Chapter One
“Speak plainly, Grover. Why are you here?”
Just outside the carved oak doors to the study, eight-year-old Ayia Ellaster pressed one elongated and delicately pointed ear to the crack that had been left between them, the better to hear the conversation within. Her alabaster fingers curling into fists against the wood in response to her mother’s tone to the human stranger who she’d let through their front doors only fifteen minutes after Ayia had been sent upstairs to bed.
Even at eight, she thought it was silly of Aria to have expected her to be asleep by then, to have expected her to “behave for once” and be a good little girl and not wait until they’d cloistered themselves inside the study to flit down the steps, grinning from ear to ear like a pixie, and look through the razor thin crack they’d so naively left between the door and the latch.
Her eyes – the deep brown of the Salathiel Sand Wastes at dusk, her mother had once said – went to the stranger first, taking in his portly frame, his ruddy white face, his balding ginger head, and his kind blue eyes. His tunic was a dark spring green in color, embroidered with matching emerald thread that sparkled when the light caught it. From where she stood and with her limited vision, she could not tell what design the embroidery made, but even to her, it was clear his clothes were high-end, probably from the capital. Which meant he was likely rich, or worked for someone who was.
What was a rich stranger doing in their home after dark?
Her gaze shifted to her mother, Aria Ellaster, standing off to one side near a small oak table, filling a silver tea cup with a matching kettle. She wore a cream dressing gown over her nightgown and her hair – so dark brown it was nearly black, just like her daughter’s – was out of the high tail she kept it in during the day, but…
She frowned.
But the tea was still steaming from being taken off the fire, and the room was already warm from a fire burning in the large.
Her eyes flicked again to Aria’s face as she handed the stranger his tea and turned to face him, her arms crossed over her chest.
This wasn’t just some random visit. Her mother had been expecting him.
They exchanged a few pleasantries, ignoring the ornate couches with ruby cushions and standing instead, but when Aria asked her question, Ayia turned her head, pressing her ear to the crack, the better to listen.
There was the sound of wood creaking as the man at last sat down on one of the couches. Aria remained standing.
Firelight flickered on the expensive books shoved into and stacked on top of the mahogany shelves that lined the walls.
“Aria.” The man’s voice nearly broke; Ayia didn’t need to see his face to know that whatever it was he had to say, it was difficult for him to say it.
“Aria,” he repeated. “Farron sent me.”
Aria didn’t say anything, but even from her place at the door, Ayia could feel the growing tension in the room. It was a moment before the man, Grover, could go on.
“Farron sent me,” he tried again, “and he told me that you need to leave. You’re not as safe as you think you are; this place isn’t as hidden as you think it is.”
“And go where?” Aria spoke through her teeth. “The Middle is watched closely by the Ensilence Warriors and Swordsingers, as are the Azure Isles. The Northern Atolls are too far to go without getting caught. The Desert has closed its borders, and the mountains are impassable now, and, even if they weren’t, it doesn’t matter. Werifesteria is gone. Thalestris probably burned with it.”
Ayia’s fingers tightened into fists, daring to pull her ear away for a moment to look in, to see her mother’s face.
There were tears in her eyes. Ayia’s own widened and she covered her mouth with a hand to stifle the sound as she sucked in a breath.
Werifesteria. Thalestris.
She’d never heard of such places, but the way her mother had said their names…hissed them with such reverence and such sorrow.
Clearly, it meant something.
“It doesn’t matter where you go,” Grover responded, waving his hand in front of his face as though to brush away Aria’s animosity, “as long as you keep moving. I thought Isleen prepared you for this eventuality. She wouldn’t have wanted — ”
“Do not speak of Isleen to me, Grover,” Aria snapped. “I’m perfectly aware of what she gave to keep us safe this long. I was there and you were not, if you’ll remember.”
Grover only sighed, his shoulders pulling in as he shook his head slightly.
Then he looked back up at Aria.
“He knows where you are, Aria,” he said, his voice barely more than a whisper. He leaned in and repeated himself, his words stronger this time. “He knows where you are. And once she finds out he knows, she’ll send him, and then you won’t be able to escape. Then they’ll know — ”
Aria rushed forward and slapped her hands over the man’s mouth before he even had a chance to react. Her pureblood Elf reflexes were much too fast for his human ones to track. She grit her teeth as she dropped her voice once more to a hiss, her face inches from his, as she said, “Do not say it. If we’re in as much danger as you claim, you will not say it.”
She waited for Grover to nod before she released him and stepped back again. “Your worries are unfounded,” she assured him after a moment spent tucking her hair back behind her ears that marked her an Elf. “He wouldn’t give me up to her.” Grover tried to protest, but Aria leaned forward again and insisted sharply, “He wouldn’t give me up. I know him better than that. Besides, he doesn’t even know we’re here. He doesn’t…doesn’t know. No one does.”
Grover didn’t respond this time, but an uneasy silence fell over them, one that permeated the hallway, making Ayia shiver and look over her shoulder into the gloom.
“I hope you’re right,” he said at last. “But, Aria, please…prepare yourself anyway…just in case you’re not.”
Aria only nodded once curtly and said, “The faeries of Bloodbracken have protected this village for longer than we’ve been here. I doubt it’ll fall now.”
But he only shook his head again and repeated, “I hope you’re right.”
Her hands still clenched into shaking fists, Ayia stepped away from the door, backing away into the chill darkness of the hall and then turning to run back up the stairs. She’d decided she didn’t want to know what Grover was talking about. It set her teeth on edge. Besides, she didn’t like the way he was talking either.
He was telling Aria to leave Lament. Leave the Meeri Sea and the Bloodbracken and all its faeries behind.
Ayia couldn’t imagine doing such a thing.
Lament was her home. It was where she’d grown up and lived all her life and it was beautiful. And, beyond a shadow of a doubt, she knew without having to be told there wasn’t anywhere like it in all the rest of Siasma.
What could possibly replace the sound of the tide coming in through her window? Or the blue skinned pixies with their little black eyes that she’d befriended on the edge of Bloodbracken? What could possibly replace their festivals?
She couldn’t imagine it, couldn’t picture it. It was too horrible to consider.
And so she flung herself up the stairs and down the hall to her bedroom. She flicked the door closed behind her and, with that Elven grace inherited from her mother, she leaped into bed and nestled beneath the blankets before the mattress had even stopped bouncing. She closed her eyes, willing the words she’d overheard in the study to go away, to stop being real, but they wouldn’t stop circling through her mind like water going down a drain.
Werifesteria is gone. Thalestris probably burned with it.
Do not speak of Isleen to me.
He knows where you are.
I was there and you were not.
Do not say it.
She didn’t understand any of it and yet she knew what she’d heard had been significant. That it was something she wasn’t supposed to hear.
Just forget it then, she told herself, putting a pillow over her head as if that would help. Just forget it and go to sleep!
But she couldn’t forget it, and she couldn’t go to sleep, and the thoughts remained until near dawn exhaustion won out over anxiety and curiosity and Ayia Ellaster at last fell asleep.
