He hurried away, and Aurora seethed, vowing not to tell Isbe what she had learned, hoping that by keeping it a secret, she was in some way keeping safe the belief that one day her sister would find true love—that true love did exist.
As the night fire burns down to embers in a corner of her tower room, sending up tufts of smoke as rain filters in from the chimney, Aurora realizes her error, over and over, like the echoing gong of a bell.
Gilbert helped Isbe escape in the dead of winter when the council meant to send her away. He is likely with her sister even now. He has always watched out for her when Aurora could not. It is suddenly clear as polished crystal to Aurora: Gilbert is, and always has been, in love with Isbe.
And Aurora, in expressing her silent disapproval on that embarrassing day three years ago, is likely the reason he never since acted on those feelings.
Though the dashing paramour of Aurora’s thirteen-year-old imagination had never existed, someone did pine for her sister, did spend time and hard-earned money writing his feelings down on vellum, with no expectation of a return of affection. There was no fantasy, just a real-life boy.
Aurora had been naive then, but she isn’t anymore.
And she knows too—has known since seeing the servant girl’s aghast face in the gallery—that Wren is in love with Heath.
But she hasn’t said anything. She has held the truth close to her, like a love letter that’s never meant to be read.
Heath told her he didn’t believe in true love, that he never really felt he had a choice before. Now Aurora can’t help but wonder whether, if circumstances were different, he’d choose her.
That’s nonsense, she reminds herself. She can’t be with Heath. She’s a princess and her kingdom needs her. She must return home to marry the third prince of Aubin.
But this fact no longer remains a fixed point in her mind. Like a firefly, when she tries to look directly at the truth, tries to reach for it, its glow blinks out, allowing the idea to swim mysteriously away, lighter than air. Home is not the thing she longs for. Home is a kind of death now—a coffin, walled on all sides, to which she must resign herself forever. For surely her faerie tithes will hold in the real world.
She will no longer have her voice.
She will no longer feel.
She will have to release the fantasy of—maybe, almost—falling in love with Heath.
But how can she stay? Sommeil is dying, starving. Aurora has probably broken the heart of the one girl here who has shown her the most kindness and support. And Heath himself has confessed that he wants to believe in love—but wanting to is not the same as believing. In truth, he has given Aurora no promise at all of his feelings or intentions.
And then there’s the queen, waiting forever for the impossible return of someone she loves—of Charles Blackthorn, Aurora’s almost sure—to set her free.
But that can’t be the full story, Aurora realizes as she sits up in bed, her long hair tangled all around her shoulders. What is she missing?
Something must have come between Charles and Belcoeur. Or someone.
30
Vulture,
a Soldier in Malfleur’s Army
From where the LaMorte army stands, forming battalion after battalion of muscle and iron on the precipice of Mount Briar, Deluce’s palace looks like a tiny oil painting that’s been left in the rain. The fog surrounding it appears quaint, like a lady’s skirt. A lady they are going to ravage and make theirs.
For a moment Vulture hears a whisper on the wind, a horse’s quiet snuffle, and it makes him remember . . . what it felt like to be an I and not a we. What it felt like to see from all sides of his eyes, instead of through tight black holes. He turns his beaklike mask to the left, and sees the rest of them. The queen calls all of them Vulture. They are no longer individuals but one dark mass of masks and black cloaks, of heavy armor and impenetrable eyes.
Malfleur paces along the cliff, counting off, conveying instructions. She approaches Vulture but keeps walking without any acknowledgment. The queen has forgotten him. She has forgotten that Vulture—this Vulture—is special. She had required a talented groom, a skilled rider, someone familiar with destriers and coursers, their behavior, the shape of their long noses. It was he, Vulture—this Vulture—who was asked to design the terrifying silver muzzles worn by all of her warhorses.
They wear the beaks for protection from the sickness, which is not, he now understands, her doing—though what terrible magic created it, he cannot say. But the masks do more than just block the disease. They narrow the focus, they separate the man from the world he is riding into, from the victim he must either gain command over or kill.
And there is something deeply reassuring about the darkness within the mask. Vulture can sink back into it like a boundless sea, can let go of almost everything that once made him who he was and weighed him down. All that’s left of before is a faint twinge. The rest is black ocean, is night sky, is anger, is flight.
But that twinge persists . . . a tiny spark within him that makes him want to go back, to flee the oil vessel in one of the smaller dinghies and look for her, rescue her, or risk death in the vast real ocean trying, rather than stay and face the mercenaries who bound him, who threatened him, who gave him no choice, who turned him into what he is now, into one of them. Vulture.
As Malfleur passes him by, he catches a glance of her glossy dark hair, lifted and wild in the breeze, and he sees not the queen, but her.
Her, falling backward into the waves alone.
Her, laughing, rebuking, arguing, rallying, racing through fields on a mare’s bare back. Her, throwing her hands up to his face to feel what he felt, to change him, to leave her mark on him.
But it is pointless, he knows, to think of her.
For what would Isabelle say if she saw him now?
PART
V
BEFORE BREAK OF MORN
31
Isabelle
It’s strange to draw near the castle village where she spent her entire life growing up. Isbe thought she would find its familiarity reassuring after their arduous journey. Instead, when William shouts to her that he can see the towers and the drawbridge in the distance, she is overcome with the distinct and uncomfortable sensation of slipping into an old, tight shoe. The smell also reminds her of old shoes, though she has come to realize that it is in fact the odor of death.
Along the road leading here—completely abandoned by travelers—she and William have stumbled upon the rotting carcasses of crows who dropped from the sky having succumbed to the sickness, presumably after feasting on sleeping mice. Even now, William points out another one wobbling awkwardly through the blue dawn, and a moment later she hears it plummet to the ground with a disturbing thud.