“Did you know my— Naomi’s husband?” I ask hoarsely, stopping myself just in time from saying my real father. Papa is my real father, even if not by birth.
“Ezra is strange,” she says at length. “Shows up on the road one day, with a traveling cloak and a bag of brand-new blood-irons. He will never tell anyone where he came from, to my knowledge—I’m not even sure if Naomi knows.” She takes a sip of her tea, her smile tinged with sadness. “There are rumors about him.”
“What kind of rumors?” My fingers ache from clenching the mug, but I can’t make myself let go.
“That he’s obsessed with time, and dark magic. He’ll visit a tavern or a friend’s home, and . . . the night will seem to go on longer than normal. People say that he slips tainted blood-irons into their tea. It will happen to me more than once, when Ezra and Naomi come over. We eat and laugh for what seems like hours, but when they leave the house, I’ll look at the clock to see that only an hour or two has passed.” She laughs to herself. “He makes people uneasy—he has all sorts of strange idols. He speaks ill of the Sorceress.”
Chills are running through me, and my whole body is alight with recognition. “And the baby?” I ask breathlessly, forgetting to be tactful.
Rinn’s face falls, the happy memories of Ezra and Naomi’s dinner visits punctured by the ugliness of what came after. “A girl born with a stone in her mouth,” she says at length. Ina’s face flashes in my mind. “An omen. The people are frightened, think the baby is the cause of everything . . .” She looks down at her hands.
My breath is coming fast, and I feel dizzy, like I’m hanging over the edge of a cliff. Ina was born with a stone in her mouth. Everyone knows that. But if the house in my dreams was my house, if Naomi was my mother . . .
“A few of us, Naomi’s friends, will go to the house—what’s left of it—after the fire. We want to bury the Morses before everyone leaves.” She pauses. “The Queen . . .” she says. “The Queen wants her.”
“Who?” I breathe.
“The baby,” Rinn says. A slow, sad smile creeps over her face. “But Naomi’s brother won’t let her.” She looks up at me, her eyes round with fear. “We have to give him time to run.”
“Who?” I ask. “Naomi’s brother?”
Rinn nods. “The blacksmith.”
My breath stops. “Pehr?”
“That was it, he—”
I don’t have time to dwell on this revelation, because Rinn’s face crumples to pain and she cries out, her hand shooting to her heart. I drop the mug and rush to her. At this distance, so close I can smell the chamomile on her breath, I notice that the fabric of her dress is stained.
She clutches me. “The other one, take the other one,” she gasps.
“What other one, Rinn?”
“The twin. But—but— It’s too late. She’s taking her away . . .”
Her voice trails off, and Rinn releases her fingers from my hands. I look down to see a red spot blooming above her heart. Slowly, carefully, I peel the thick wool of her dress away from her chest.
Her flesh has been split in two, and the mark is ringed with the dark purple color I know so well—mava, the Queen’s mark of death. Blood spills from the wound, fresh and plentiful as the day it was given.
After she stills, I hold her body for a long moment, too horror-struck to move. Her blood warms my lap, seeps into the cracks of the floorboards around us. Finally, I’m able to lower her onto the ground. I stand up, shaking, intending to find a sheet to cover her with—and then run from this town and never, ever return.
I’ve only just turned my back when a sound from behind makes a scream lodge in my throat. I whirl around to see Rinn sitting upright, looking at me with a puzzled expression on her face. Her dress is clean and whole, though mine is still wet with her blood.
“Hello,” she says. “Who are you?”
26
When I step back over the boundary between the town of Briarsmoor and the rest of the world, dark falls in an instant—a clear, chilly winter afternoon dissolving into a cold night just on the edge of a cold dawn. For a moment, I sway on my feet, the sudden change making me dizzy. Human beings weren’t supposed to move through time like this, and a wave of nausea passes over me. But as my eyes adjust to the dark, I make out the shape of the mare still waiting for me, tied to a fence down the road.
The horse whickers gratefully when I turn her around and urge her back toward Everless, the way we came. I wish I could share in her simple, high-stepping happiness.
Rinn’s words echo in my head. Her blood stains my dress, blood she’s been spilling over and over for seventeen years. After I regained my voice, I pleaded with her to come with me, thinking that I could pull her from the snag in time that she seemed to be caught in—but as soon as she reached the threshold of her house, her eyes became misty with confusion. When I tried to pull her outside, she started to scream, and only stopped when I let go of her wrists and walked away.
Dying and dying and dying, over and over again. I was a fool to think I could save her from such powerful magic. Grief tears at my heart for Rinn, for this town. For a family I’ve never known, now ashes.
But above all else, my thoughts are consumed by the truth slowly but surely taking shape before me. My mind continually circles back to Ezra Morse—the man who slowed time when he was happy. And when his wife gave birth, time stopped entirely, just as it did around me, when Caro was in danger yesterday.
Pehr—Papa—was my uncle. The Morses must have been my birth parents, my birth father a stranger who appeared in Briarsmoor out of nowhere. A man scornful of the Sorceress, who nevertheless had a statue of her near his home, and was rumored to experiment with magic. If I was the baby who was saved, was I the baby who stopped time? And Ina Gold . . .
My sister? My twin?
Impossible. And Roan . . .
My sister is marrying Roan Gerling. My sister will be crowned queen. My sister who doesn’t know who I am, who doesn’t know about the night of blood and magic and death that bore us.
The riddle of it all pounds through my mind: Papa died to keep me from the Queen. He warned me the very day he died not to let the Queen see me.
But why? And what does it have to do with the Sorceress, who keeps appearing in my dreams, her palms open as I run toward her, knife in hand. . . .
What does the Queen have to do with any of the stories Rinn told me? Why would she have wanted a child born in Briarsmoor—a child whose birth stopped time?
Unless the Queen . . . is the Sorceress.
The thought stings, blindingly hot then cold. I tell myself it’s the air, only the air whipping against my face.
For some reason, the Queen wanted the child who could stop time.