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“I’m sorry,” I murmured to Onal. “I can’t. I can’t help us. I’m so sorry . . .”
“Stop blubbering,” she said, shaking me. “Use my blood. Get us out of here. Do it now.”
“But . . .” I tried to argue, even as my eyes came to rest on her bandages; they were soaked through. “You said blood magic—”
“Now,” she barked again.
The magic in her blood was calling for me to use it. Warm. Welcoming.
I threw my arms around Onal and answered its call. “Ut salutem!”
We collided with the edge of the rocky shore just as the second chimney stack went down, shattering the boat we left behind into a thousand pieces.
On the other side of the fjord, I thought I saw a shadow form: a cloaked rider on a tall horse. But I was too dizzy, too cold, too stunned to make sense of it.
As the black water of the fjord claimed the Humility, unconsciousness claimed me.
* * *
I dreamed about my mother.
She was sitting at her desk, her glossy chestnut hair spilling over her shoulders in spiraling curls. Her black mourning dress belled out in the front to make room for her swelling belly; Conrad would be born soon. She had one hand on her belly as she wrote, a stack of letters piled up beside her. They were all addressed to Brother Cesare.
She was so sad, and so happy, both at once.
“Mother?” I asked, approaching slowly. But of course she couldn’t see me; I was the ghost here, not her.
She looked up and smiled brightly, but I realized she was not looking at me; she was looking behind me.
“Aurelia?” she said, rising to rush past me. “What happened?”
I turned to see a younger version of myself, all knobby knees and skinned elbows, dirt smudging my cheeks. There were tears shining in my eyes, but I was too stubborn to let them escape. Instead, young me said matter-of-factly, “I know I’m not supposed to fight, Mother. I know. But I heard them talking. They were going to push me into the pond and hold my head under the water.”
“Who was saying that?” Her eyes were full of a fire I did not remember.
I stuck out my chin obstinately, unwilling to give
up the names of my harassers. If we had punished everyone who teased or taunted me, there’d have been no one left to work at the castle.
She knelt in front of me. “You listen to me, Aurelia. I know I tell you to lie low. To be quiet, to not draw attention to yourself. Most of the time, that will work. But if it doesn’t—Look at me! If it doesn’t, you fight. Do you hear me? Save yourself. Promise me. Fight.”
“I will, Mama. I promise.” I spoke with two voices, both past and present.
Seconds later, that same girl was standing outside a hedge more than three times her height. Mother was no longer wearing mourning clothes, and a chubby, blond-haired baby was bouncing in her arms as she spoke with Fredrick Greythorne and Father Cesare.
“Kellan is young, but he’s capable,” Fredrick was saying. “I’ve never seen a boy with so much dedication.”
“Is that him?” Mother asked, putting her hand up to shield her eyes as she gazed toward Greythorne’s stables, where a young Kellan was leading a silver-white Empyrean foal across the garden.
“Yes,” Fredrick said. “I promise you, if you put him to the task of protecting her, he’d rather die than fail.”
In the next second, my young self was huddled in a dead-end corner of the maze, crying into her knees in the dark. Young Kellan leaned out from the other end of the corridor. “She’s here!” he called over his shoulder before approaching me with the same conscientious calm he’d used in training his Empyrean foal.
“Princess?” he said, holding out his right hand. “Aurelia? Don’t worry. I won’t let you get lost again. I’ll see you to the end.”
My mother and his brother were waiting for us on the steps of the Stella. She hugged me tightly before turning to Kellan. “You did well, young Greythorne,” she said to him. “You are going to be a great soldier, I can tell. Your queen thanks you.”
Kellan beamed, first at Mother and then at me. But I was looking up at the statue in the fountain.
