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“Are you all right?” she asks, pulling back. Her eyes are red-rimmed, like she’s been crying.

“I’m fine.” It’s a lie, but it’s simple. “What happened to you?”

And how did she get out of the charnel house? Where is Orla?

“I escaped,” she says. “I’m myself again. But, Saints, I don’t know what happened . . .”

“The siphon’s nature is almost impossible to fight,” I tell her. “You overcame it.”

She’s breathing so quickly she’s close to hyperventilating. I put my hands on her shoulders and try to hush her. “Poppy, it’s all right.” I hold up the silver stake. “I know how to kill him. We can end this. You’ll change back, like the bite never happened.”

She shakes her head. “No . . . no, you don’t understand. Vesper, you have to come with me. I know why this is happening—everything, the whole night. The Ridding, the prince—”

“I know why,” I tell her.

I don’t have time to explain to her about my father’s story, about the bloodbond, about Galvin’s ambitions, about Fate. But Poppy winds her fingers around my wrists. “No, Vesper. You don’t. You need to come to the graveyard.”

Chapter Fifty-Four

She leads me through the graveyard, her hand in mine. The cat trails nearby but stops short of getting its feet wet on the damp earth. It stays in the cloisters instead, watching us, tail swishing. Our feet slip in the mud, and trepidation roils in my stomach at the thought that just a little while ago, Orla and I were running from Poppy through these grounds.

“Where’s Orla?” I ask, glancing at the charnel house. Its massive stone door is open, torn from its hinges, lying in two pieces on the steps.

“Oh, she went looking for Ollinde,” Poppy says.

My stomach bottoms out when Poppy approaches the sweeping umbrella of the giant willow tree in the graveyard. I stop sharply. No . . . no, she can’t mean . . .

“Why are we here?”

Poppy turns to me, taking both my hands in hers.

“There’s a reason he bit me first, Vesper. I saw him attack that first girl. It was so vicious. She was so young. I lost it. I attacked him, tried to poison him. Foolish, without the rest of you . . .” Her voice fades momentarily, and as she looks down, I wonder if she’s thinking about the consequences of that decision. About Hugo, whose body lies somewhere in the school, whose death I’ve kept tucked away behind the walls of my broken heart, the mere thought of whom causes bile to rise in my throat. It’s unimaginable to wrap my mind around it now. Her wide blue eyes lift to mine again. “But I did. He knew who I was—that I was your roommate. He grabbed me and demanded to know where your mother was.”

I swallow. “Why would he want to know that?”

“I don’t know. But then I remembered your timepiece.”

I have many secrets. Some have only been shared with Lonan, some only with my godfather. But there is one I’ve only told to Poppy. She couldn’t know about my Dark, about the things Van Asten makes me do for him. But she is my best friend, so I shared this one secret with her—I told her about my timepiece.

My mother disappeared. And she took a piece of my broken heart with her. My father and godfather erected the grave marker in her honor, knowing she wasn’t there.

I was so small when she left, young enough that my memory of her leaving is hazy. I remember golden light by a river, her running her fingers through my hair. I remember her promising to always keep a piece of my heart with her. I remember her placing the timepiece around my neck and promising that I could always find her with it.

Her face is a dim memory. Bright and beautiful as the sun. But her humming . . . that I remember vividly. It still plays in my head as I fall asleep, all to the metronomic ticking of the timepiece around my neck.

“Hold every moment precious,” were her last words to me. “Put your heart in Fate’s hand. There, you will find me.”

I didn’t know what she meant. I spent years trying to decipher the meaning of those words like they were the most complicated poem ever written.

“Fate’s hand,” Poppy says, and points to my mother’s grave marker.

It almost seems too simple. And I wonder if perhaps part of me was afraid of finding the answer, afraid of what finding my mother would mean, afraid of what it would do to my broken heart.

The angel stands with her scythe, staring down at us. Around the base of the marker, carved into the stone, are the words Astra inclinant, sed non obligant.

The stars incline us. They do not bind us.

I’d brushed it off when Lonan said those words in the observatory. They’re not an uncommon maxim. But on this night, in this moment, they feel like fate.