Rhiannon stood on the barrow mound near Glaeyand, watching the ritual to awaken her mother unfold. Llorn was there. As were Blythe and Raef and Maladox. There were druins from the Deepwood, many of whom Rhiannon had never met, plus a crowd of Red Knives that was much larger than Rhiannon had expected. It was dangerous for so many Knives to gather in one place. Why would so many of them come to see her mother?
Llorn stepped to the top of the mound and spoke, but Rhiannon was in such a state she barely paid attention. Cupping her mother’s cold wisplight in both hands, she stared at the sarcophagus Sister Dereka said contained her mother’s remains. The chill in her fingers deepened as she thought about what she and the gathered druins were about to do. They were going to grant her mother a third life as a draugr. Rhiannon couldn’t predict what would happen when they did, but it felt as if the fate of the forest, the fate of the world, was about to change.
Sister Dereka yanked Rhiannon into place so she and the druins were spaced evenly around the sarcophagus. “Prepare yourself. Concentrate on your mother’s wisp.”
Rhiannon squinted, clenched her teeth, and stared into the glowing ball. Anticipation, righteousness, and profound anger came back at her from her mother’s soul, and with them the sense that what they were doing was deeply wrong. Didn’t the druins preach about the sanctity of freed souls? How wisps deserved peace in their second lives? Didn’t they rail against the empire for disrespecting them?
Rhiannon’s fingers were growing numb. “Sister, why is it so cold?”
“Shush child, your mother is unhappy, but she wants to live again. Trust me.”
But Rhiannon didn’t trust her. Not in the least.
Sister Dereka opened the cavity in her ring and tipped white auris onto her tongue. Though Rhiannon had her own reservoir in the locket Llorn gave her, Sister Dereka gave her some as well. The other druins sniffed and swallowed black umbris. The powder tingled on Rhiannon’s tongue. She felt lighter, as if she could lift from the ground and shine like the sun.
The druins chanted an ancient song from deep in their throats. The moment was nearly at hand. Rhiannon had promised Llorn she’d help raise her mother, but she hadn’t counted on how wrong the ritual felt. She wanted to drop the wisplight and run, but Sister Dereka looked so intense, so angry in that moment, that she didn’t. She swallowed hard, raised the wisplight over her head, dashed it against the lid of sarcophagus. The glass shattered. Her mother’s soul hovered like a bright blue flame over the shattered glass.
Rhiannon lifted her shaking hands and held them near the wisp. She called upon the aura within her and became like a beacon, summoning her mother’s soul. Once again, she felt the hot pokers on her feet, her toenails being ripped out with pincers. Then she was driving a knife into the skull of an imperial soldier. The anger, the sheer amount of rage in her mother’s soul, felt so very foul.
You shouldn’t come into the world like this. You should return with love in your heart, not hate.
She summoned the memory of playing with the wooden blocks, of walking with her mother toward the pond. The wisp dimmed, and Rhiannon saw herself crouch beside the pond and pick up a crayfish. It wriggled between her pinched fingers.
Her mother laughed. “You’ve found a pet?”
Sister Dereka was suddenly at her side. She gripped Rhiannon’s wrist painfully. “She must have purpose in her third life, girl. Let her steep in her fury.”
Rhiannon wasn’t sure if it was caused by her inattention or the pain of Sister Dereka’s grip, but she saw the imperial soldier once more and Morraine straddling his chest. She was using her knife to cut out his tongue. What had spurred her mother to such savagery, Rhiannon had no idea, but the sharp sawing motions she was using, the way she sliced his cheeks open to get more space to work, made her feel as though she was committing a great evil upon the world by allowing things to continue. She felt certain Alra was watching from the land beyond and that the goddess would condemn her to endless torture for her sins.
As the wisp floated down toward the stone lid of the sarcophagus, she yanked her wrist from Sister Dereka’s grasp, screamed for them to stop, and lunged toward the spark.
“Fool girl, you’ll ruin it!” Sister Dereka grabbed Rhiannon’s hair and yanked her backward. “Gather your courage.” She pointed to the sarcophagus. “Your mother clearly has.”
Rhiannon tried to free herself, but the sister’s grip was too tight. She tried to force her mother’s soul away, but the wisp continued to fall. At last, it vanished through the lid.
She felt her mother’s soul awaken, felt her limbs begin to move. She pressed herself to Sister Dereka, as if she needed physical comfort, then elbowed the woman in the ribs as hard as could. Sister Dereka grunted and let go of her, and Rhiannon raced down the barrow mound. She stumbled, fell face first in the grass, then got up and sprinted for the trees. Behind her, the crowd of Knives gasped. A few of them screamed.
Someone shouted, “Intruder!” But Rhiannon kept running. Minutes into the forest, she came to a hole at the base of a citadel and stopped to catch her breath. The hole led to a tunnel that wound its way to the underroot and a subterranean vyrd—the way they’d traveled to the barrow mound earlier that day. She thought of fleeing deeper into the forest, but she was terrified the alarm meant the empire had learned of the ritual, and that she’d be found by their dracorae, then tortured and hung, as her mother had. She thought of navigating the tunnels and entering the maze to escape, but she’d never been properly taught how to use the vyrda and was afraid she’d muck it up and become lost forever.
Feeling useless as a bent blade, she entered the mouth of the tunnel and waited. Sister Dereka arrived a short while later, glared at her, but didn’t say a word. Behind Sister Dereka, a burly druin carried Morraine in his arms. Morraine was silent, unmoving, her eyes open but half-lidded, listless. They descended a stone stairway into the underroot, and Sister Dereka led them to a cavern with runes over the uneven floor. Using no lucertae whatsoever, Sister Dereka called upon the power of the maze. A whistle sounded, and Rhiannon found herself in a proper vyrd with rounded stones, an open sky, and citadel trees all around.
Sister Dereka led them along a well worn path, and they soon arrived at an outpost in the trees. It had a number of dragon nests, a scattering of burrows, a long wooden building on the ground that Rhiannon couldn’t begin to guess the purpose of.
“It’s the Rookery?” Rhiannon asked.
“Of course it is,” Sister Dereka snapped.
The sister led them up one of the citadel trees to a burrow. It was small, with two beds, a night table with a candle between them, and a small, shuttered window. Sister Dereka shoved Rhiannon toward one of the beds. “Rest.” She lit the candle, then reached into a pouch at her belt and handed Morraine the crystal shard Llorn had shown to Rhiannon near the waters of the Vagabond. “Take this.”
Morraine accepted it without a word, then held it to her chest and lay down on her bed. Rhiannon changed into a night dress she found on the other bed, lay down and covered herself with a thin blanket, occasionally peeking out at the draugr, her mother, and hoping she hadn’t moved. The exhaustion of the ritual and her flight back to the citadel eventually caught up to her, and she fell asleep. She woke hours later, shivering beneath her blanket. The candle was out, and the burrow was bitterly cold. She pulled her cover down and peeked out. Her mother was sitting on the edge of Rhiannon’s bed, staring down, her eyes glowing like distant wisps. The crystal glittered softly in her trembling hands while Nox’s brooding light filtered in through the slats of the room’s lone window.
Rhiannon pushed herself up and sat with her back against the headboard. “What are you doing?”
“Wondering, child . . .” Her voice was scratchy, but nothing like the hiss of the dead Rhiannon had expected.
“Wondering about what?” Rhiannon asked.
“At everything’s that’s happened since I died.” She smiled a pale, wrinkled smile. “At our old life together.”
“Do you remember what happened to you?”
“Not all of it, but much of it, yes.”
“Do you know what’s happening now?”
Morraine nodded, shrugged, and shivered violently and so suddenly Rhiannon almost ducked under the covers again.
“Are you well?” Rhiannon asked.
“Of course I’m not, child. Are you daft?”
“I only meant”—Rhiannon fought back tears—“can I help in any way?”
Morraine’s face softened. “Not with this.” She stared at the crystal in her hands. “Llorn came. He and I spoke for a time, so I understand some of what’s changed in the years since—” She shrugged, and Rhiannon thought she heard bones scraping. “It will take time to understand everything. You can help me with that if you’d like.”
Rhiannon took a deep breath. “I can try.”
Morraine smiled again, slightly less wrinkled, slightly less pale. “Then do so.”
Morraine grimaced and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, Rhiannon felt a growing emptiness inside of her, like she was being devoured from within. “I can feel your hunger.”
“I know you can,” her mother said. “We’re bound. We shouldn’t be, but we are. A result of the ritual being interrupted, I suspect.”
“Briar and bramble, I’m sorry. It’s all my fault.”
“You didn’t know.” Rhiannon’s stomach rumbled, and Morraine suddenly stood. “I must go.”
The child in Rhiannon wanted to stop her mother from leaving, but the young girl in her, the one who’d grown up without a mother, only wanted her to go away. She said nothing as Morraine left and closed the door behind her, and the room began to warm. The emptiness inside her ebbed, too, but only a little.
• • •
The following morning, Rhiannon woke to the sound of birdsong. Lux’s early morning light shone through the window slats. She swung her legs over the side of the bed, stared at the empty bed on the opposite side of the room, then got up and relieved herself in the chamber pot.
She heard clanking of pots and pans echoing in the hallway. She washed her hands and scrubbed her face in the basin. The smell of oats cooking, a common scent in the abbey in Thicket, wafted into the room. She took off her night clothes, put on her aspirant robe, which had grass stains along the knees and smelled of torch smoke from the night before, and braided her hair. Then she left the bedroom and went to the kitchen. Sister Merida was stirring a pot on a small, wood stove.
“You’re here,” Rhiannon said.
Sister Merida glanced over her shoulder and smiled. “I am . . .” She went back to stirring. “Sit. Drink.”
Rhiannon sat at the small table and poured herself a glass of pine milk from a pitcher. It was sourer than she was used to, but it was tasty just the same. “Where’s my mother?”
“She went to the fens to think.” Sister Merida brought her a bowl of porridge, a pot of honey, and a basket brimming with hackberries. “Tuck in.”
Rhiannon was so hungry that she didn’t at first notice the bruises over Sister Merida’s eye. Her upper lip was cut and swollen, too, and the bottom of her ear was red and scabby. “What happened?”
“Nothing happened, child.”
“Your eye, and—”
“It doesn’t matter. Eat.”
“Did they hurt you? Did Llorn?”
Sister Merida sat across from her. “Not Llorn.”
“Then who?”
Sister Merida took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Eat and I’ll tell you.”
Rhiannon shoveled a spoonful of porridge into her mouth. It was bland and pasty. She added some honey and berries. Then she stared at Sister Merida as she chewed.
“When I learned you were being brought here, I asked to join you. Sister Dereka tried to deny me. She and I had words . . .”
Rhiannon took another, much-sweeter mouthful. “Looks like you exchanged more than words.”
“That’s none of your concern.”
Rhiannon didn’t know what to say. Though they were blood relations, Rhiannon had never felt particularly close to Sister Merida. She’d thought Sister Merida felt the same, yet she’d fought to be here with her. “Didn’t you have a husband once?” Rhiannon shoveled in another mouthful.
“Beckett, yes, but he’s been gone for some time now.”
Rhiannon spoke around her food. “You had a child.”
“Chew, then speak, Rhiannon, and wipe that . . .” She pointed to her own chin. “We raised a foster child, Rylan, but he’s grown now and moved away. You met him at the abbey a few years ago.”
She vaguely remembered him. He was handsome with green eyes. “You didn’t want any of your own?”
“Someone’s certainly full of questions this morning.”
“I’m sorry, I know it’s rude—”
“It’s all right.” Sister Merida spun the bowl of hackberries idly. “I would’ve liked to have children of my own, but I’m barren, sadly.”
Rhiannon felt her cheeks flush and paused her chewing. “I’m sorry.”
“Oh, don’t be.” Merida stood and carried the cooking pot to the basin beside the stove and began cleaning it with a washrag. “It was a blessing in disguise. I’ve seen plenty of childbirths. All that screaming and pushing and sweating. But I did love raising a child. I could never stand the quiet.” She looked out the window. “With Rylan all grown up, life in the abbey suits me. Now finish up and head to the nests. Llorn has a surprise for you.”
“What kind of—”
“You’ll see soon enough.” Sister Merida continued washing the pot.
Rhiannon finished her bowl as quickly as her mouth would allow and dashed out of the burrow. A few walkways, stairs, and bridgeboughs later, she arrived at the dragon nests. Llorn stood beside the nearest of them. Inside the nest itself, his massive cobalt, Fraoch, was curled around three dragon kits, each the size of a bloodhound.
Rhiannon walked toward them and realized Irik was standing behind Llorn.
“Irik!” she yelled.
The dragon kits twitched and shivered at the sound. Fraoch raised her head, fixed her turquoise gaze on Rhiannon, and uttered a low growl.
Llorn raised his hands. “Quietly, girl.”
“I’m sorry,” Rhiannon whispered and tiptoed the rest of the way to the walkway on the nest’s bough. Fraoch growled a little louder, but Llorn whistled, and she laid her head down next to her kits.
Irik was smiling so hard he looked like he’d grown extra teeth. “Rhiannon, I’m to bond with one of them!”
Llorn chuckled. “You’re here to see if one of the kits will take to you.”
Irik pointed to the shining blue kit closest to him. “One of them already has.”
“We’ll see.” Llorn stroked the kit’s jaw with the back of his fingers. Then his brow furrowed, and he pinched the bridge of his nose. When he caught Rhiannon watching, he lowered his hand.
Irik, apparently oblivious, stepped next to Rhiannon and whispered, “His name is Tiufalli.”
Rhiannon smiled. Tiufalli was the Old Kin word for devilish. She stared at the kits’ vibrant scales, which were noticeably lighter blue than their mother’s vivid cobalt. “All three will be bonded?”
“One will be bonded.” Llorn turned and faced Rhiannon. “The other two will be sent east, into the wild, to help rebuild their population. Unless you wish to be bonded as well?”
Irik’s eyes went wide. Fraoch warbled.
“It’s all right, girl,” Llorn told the dragon. “Nothing’s been decided yet.”
Rhiannon tried to ignore Fraoch’s stare. There wasn’t a child in the Holt who hadn’t dreamed of bonding with a dragon. Irik and Rhiannon had played Dragonriders of Gonsalond countless times back in Thicket, but this was real. Dragon kits needed constant care when they were young. They needed to be trained to carry a rider and obey their bondmate’s commands. Rhiannon wasn’t worried about those things as such—she’d gladly dedicate herself to forming a bond with a dragon—but there was the empty feeling in her gut, her link to her mother. It was a bond of another sort, and she worried it would affect a dragon kit. Like a needle driving into its mind, it could make the kit angry or violent. It wouldn’t be fair.
“Thank you,” she said to Llorn, “but I can’t. I’ll be happy to help Irik, though.”
Llorn looked like he might argue, but he just shrugged. “Suit yourself, but both of you have work to do today.” He touched Irik’s shoulder and pointed to a deck a few trees over, where a spindly woman was carving up an elk carcass. “Help Ayasha dress the elk.” After Irik nodded and left, Llorn told Rhiannon, “Your mother went to the fens. Go. Speak with her.”
“Can’t I help Ayasha, too?” She didn’t wish to carve up a dead elk, but she didn’t particularly wish to talk with her mother, either.
He walked away. “Go talk to your mother, Rhiannon. Now.”
She watched Irik bound over a suspended bridge. She wondered if Llorn had brought him to the Rookery just to make her feel more at home. Despite what had happened with Sister Dereka, it was almost certainly why he’d allowed Sister Merida to come. Rhiannon was glad for it, but it made her feel manipulated. It made her feel responsible for them as well.
She wished she could go back to the day she’d snuck off with Irik and summoned the wisp beside the swamp. She would’ve stayed at the abbey instead and left Brother Mayhew’s book alone. Now she’d stepped into a mire she wasn’t sure she could get out of.