She could feel how ancient this place was, as if the power of the gods themselves was woven into the door, or bound tight behind it. She imagined she saw glints of light flying up from the carving like sparks from a smith’s anvil.
The sudden thud of hooves in the sand shook her from her reverie. She looked down to see a lone horse and rider galloping along the shore: Caiden, his dark hair wild in the wind, stark against the mingled gray of sea and sky. The flock of starlings whirred inside of her. Why was he allowed to go down to the sea and she was not?
“Talia?”
She jerked around to see Wen standing on the path above her, his spectacles perched precariously on his nose. There was ink on his fingers, and the top few buttons of his shirt were undone, his cravat absent.
She didn’t snap at him for using her first name, or yell at him for following her, just nodded to the stone door. “What’s down there?”
The muscles in his face clenched, and he shook his head. “Nothing.”
“Nothing is shut away behind a heavy chain and an iron lock?”
“Leave it alone, Talia. Please.”
“Why are there so many secrets here? Why won’t anyone give me a straight answer?”
He considered her, his blue eyes huge behind his spectacles. “The Ruen-Dahr is centuries old. There used to be a temple here, and that door is a remnant of it. But it’s in ruins now—it isn’t safe to go inside. That’s why it’s locked up.”
She doubted that was the whole truth. “A temple to the Tree?”
“Yes.”
“Then people do believe the Tree was here, once.”
Wind stirred through her hair, and she could still hear the echo of hoofbeats, away down by the ocean.
“You don’t believe in the gods,” said Wen, watching her. “Why would you care about the Tree?”
“How do you know I don’t believe in them?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Do you?”
The challenge rankled her. “Not really.” Her mind went back to her conversation with Hanid down in the ship’s galley. “I want to be in control of my own fate.”
He glanced at the door and she followed his gaze, staring at the weeping woman carved into the stone. The glints of light were gone. “You’ve never experienced anything that you can’t rationally explain?”
She thought of the whale in the storm, the eerie music echoing among the waves, the feeling she’d gotten when she first saw the sea. Like it belonged to her. “No,” she snapped.
He shrugged. “Well, I have.”
She wished he would stop looking at her with such intensity. It was driving her crazy. She turned and started down the path again, but he grabbed her arm and pulled her back.
“Please don’t go down there. The sea is unpredictable, and that makes it extremely dangerous.”
For a moment longer she held his gaze, not challenging his half-answer. “Ahdairon choke you,” she muttered, then pushed past him, walking back up the path. She scrambled over the gate and paced through the garden-that-wasn’t-really-a-garden, and went inside, so frustrated with her situation she didn’t know what to do with herself.
Gods above. It was hard to believe she’d only been in this awful place a day.
Chapter Fourteen
RESTLESS AND FIDGETY, SHE DECIDED TO EXPLORE the house. She paced through the back hallways, avoiding the music room in the event Wen might go there. She found the kitchen (Dairon ordered her out), the stairs to the cellar (Lyna did the same), and a small, vacant sitting room.
She climbed the stairs in the vestibule, not turning left to where she knew the boys’ rooms and the Baron’s suite were, but continuing on past her own room and to another, narrower staircase. This one twisted upward for a while, a worn, red runner curling down the center of it. The stairs spilled out onto a little alcove, with a window cut into the wall. It looked down over the garden, the sea glimmering beyond. From there, another staircase wound further upward to a green door at the top. She tried the handle—surprisingly unlocked—so she opened it and stepped through.
She found herself in the modest foyer of a dusty suite—a handsome private sitting room that led into a dressing room, with a bedchamber beyond. She paced through the sitting room first, peering at the portraits on the walls, all dusty, all faded. Several were of a dark-haired young woman with smooth brown skin; her eyes stared out of the painting and straight into Talia’s. In one she held a dark-haired baby, her lips curved into a smile, contentment radiating from her face. In another the baby was older, and the woman wasn’t smiling anymore. Her expression looked strained, her eyes haunted.
The next series of portraits showed a blonde young woman, laughter in her bright blue eyes, a baby in her arms. In one of the paintings, a dark-haired little boy stood with her and her baby. The painter had depicted the boy smiling, but unhappiness came through in his eyes.
It was Caiden, Talia realized. Caiden and Wen and the second dead Baroness. The dark-haired woman had to be the first.
She felt like she was disturbing a mausoleum.
She walked quieter after that, passing through the dressing room and into the bedroom. Sheets were draped over the furniture, transforming couches and chairs, bookcases and mirrors into unearthly shapes. Cobwebs clung to bedposts and the corners of the walls. The whole place had a tinge of sadness to it and smelled like dead flowers.
Talia circled back to the dressing room, tugging open the doors of a large cedar wardrobe that stood in the corner by a tightly shuttered window. The wardrobe was empty, save for a bright blue gown she knew immediately was a wedding dress. She fingered the silk. There was silver stitching around the neckline, and a crown of dried flowers tied to the hanger with a ribbon. It seemed the servants had given Talia all the late Baronesses’ gowns save one. This suite had clearly belonged to them, and she wondered if her own mother would have lived up here, too. Somehow, she didn’t think so. These rooms ached with longing—things lost, but remembered always.
She was the only one left to remember her mother.
Talia shut the wardrobe in a hurry.
She left the suite, stepping back through the green door and onto the landing, then up a third set of even-narrower stairs, patches of bare stone showing through an ancient blue rug.
The air grew colder as she climbed, and she felt uneasy. She knew she shouldn’t be up here.
At the top was another landing, another window. This one was small and round, the colored glass showing an image of the white Tree with three flaming Stars caught in its branches. Talia stared at it, her mouth going dry. The glass looked very old.
What was tucked away up here?
A plain door stood to the right of the stairs, and she pulled on the handle, pulse jumping.
But this door was locked tight.