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“If you end up tossing her, send her along to me,” she calls after him. She turns to me. “Is she pretty?”
“There’s no one.”
“Wonderful. We’re all doomed.”
I watch Cyrus go upstairs from the corner of my eye. Today was progress. But I only have two more weeks until the ball; progress isn’t good enough. And he isn’t my only problem.
Camilla has turned her attention to the bevy of servants bringing her shopping haul to her quarters. I spot a basket of clothes, a matching saber and pistol, a tower of hats, and three more unmarked boxes. “Ah—not those,” she says, hustling after a boy leaving with a stack of books. “Take those back to the library.”
They’re the books Dante tried to give her—and the copy ofTraditions & Magics of the WoodI left behind in the carriage. “Hold on, that’s mine,” I say, sliding it off the stack.
I bring the book and my weary bones back to my tower.
After climbing the excessive number of stairs to my bedroom, I go bathe off the day’s sweat and dirt. Then I light a tray of candles and spend the evening reading by candlelight, legs dangling over the armrest of my writing chair.
The first third ofTraditions & Magics of the Woodis devoted to medicine and poultices. I skim for descriptions of vines that grow quickly or anything related to roses, but the book talks of few true plants. Most plants, it claims, can’t be relied upon to be the real thing in the mercurial woods, which can transform strange magic into tempting plants and berries.
The next section is about clearing the woods for habitation. All growth above the surface must be burned down, then a line of blood must be drawn on the ground as a border. Blood is the stuff of mortality, like oil to magic’s water, and where blood stains the earth, no Fairywood grows.
Unlike common Auvenese sentiment, this text treats the Fairywood as something to be preserved. It goes on about things I never hear discussed: cleansing rituals, the proper disposal of the ashes, the importance of clearing no more than necessary because the destruction is permanent. The western side of the Sun Continent is a reminder of that: before the Lidines united the kingdom, centuries of bloody wars between feudal lords destroyed any Fairywood that once grew there. Even after two hundred years of peace, the Fairywood hasn’t regrown on these lands.
As I’m yawning through blocky passages of text, one of Camilla’s handmaidens comes by the tower with a basket of desserts from the earlier tasting. Only then do I realize I forgot to eat dinner and I’m starving. After she departs and I shut the door, I do a double take at the fountain at the entrance of my divining room.
I recently emptied the basin of coin, and the bottom is stained red—rust, I’ve always assumed. But having just read that chapter, I remember something I never thought much about:
The Fates are associated with blood.
That stuff of mortality, that tether to time, a thread unraveling from ancestors to mother to us—blood rolls destiny’s dice the moment we’re born. The most devout say that our bodies are but Fates’ vessels.
People used to offer blood, too. I’ve seen grandmothers keep bowls of goat’s blood in their homes for luck, and if you explore certain copses outside the capital, you can still find altars where livestock was slaughtered in the name of the gods. I remember this past across my scattered dreams:these practices faded when aristocrats started hiring fairies who refused to work in the presence of blood. Suddenly blood was a taint—it marred the beauty of glamours.
And those offerings? Unsightly and crude.
The statue at the fountain’s center stares at me as I crouch down and draw a line along the bottom of the basin. Black dust speckles my finger.
This was once a vessel for blood.
How long has it gone unused?
I remember how the Fates spoke to me that night. They weren’t indifferent beings. They werespiteful.Could the Fates be offended that we’ve stopped our worship—worse, that we’ve replaced them with earthly creatures? Some elders say fairy blessings are an insult to destiny, because they’re now given to those who don’t deserve them. Maybe there’s truth to that.
Blood opposing magic, stars opposing earth.
What proof is there that gods have anyone else’s best interests at heart?
When I return to my desk, I stare dully at the open book, rubbing my eyes. No amount of research will amend the fact that I don’t know what the Fates really want. And I won’t find the answer in some underpaid scholar’s secondhand conjecture. Why am I pretending otherwise?
I bury my head in my arms. There’s something here, if I only knew what I was looking for.
There you are.
The voice echoes in my ear, startling the breath from me as I sit up in my chair. I cough as I inhale something sweetly pungent—roses?—followed by a stink that makes my eyes water. Panic rises in my throat before my hands clamp down on my chair’s wooden armrests, and I make sense of the pitch-dark.
I’m not in my tower at all. There is no desk or book or half-devoured dessert basket. This is the dark of emptiness.
I’m dreaming.
I’ve been looking for you, little star.
