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It’s the sort of thing attached to a feeling more than an actual memory, like the remnant of a dream. It has a cloth cover in woodsy green with gilded birds and willow branches woven together in an intricate pattern. I can’t place it, but I’ve seen this book before.
Carefully, I take it, putting my trust in the library that it knows what I need better than I do. I flip open the cover, and my knees go weak at pages that are like some lost memory. It’s a storybook, one I haven’t seen since childhood.
My father used to bring me back stories from his travels. They were scavenged from every odd corner of the continent—folktales, epic myths, and stories nearly lost to time but kept alive in the bedtime tales of grandmothers and the firelight fables of old men. Each time, he would record the story in this very book.
The book had disappeared. I’d assumed I lost it somewhere in the hundreds of rooms of the estate, or, more likely, my stepmother had destroyed it. But here it is, hidden at Gossemort right under my nose.
“What’s that?” Orla asks. I ignore her, thumbing through the pages of stories I remember told to me over and over. Every midnight story to calm a nightmare during a storm. Every lazy afternoon moment lying belly down on the thick rug of the library, sunlight washing over the pages I now hold in my hands. So many memories.
I flip to the last pages. And stop.
The last story ends mid-sentence, the ink trailing off in a long, muddled blotch, like my father’s hand was ripped away from the page. I flip back to the beginning of the story. At the top of the page is my father’s elegant script.
The Heartless Maiden
A Tale Told to Me by a Stranger in the Deep Marshes of Imaelhain
My heart races. I didn’t even know my father went that far into enemy country. And this . . . it’s a story I’ve never read, never had a chance to read before the storybook disappeared. My father’s last tale—the one I waited for him to bring home. But he never made it home.
Once upon a time, in the land of Light and magic, there was born a baby girl. Her heart was pure and perfect, and it held more goodness than any in the kingdom. As she grew, she grew in love. She loved her family as well as she loved the stranger. She loved the birds who visited her window and the mice who ate her crumbs. Every living thing was hers to love, and she likewise belonged to them.
But such love is a tricky thing, for left unpruned, it becomes a snare. The girl felt, and in feeling, she drowned. Her heart began to fracture from the weight of her love, and fearing for her fragile heart, her mother, a woman of great magic, broke her heart to protect it, keeping part of it safe until such a time came that it was safe to return to her daughter. For a heart already broken cannot be hurt again.
From then on, the girl with the broken heart lived half in love with the world and half in misery of it. This was a terrible fate of its own. But her mother ensured that she would not have to live in heartlessness forever. She locked her heart away—safe, protected—until such a day that the one destined to protect it forever would appear. A love that would repair, would protect, and would make the heart whole again. A love of Fate, ordained, written in the stars.
And so it was that this love was destined to heal the old wounds, to repair what was broken, not only in the broken-hearted girl, but in magic itself. For the Light and Dark, once torn, would be mended. The tear in all magic repaired. What was once lost would be found, and the whole-hearted girl and her Fated love would be one, bound in the Dark, united in the Light, and chosen in the D—
The story ends, my father’s last words cut off.
“Saints, it’s about you,” Orla says.
But my voice is still frozen in my throat. A strange, caged feeling surrounds me. Here is my story, the tale of my parents, of my life, my lore, relayed to my father by a stranger. Foretold. Cemented.
I am a myth.
But more than that, a deep sadness permeates my heart, not for myself but for the man whose hand recorded this tale. What happened that he couldn’t finish the story? Why did he never give this to me, explain it to me? I can nearly hear his voice as I stare at the script, can nearly smell his woodsmoke and tobacco scent, feel the brush of his whiskers on my cheek as he gave me a departing kiss before leaving for the war again.
I close my eyes and tilt my head back. He knew. My father knew something of my fate, that I was destined for Galvin. With a steadying breath, I open my eyes. And a pair of bright white orbs peer at me from atop a shelf.
Chapter Thirty-Six
My hand seizes Orla’s arm, and she tenses when she sees it too—the strange hulking shape peering down at us from atop the shelf.
“Poppy,” Orla breathes. She retrieves her knife from her side, glowing a deep orange in the dim light of the library.
Poppy makes a deep, animalistic noise in her throat, the sound of a predator. Dried blood still stains her chin. Something awakens in me—something vicious, clacking its claws along the edges of my mind, begging to be let out. Orla jerks out of my grip, and when I turn to her and see the fear in her eyes, I know why—she’s just realized she is alone in a room with predators.
Poppy grins, her teeth sharp and gleaming through the dark. “Orla,” I say, my voice rough from restraint. “Run.”
She turns and dashes, leaping over twisting branches and fanning ferns, weaving through trees toward the direction of the library door.
The predator inside me burns and growls watching her retreating form. Chase. Chase.
Poppy leaps from atop the bookshelf, and I’m overcome by instinct. I lunge after them both, right on Poppy’s heels.
Orla races through the hall outside the library, and Poppy and I tear after her. My lungs burn. My muscles move faster, stronger, than ever before. I didn’t know I was capable of this kind of power. Poppy and I keep pace with each other, and it feels so good, like two lionesses hunting in a pack. We’ll rip our prey apart together, sharing in a meal we earned.
Orla looks over her shoulder, and her face turns white. A terrified whimper escapes her throat—it’s a sound that sinks deep into my bones and fills my mouth with saliva. I hope she whimpers like that when we rip her throat open.
