“Your father wrote to me last month,” she said softly. “Told me to come, hinted that the Ruen-Dahr needed a new mistress. Make him proud, Caiden. Let me stay here with you. It’s what we always planned, after all.”
Rage hardened every line of Caiden’s frame. “My father had no right to invite you here. You might as well pack your bags and leave this evening, Blaive. It will save you future disappointment.”
She smiled. “Does your father know? About Talia?”
“There’s nothing to know,” Talia objected, but neither of them was paying attention to her.
“If you think for one second that I would dream of marrying you—”
“You’ll do what your father tells you to,” Blaive snapped, “like you always have.”
He shut his mouth, eyes blazing fire.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me,” said Blaive, gathering her taffeta skirts. “I believe I’m late for dinner.” And she swept down the stairs in a haze of righteous fury.
Talia stared after her, shocked. She disliked Blaive more than she thought possible, but she was also a little awed by the girl’s tenacity.
Caiden was obviously rattled. He stood there vacantly staring for a solid minute, before at last bowing vaguely in Talia’s direction and retreating upstairs.
Talia took a breath and went into her room, collapsing in the window seat and ringing for one of the maids to bring her dinner. She had no wish to encounter Blaive again.
She dreamed of the boat from the hidden cove, upright and whole, adrift in a dark sea. A patchwork sail swelled to catch the wind. She was standing at the tiller, guiding the boat through the black waves.
The sea began to groan, and a host of shadows rose from beneath the water. They were clothed in gray and bound in chains and every one of them was screaming, though they made no sound. At their head a goddess rode on the back of a sea serpent. She wore a crown of bones and fire, and the Star shone bright from her finger.
A wave crashed against Talia’s boat, and black water enveloped her. Chains wrapped around her ankles, dragging her down and down and down. No matter how she fought, she couldn’t get free.
The goddess’s laughter rang in her ears, and she could see nothing before her but shadows, and death.
Talia jerked from sleep, skin drenched in sweat. She got out of bed, lit a candle, and changed into a fresh nightgown, splashing water on her face and willing her pulse to return to normal.
Outside the window the clouds had ebbed away, stars showing white in the fathomless dark. She unlatched the casement and leaned out into the night. Icy air raced into her lungs, and away out over the sea, she heard music. It was filled with longing, and danger, and impossible sorrow. She tried not to listen.
The boat from the hidden cove. How had she not remembered that yesterday—no, two days ago—in the mirror room? Was it possible she was meant to use that boat to sail to Rahn’s Hall and free her mother? She couldn’t think about the other part of her dream—the dead rising from the sea, chains around her ankles. Death.
She shivered in the frigid wind, but didn’t pull the window shut.
She could feel her fate like an inescapable noose, every moment cinching tighter. The gods were giving her all the pieces. She just had to figure out how to put them together.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
CAIDEN WASN’T AT DINNER.
Talia hadn’t seen him all day. She was the first to arrive in the dining room, still thinking about the boat in the hidden cove, trying to figure out what she should do first. The boat needed repair—she wouldn’t know how much until she dug it out of the sand. Somehow, she had to figure out how to even find Rahn’s Hall—it wasn’t like it’d be marked in ink on a map. And in the event she actually made it, she’d need some kind of plan to dive into the sea and pull her mother out from among the dead.
It sounded like nonsense, when she thought about it like that, and yet—
She knew it wasn’t.
Blaive breezed in a few moments later with a smile on her face, settling into her chair in a pouf of powder-pink skirts. Wen came in just after, his spectacles pinched tight on his nose, ink spattered all over his hands and even a few black stains on his shirt. He smiled at Talia and she smiled back, her guilt at the things she wasn’t telling him gnawing deep.
“Caiden’s not coming,” Blaive explained smoothly to no one in particular, as the maids brought in dinner. “He’s upstairs with the Baron.”
“Oh?” Talia wondered faintly if Caiden was talking to him about the betrothal. Not that it mattered anymore, really—she would be gone by the spring. She swallowed past the lump in her throat.
“I saw the Baron myself this morning,” Blaive continued, unfolding her napkin on her lap. “We had quite a chat over tea.” Wen frowned, clearly more in tune with this conversation than Talia. “What did you chat about?”
Her smile deepened to dangerous dimensions. “Responsibility. Contracts. Propriety. Honoring one’s commitments.”
“What did you do?” said Talia.
Blaive locked eyes with her. “I simply pointed out a few things going on under the Baron’s nose that he was unaware of.”
“Such as?” Talia prodded, grinding her jaw.
Blaive gave a dimpled smile. “The particulars aren’t important.” She saluted Talia with her wine glass.
Caiden wasn’t at breakfast either.
Sausages and porridge and dried winter pears were spread out on the table, with hot tea and cider. Exhausted, Talia barely touched any of it. She’d been up late reading, trying to gather as much information as she could about Rahn’s Hall. But it wasn’t like there were any charts helpfully pointing the way. Just stories, and not very many of them at that.
Blaive sat, primly stirring cream and sugar into her porridge, her fitted orange gown a bold splash of color in the dull room. Flames danced hot on the hearth, living echoes of her brilliance.
Wen sat scratching at a piece of music paper, the tea at his elbow untouched.
“What are you doing?” Talia asked him, tired of silence and loath to speak to Blaive.
He glanced up at her briefly then back at his music. “Working on my symphony. It comes in bits and pieces, and if I don’t write it down immediately, I can’t get it back again. It’s been exploding in my mind since … since the other day.”
Since the mirror room, Talia thought, and suppressed a shudder. She watched the quick movement of his pen across the paper and wondered what horrible thing he’d seen in the last mirror that hadn’t happened yet.
“Caiden’s out riding, in case anyone wanted to know,” said Blaive, smugness rolling off of her in waves. “He left quite early this morning.”
Talia sipped her tea without tasting it. She shouldn’t care about Caiden’s whereabouts, not with everything else that was going on, but she did. “Do you know where he went?”
Blaive shrugged her pretty, orange-clad shoulders, a smile playing about her lips. “I’m afraid I don’t.”
Wen’s pen scribbled rapidly over his paper, black notes marching up and down the staff lines. Talia wondered what it sounded like in his head.