*
“The armband, too?” Yvan snipes at me as he loads wood into the stove next to me that evening.
I’m deeply stung by his harsh tone. “Don’t you think it’s smart?” I snipe back.
He stares at the flames, his jaw flexing with tension. “It’s smart.” His green eyes flash at me before he throws the iron door shut and stalks away.
Anger burns at my insides.
I’m not these clothes, I want to yell after him, aware of the newly stoked hatred bearing down on me from all the kitchen workers, Iris’s brazen look of hostility the most open manifestation. I can feel her look clear across the room.
I’m not this white armband, or these black silks, or this face, I continue to rail at Yvan wordlessly as he exits out the back and shuts the door with a sharp slam I feel straight down my spine.
I’m not Her, I continue to rage toward him, an angry flush burning at my cheeks. You know I’m not.
I’ll never be Her.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Tightening Noose
It’s late the next evening when I’m intercepted by a messenger from Lukas’s division, the Twelfth Division River Oak pinned to his tunic.
Apothecary lab has just ended, and Tierney is by my side, a white band now pinned around her arm, as well. “Self-preservation,” she told me when I first took in her white band with no small measure of surprise.
It seems I’m not the only one resorting to camouflage.
The uniformed messenger hands me a long package. “Mage Gardner,” he says with a deferential bob of his head, his breath puffing out from the cold.
There’s a note card affixed to it, my name on the small envelope in neat script, written with an artistic hand.
Lukas’s hand.
A pang of regret rises. After what happened to Ariel, I’ve put Lukas firmly out of my mind, pointedly not responding to his sporadic gifts and notes. I was so mad at him for so many weeks, but guilt has gradually worn that down. I’m just as much to blame for what happened as he is.
I weigh this new gift in my hands, the box not as heavy as I would have thought it would be, given its size. The young soldier gives me another quick bow and sets off.
I sit down on a nearby stone bench. Tierney takes a seat beside me, smatterings of scholars passing by talking quietly, the chill wind picking up in fits and starts.
I hand Tierney the note card and tug at the stiff brown paper, ripping it open, pulling out the black leather case underneath.
A violin case.
Heart thudding, I open the case and gasp when I see what’s inside, nestled in deep green velvet.
A Maelorian violin. Like the one Aunt Vyvian was given temporary use of the night of her dance.
Only this one is brand-new, the Alfsigr spruce varnished to a deep crimson, the edges gilded, the strings gleaming gold in the lamplight. A violin so expensive it could pay for my University tithe about ten times over.
With shaking hands, I take the note card from Tierney and open it.
Elloren,
If you wanted a portrait of me, all you had to do was ask.
Lukas
An incredulous laugh bursts from me, and a warm spark of affection for Lukas Grey is quickly followed by some remorse. I’ve been wrapped up in thoughts of Keltic Yvan while Lukas has been pursuing me from afar, and now this. Chastened, I hold the note out for Tierney to read.
Tierney’s mouth lifts into a crooked smile, her eyes dancing with dark delight.
“It feels bizarre, but I kind of like him at this moment,” she says, her smile growing wider.
I reverently close the violin case, heart fluttering at the sheer giddy excitement of holding such an instrument in my hands. At owning such an instrument.
I become suddenly conflicted—I don’t deserve such attention from a man I don’t plan on fasting to. I resolve to return the violin to Lukas the next time I see him, and to send a note of thanks in the meantime. Lukas deserves at least that.
Feeling eyes on me, I look up.
Gesine Bane and her friends are all staring at me and the violin in my lap, a nasty gleam in their eyes.
My elation instantly turns hard and sour, fear spiking on its heels.
Once Fallon Bane gets wind of this, I realize, it will be open season on me.
*
“She can speak, I’m sure of it,” Diana observes to me that night as I send up a stream of music in the washroom, my fingers sore and unaccustomed to playing for so long. I don’t care. It feels so good to have this violin in my hands.
And what a violin.
It renders my out-of-practice efforts into something heartbreakingly lovely.
Marina’s in the bath, curled up naked under the cooling water, her sorrowful gaze rippling up at us. I finish my song and lower my violin as Diana cocks her head in thought. “She can speak, but she just can’t speak in any form we can understand.”
Marina opens her mouth and forces multiple tones through her mouth and gills, the sound transformed by the water, her multiple tones coalescing into a deep, resonating hum that sounds like an eerily mournful song.
Like she’s grieving.
Our Selkie is a puzzle that can’t be solved. Sometimes her animal-like movements and barking multitones are those of a wild thing, but her eyes are inquisitive and intelligent, and I know that Diana’s right.
She’s more than just an animal. More than a seal.
Jarod and Diana have not been able to find Marina’s skin, and she can’t go back home without it—her strength is sapped to the point where she often seems ill. I’ve written to Gareth, asking for information about the Selkie trade and where their skins are kept, but I know his response will be slow in coming. He’s been gone for weeks with the other Maritime apprentices, all of them out to sea until First Month, when winter digs its claws in and all the ocean passes will start to ice over.
Every night an exhausted Marina methodically runs her fingers through our hair, pulling out the tangles more effectively than any brush as she softly mutters in her multitoned language. It seems to soothe her, and it soothes all of us in turn.
All of us but Ariel.
Ariel despises the attention Wynter pays to the Selkie and flaps her wings agitatedly at Marina and mutters obscenities. Fortunately, Ariel’s attention is mostly consumed by an injured raven that now abides with us, along with the two chickens. The owl is long since healed and freed. The raven perches on the bed next to Ariel, the two of them spooky in their blackness and unspoken understanding, the bird’s leg carefully splinted and bandaged.
And so my days wear on.
*
Sporadic notices flap in the bracingly cold wind. They’re affixed to University streetlamp posts and outside building entrances, alerting passersby of the Selkie’s theft and a monetary reward for any information as to her whereabouts.
At first sighting, the notices send a sharp spasm of fear through me. But as time passes, and they’re battered down and lost to the relentless wind, my fears are dulled to a blunt point.
Once, thinking I’m alone in an alley, I tear down one of the last notices still remaining and stuff it in my cloak pocket. I look up to see Ni Vin, the young, scarred Vu Trin. She’s standing across the street and staring at me, a curved sword at her side. She gives a subtle nod of approval to me as my heart skitters against my chest.
Then she turns and strides away.
*
“There’s mention of it here,” Tierney tells me, her finger coming down on the paper set before her. The two of us pore over the Council Motions & Rulings every week’s end, late at night, feeding our ongoing sleep deprivation.
She’s right. A small mention of an “escaped” Selkie and the posting of a reward, as well as a renewed motion—put forward jointly by Mage Vyvian Damon and Marcus Vogel, and struck down by a slim margin—to have every Selkie in the Western Realm shot on sight.
I rub at my aching temples. “My aunt’s not going to win any awards for compassion, I can tell you that.”