongue still works perfectly well,” I said. “Which means you can still cut a man down at twenty paces with nothing but words. That's not nothing.”