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I remembered Mercer’s words: They work harder than anyone I’ve ever had in my employ. And what work they do . . . It’s exquisite.
I wondered, just for a moment, what life was like for them before I destroyed their city. And then I hurried past, adding it to my list of questions that still hurt too much to ask.
* * *
The Renaltan fla
g was flying over the steep peaked roofs of Greythorne, announcing to all—including me—that King Conrad was in residence, returned from his tour. Somewhere inside those warm, welcoming windows, my brother was preparing for tomorrow’s festivities, surrounded by courtiers and well-to-do callers. The great Greythorne stables would be full to the brim with the horses of visiting dignitaries, and a variety of carts and carriages lined either side of the long drive from the village square to the manor’s main front door.
If I wanted, I could walk up those stairs. I could let my cape be taken, have my name announced. I could claim my place at Conrad’s side as his regent. I could guide him into adulthood. That’s what my mother would have wished for.
But I didn’t.
Instead, I took a sharp turn to the left, cutting through the flower gardens and around to the eastern side of the grounds, and tied Madrona’s reins around a garden post. “Wait here,” I told her, hoisting my satchel, and giving her a pat. “I’ll be right back.”
From the road, Greythorne looked much like any other provincial manor: a house of dark timber and light stone, fondly watching over the little village and the rolling hills from a throne of well-tended flower beds and manicured shrubs. But as I circled around back, it became clear that the house, as lovely as it was, was built to serve as sentinel to another, more stunning site beyond: the elaborate hawthorn-hedge maze that spiraled like a bursting star from the white walls and black-slate roof of a renowned sanctorium built by the fourteenth-century monk Saint Urso.
The church of the star queen. The Stella Regina.
The sanctorium’s imposing bell tower loomed as I wound my way through the narrow, overgrown paths of the maze, muttering a litany of blasphemies each time I found myself at another impasse. I thought I knew the labyrinth well enough that cutting through it to the back entrance of the manor would be easy, but I was still buzzing from the wine, and it had been a few years since I’d last traversed it. Everything looked different at night, too. Bigger. More ominous.
The maze was spooky enough already, littered as it was with unsettling statues: a narrow-eyed fox, an owl on a naked branch, a child holding a doll.
They used to terrify me. I’d been through enough now to know there was nothing to fear from immobile marble, but even so, there was something discomfiting about the maze and its stony occupants: an agitation, almost—as if they were somehow out of place. Lost.
Using the bell-tower spire to orient myself, I eventually found my way to the back end of the sanctorium. The entire wall was stained glass, an intricate depiction of the Empyrea descending in human form to rain fire upon heretics and sinners. The glass faced west so that the light of the setting sun would shine through it and bathe evening supplicants in the Goddess’s mighty glow.
The front of the sanctorium faced east, toward Greythorne Manor, the bell-tower spire reaching high above the red-painted doors. A small plaza had been built at its base, where a fountain of still water was watched over by the stone likeness of Urso, the man who’d built all of it: the maze, the sanctorium, the statues, even the settlement that would one day become Greythorne. Fixed in the center of the mirrorlike pool, he gazed into a hidden beyond with a look of melancholy longing, one hand cupped, the other extended as if reaching out for something. There was a plaque at his feet, but I had to lean over the water to get close enough to make out what it said.
In memory of Urso,
artist, architect, visionary.
1386–1445
A tendril of my hair slipped from over my shoulder and into the water, disturbing the perfect stillness with soft ripples. When they quieted, my reflection had changed.
It wasn’t me. Or rather, it was—but a different version of myself. Gone were my ashy hair and silver eyes; the girl staring back in my place had hair like night and eyes like an angry ocean.
Then she spoke, whispering in my own voice.
One or the other. One or the other. Daughter of the sister, or son of the brother.
At the red moonrise, one of two dies.
I stumbled away from the fountain’s edge just as the carillon bells housed in the cathedral’s spire began to chime, heralding the midnight hour and the passage of one day to the next.
When the bells had quieted, I forced myself to look once more into the pool, but the apparition was gone. The reflection was mine again.
I rocked back on my feet. I’d heard that sombersweet could induce hallucinations. I just hadn’t expected them to be so unnerving.
“Aurelia?”
“Bleeding stars!” I whirled around to find Kellan staring at me, arms folded. I put my hand to my chest. “Did you have to sneak up on me? I think my heart stopped!”
“I didn’t sneak up on you. I said your name three times before you heard me,” he replied. “I was doing a sweep of the perimeter when I saw your mean old nag making a feast out of the vegetable garden and knew you had to be around somewhere.” He stopped, looking from me to the Stella Regina’s bell tower. “Did you go . . . to church?”
“No,” I said adamantly, adjusting the pack across my shoulder. “I was using the maze to get to the manor’s back entrance. Wanted to get in to see my brother without alerting any of the rest of your guests.”
