Quentin was still holding my hand, clenching tightly enough that my fingers hurt. I didn’t try to pull away, not even when we turned a corner and there it was: the stable, so close that I could smell the straw and horse-sweat scent of it. I tried to breathe shallowly, but I couldn’t stop the scent from creeping in and filling my nostrils, bringing too many memories along. This was where nightmares were born.
The tangled thorn briars that had once locked the stable doors were gone; the doors stood open, allowing the inhabitants to come and go as they pleased. That wasn’t the only change. The walls were still dark wood and stone, but they had been scrubbed at some point, and were no longer caked in several centuries of filth. The floor was clean. Everything smelled of horse, but not of urine or feces. Just hot skin, and fur, and all the other scents that were unavoidable when there were animals present.
Given more time, given more changes, this place might stop making my skin crawl. But I wasn’t going to count on it.
“The changeling boy was kept here,” said Acacia, indicating the stable.
“Wait,” I said. “Blind Michael snatched a changeling powerful enough to rip holes in the world, and stuck him in the stable?”
“He was mortal,” said Acacia, like that explained everything—and maybe, to her, it did. “Rider or ridden. In all the years I watched my husband working, you were the only changeling I ever saw him treat as anything other than a beast of burden.”
“Lucky me,” I said bleakly, looking at the stable. I pulled my hand out of Quentin’s. He didn’t fight me. He knew what I was about to do, and he wanted no part of it.
Might as well get this over with. I turned and offered him the candle. To no one’s surprise, it burst back into flame as soon as it was clear that I intended to give it to someone else. “Hold this,” I said.
He blinked. “What—?”
“It’s going to be hard enough to find August’s magic under everything in here. I don’t need to have the Luidaeg’s candle confusing me.” The Babylon candle didn’t smell of blood. It didn’t really smell of anything, not even smoke. That didn’t mean it couldn’t confuse things. The Luidaeg is a sledgehammer in a world of scalpels, and when she gets involved, it leaves a mark.
“Okay,” said Quentin uncertainly. He took the candle and pulled it close to his chest, so that the light of it bathed his face, making everything golden and wavering.
I offered him the most sincere smile I could muster, clapped him on the shoulder, and turned away from him. What came next was something I would have to do alone.
Blind Michael’s stables—and they would always be his, Acacia could be lady of these lands for a thousand years, could do everything in her power to erase the stain of his legacy, and this place would still belong to him, drenched in the effects of his good intentions, of his monstrosity—loomed like an empty eye socket, black and bleak and dripping with menace. I took a deep breath and forced myself to step inside, past the threshold. I didn’t look back. If I had, even once, it would have become impossible to continue on.
With every step, the shadows got deeper, and the smell of horses got stronger, even though most of the stalls were currently empty. I shivered. This was the real reason I’d given the candle to Quentin. If the shadows had danced when the flame flickered, I would have run screaming.
Some wounds never really heal. They just scab over enough to let you keep on going.
When I reached the center of the building, I stopped, braced myself against what was about to hit me, and closed my eyes.
Your name is October; you are doing this to save the man you love, I thought, and breathed in deeply.
Magic is distinctive. No two people have the same magic, no matter how superficially similar they may seem. Amandine’s roses are not Evening’s roses are not Luna’s roses. My copper is not my mother’s blood, no matter how similar the two might eventually become. Magic echoes. It does not repeat.
Magic is ephemeral. It fades with time, with distance, as other scents and other footsteps blur and rub it away. Even the strongest spells were never intended to last forever. In the mortal world, dawn chips away at magic with every sunrise, erasing it from the world, making space for something new.
This wasn’t the mortal world. This wasn’t even the Summerlands, where a thousand competing local regents wrote and rewrote the land according to their own desires. This was an islet, so far from the places most of us knew that the rules were different. For Blind Michael’s lands, the time between August’s arrival and mine had been nothing more than one long, unending night. Acacia had softened it, finally allowing it to die, but there was still a chance.
I breathed in, and the magic of hundreds of stolen children washed over me, screaming. Here were the illusions they had spun, desperate to hide themselves from the man who had stolen them, who was still stealing them, breaking their minds and bodies in order to remake them in his own image. Here were the transformations they had attempted—and, in some cases, achieved. One child’s magic had smelled of bluebells and meadowsweet, and when I breathed it, I could taste the moment he had burst into a whole warren of rabbits, each holding a single piece of his heart. They had fled for the trees, and for all I knew, some of them were living there still, mute and unaware of what they had once been, but free.
August, I thought. I am looking for August.
Flowers and fruits and minerals and ideas, the smell of spilled cream drying in the sunlight, of fresh-milled grain, of ripe tomatoes, of sunlight on a bird’s wing. All the shades of magic washed over and through me, choking me, bringing tears to my eyes. Most of these children had died here. The ones who hadn’t . . . they would never go home. All this magic had been lost, harvested like wheat to reinforce Blind Michael’s own aspirations.
And under so much of it—not at the bottom; I didn’t think I could find the bottom if I spent a year trying—I found a ribbon of rose wrapped in smoke, all but buried under magic fueled by panic and agony and fear. August hadn’t been in emotional distress when she’d arrived here. She had been on an adventure, doing something bright and brave.
Had she even paused to realize how many children she was leaving behind? Had she promised them she would come back, and died a little inside when she broke her word? Or had she seen them as just one more obstacle between her and the goal of fulfilling the prophecy about our bloodline? I didn’t know. I didn’t even want to guess. It was impossible not to wonder.
“Quentin, bring me the candle,” I said, holding fast to the traceries of August’s magic. I didn’t want to let go. If I did, I might not find them again.
“Coming,” he said, and then he was beside me, pushing the candle into my waiting hand.
The flame began to smoke, wreathing me in gray. “Simon!” I shouted. “I think we’re leaving!”
“You found her?” He was suddenly beside me, looking at me with wide, anxious eyes. “Where are we going?”