“Now, Signa! I want him back now!”
Guilt swelled within her, and there was the heat again, stirring deep in her belly as she tried to give Blythe what she wanted. Tried to give her cousin a version of herself that was worthy of the love Blythe had to offer. It burned through her, so hot that Signa worried her skin would melt. She refused to shy away from it, though, curling her fingers into the foal’s mane even when the tears came and a scream tore through her throat.
It took seconds that felt like years of agony; like Signa herself was in the depths of hell, eaten alive by the flames. Distantly she heard Death calling to her, though she couldn’t make out the words. It hurt too much to listen. To focus. To do anything at all… until suddenly it didn’t.
All at once the heat disappeared, and beneath Signa’s hands the foal’s chest rose and fell, stronger this time. It pushed from Blythe’s grip, eyes clear of the fog that had been weighing it down since birth.
In and out its chest moved. Signa couldn’t pull her focus away, counting every breath.
One. She had done that…
Two. She had done that.
Three… Signa turned at once toward Death, but with the belladonna purged from her body and her heart racing once more, he’d disappeared from sight.
“I brought him back.” Signa stared at the foal. Her hands felt like they were on fire, and she had to touch her lips to confirm they hadn’t melted away. She nearly spun to Blythe, and though she wasn’t sure what she was expecting, it wasn’t to see Blythe push up onto shaky feet and back away as though Signa was the devil himself.
Because this was what she’d asked for.
This was what she’d wanted.
And yet, with words so vicious that each of them felt worse than death, Blythe choked, “I wasn’t talking about the horse.”
Ice flooded through Signa once more, removing all traces of the aching heat. For the first time she found no comfort in it. The girls watched each other, Blythe a predator and Signa the wounded prey.
“I can explain—” Signa began, but Blythe didn’t let her say another word.
“I need you to tell me one thing.” As quietly as Blythe spoke, her voice was the only sound in the world that Signa could hear right then. “I need you to tell me if my brother really left Thorn Grove the night of the fire.”
What Signa wouldn’t have done to have had these abilities earlier. If she’d had them a few months prior, she could have saved Blythe herself. She could have found a different way to deal with Percy.
Why now, of all possible times? Why now, when it was too late to go back?
She bowed her head, and though she knew it would doom her, said, “No.”
Blythe’s hand flew to her mouth, barely covering the sob that racked her body. Through it she forced out each word, “Is my brother alive?”
“Blythe—”
“It’s yes or no!” The sharpness in Blythe’s voice was intended not to wound but to kill. “Is Percy alive?”
Signa had known this question would come. All along she’d known that, one day, she’d have to admit the truth of what she had done to this family. She wished only that it hadn’t come so fast. That she’d had more time with Blythe before losing her forever.
But she had been warned that there was a price for toying with Fate and playing God, and it seemed her payment was finally due.
“No,” Signa whispered, knowing that every day for the rest of her existence she would wish to forget this moment. “No, he’s not.”
Blythe did not blink. Did not breathe or even twitch her lips. The only sign that she’d heard Signa was in the shaking hand she wound around her stomach, as if holding herself in. And when Blythe finally did speak, exhaling unsteadily, she became winter incarnate, each word raging with the force of a tempest.
“I want you gone from Thorn Grove by morning.”
Nine words, Blythe had whispered. Nine words, and Signa felt any remaining happiness she had slip from her grasp.
Without leaving any room for rebuttal, Blythe gathered her skirts and fled the stables. All Signa could do was sit, numb and hollow, as she watched the foal bend to eat its hay.
TWENTY-THREE
SIGNA GAVE LITTLE THOUGHT TO WHAT SHE DID NEXT. THINKING would require feeling, and she had no desire to suffer through anything of the sort. Not yet.
Moments after Blythe had fled, William returned in a panic to find Signa hugging her knees, unblinking as she watched the foal.
“Miss Farrow?” Fear edged his voice.
Had she been able to see herself, Signa might have understood why he drew a step back as she stood to face him. She would have seen the wildness in her eyes and the straw in her hair. Would have seen the way she flexed her fingers as though her nails were claws, and the pain that cracked her expression like a porcelain cup. One wrong word, one wrong move, and she would shatter.
“Leave me alone.”
“It’s getting late,” William whispered. “I’ve come to accompany you back to the manor.”
She cut him a look so scathing that his mouth snapped closed. Only after a long moment of staring down at the foal did he step inside and scoop it into his arms. “Stay as long as you’d like, then. But I’m putting the foal with his mother.” William said it like a question, so Signa nodded. It would be better that way, if she didn’t have to look at the foal—at proof of what she was, and the impossibility of what she’d done.
She waited for William to disappear. For the noise around her to settle into swishing tails and softly stamping hooves before she tilted her head up at the ceiling, shut her eyes, and asked, “You’re still here, aren’t you?”
Signa was met by a wave of icy air, and a voice that slipped through her mind like the finest velvet. Of course I am.
“I brought a foal back to life.”
You brought a foal back to life, Death repeated without a hint of emotion to betray his thoughts. The silver in your hair is gone, as well. How are you feeling?
The question was so ridiculous that she couldn’t contain her bitter laughter. How was she feeling? God, she couldn’t even begin to process it.
Tell me how I can help, Little Bird. Signa knew he pressed closer when her fingertips numbed from the chill of his body. Tell me how to make this better.
That was just it—there was no making it better, and the reality of that was sinking in too quickly to process.
“I feel like I’m being pulled in a thousand directions.” The admission was quiet, whispered from her most fragile depths. “I’m tired of people being afraid of me. I’m tired of feeling like I’m not enough. No matter what I do, I’m disappointing someone. But the one I truly feel most disappointed in is myself, because I hate feeling like this, Death. I thought I was done.”
Death’s voice came as easy as the autumn breeze, sweeping in and lulling her into its comfort. If people are afraid, he said, then let them be afraid. Your shoulders were not meant to bear the weight of their expectations, Signa. You were not made to please others.
He was right. Despite the result, Signa did not regret telling her cousin the truth and unburdening herself of this secret.
Signa had tried to please Blythe; she had made herself feel as though she were burning from the inside out to bring the foal back to life. Yet doing so hadn’t mattered at all. None of it mattered. Signa had made her choices, and now it was time for her to own them.
Still, she would mourn all that she would miss, like sneaking into Blythe’s room for gossip at all hours of the night, listening to ridiculous family banter over dinner, laughing with her about whatever ridiculous thing Diana said or did at tea. There would be no more rides with Mitra, or seeing Lillian’s garden once it healed from the fire and managed to bloom again. She wouldn’t even have Death’s voice in her head to help ease the transition if Fate continued to keep him from her.