13

Fi

fi set a length of rope spinning, trying to track the slithering vines while still keeping one eye on the little ball of light. It had retreated to a high corner of the ceiling, waiting. Fi would have to worry about that later. The first of the vine snakes was getting close, its stone leaves crackling as it plowed through the sand. Fi squared her stance, trying to recall all of the details of the room at the same time. There had to be a way out—a way forward—and a hint buried somewhere in the chaos around them.

A violent crash behind her signaled the beginning of the fight. Bits of broken stone skittered across the floor as Shane cracked her ax through the first vine.

With a rush of sand, another vine sprang at Fi, twisting around her wrist like a shackle. The hard stone cut into her skin as it cinched tight and then froze, turning back to unyielding rock. Fi yanked at her hand, but it was locked in place.

Two more of the vines were already racing toward her. Desperately, Fi let her rope fly. The metal ring bounced off the writhing vines with a loud ping! and then lurched out of her grip. The rope had snagged on one of the stone thorns. Another stone vine hurtled at her, and Fi ducked just in time, nearly wrenching her arm out of its socket. She didn’t miss the way the little wisp of light jumped, like it was waiting for just the right moment to strike.

“Shane!” Fi yelled. Behind her, she could hear the grunts and crashes of the huntsman dealing with her own problems.

“Little busy here, Fi!” Shane called back.

“The vines are trying to trap us so that light—whatever it is—can attack.”

“What?” Shane demanded.

Fi tugged desperately against the stone shackle, kicking at one of the vines slithering around her feet. Her toe throbbed like she’d kicked solid rock, but at least she’d tossed it back a few inches.

The vine coiled again, the stone rippling like a viper as it readied to strike. Fi stretched as far as she could, struggling to grab her fallen rope. The vine launched at her. Instinctively, she threw her free hand up to protect her face, aware even as she did that she was about to be completely trapped.

The stone never reached her. Shane let out a great shout as her ax smashed into the vine, shearing it in half and leaving it a crumbling stump writhing on the ground.

“Keep your eyes covered,” Shane warned. Then she spun the ax in her hands and slammed the blunt end into the vine trapping Fi’s wrist. The stone shattered, bits of rock flying in all directions, and Fi stumbled free. The skin of her wrist was scraped raw. She grabbed her rope and turned to join Shane, only to find her partner shoving her toward the black coffin instead.

“This is a job for a huntsman,” Shane growled. “Figuring a way out of here—that’s a job for a bookworm.”

Fi wanted to protest. Blood was already running down the side of Shane’s face, her messy hair studded with shattered chips of gray stone. But her partner was right. Fi shot one last look at the strange wisp of light hovering at the edge of the room. Then she snatched up the lantern and rushed to the black coffin.

In the wavering light, the stone gleamed as though the entire thing had been carved from obsidian. The surface was smooth, and it was thick enough that Fi couldn’t even hear a hollow echo when she rapped her knuckles against it. There was nothing else in the room—the clue she was looking for had to be here. But it was hard to focus with Shane locked in battle behind her.

Fi jumped as a torn-off hunk of vine smashed into the coffin inches from her.

Focus! Fi told herself. She sucked in a deep breath of dusty air. There was a seam running around the top edge of the coffin—invisible to the eye, but Fi could feel it with her fingertips. A lid. Fi forced her shoulder against the edge, using all of her weight to try to force it open. The stone didn’t budge. Clearly, it wasn’t a matter of brute force. She had to find a way to unseal it.

“Anytime, Fi!” Shane growled. Her voice was closer, close enough that Fi could feel the shards of broken vines striking her calves as Shane hacked away. It really was just like old times.

Fi closed her eyes and pinched her earlobe. Hard.

This was the tomb of Aurora, the first Witch Queen and the founder of the Order of the Divine Rose. But there were no roses in this room, deliberately so, and unlike the sunlit statue and the garden of weeping willows, this place was dark and menacing, with a cold, forbidding coffin. It was the most unfitting place possible to be the resting place of a Witch like Aurora, the greatest light Witch Andar had ever known.

All at once, she was lost in a memory of Briar Rose, sparks of white light dancing between his fingertips. Briar, who had the same magic as his powerful ancestor.

This wasn’t a trap at all—it was a test. Fi’s eyes sprang open in time to see a stone vine flying toward her. Shane seized her by the collar and dragged her to the ground.

“I can’t hold them off any longer!” she warned.

“It’s okay.” Fi squeezed her partner’s shoulder. “I know what I have to do.” Then she stood up, walking purposefully toward the ball of light. The vines snapped at her feet, leaves and bulbous rosebuds gliding through the sand.

“Fi!” Shane shouted. “Get back here!”

“Trust me,” Fi said, throwing a look over her shoulder.

“I really hate it when you say that,” Shane grumbled.

Fi just smiled. Then the little wisp of light darted forward, straight at her. Fi threw her arms wide and let it in.

It was like being hit by a blast of air, or a rush of mist if, instead of icy cold, the feeling was warm like the sun. At first, it felt like all the life was being sucked out of her, her knees buckling, her breath stuttering and shallow in her chest. Then a different kind of power filled her, searing and bright. Fi looked down at her hands in wonder. They were glowing a silvery white.

On its own, her body turned back toward the obsidian coffin. Fi’s first instinct was to fight it—to try and regain control of her body—but she didn’t, because this was the test.

Aurora Rose was the most powerful light Witch of all time. The little ball was a fragment of the queen as surely as the Lord of the Butterflies hid pieces of himself in mirrors. Aurora was the guardian of her own tomb and the judge of who could enter. In the end, a trap, no matter how clever or carefully set, could only test a person’s wits, or strength, or luck. The only way to know what was in a person’s heart was to look inside them. Whenever treasure hunters broke into her tomb, Aurora’s spirit had possessed them and simply walked the unworthy back out into the forest, leaving them with no memories of her.

And now? What would she do with Fi?

Fi felt herself take another step. The vines calmed around her feet, the stone rosebuds unfurling in the radiant white light. Fi closed her eyes. The glow that had filled her didn’t feel as frightening when she imagined it was really Aurora, who looked so much like Briar Rose.

Please, she begged silently. I may not be worthy, but my cause is. Briar is. Your descendant needs you. At the thought of him, a tide of memories rushed over her, and Fi let herself get swept away in them—Briar carrying her piggyback, Briar swirling in his Red Baron costume, Briar’s blue eyes sparkling like a deep, warm ocean, Briar kissing her under a sky of stars. Briar, who was the light burning in the center of her, chasing away all of the darkness and the fear and the loneliness she had gotten so used to. It made her ache and ache and ache, remembering how much she loved him and how he’d been ripped away from her.

Fi didn’t know if Aurora could see those memories, too, but she tried to concentrate on that love, on her desire to save him and all of Andar. If you ever loved someone like this, she thought, please help me get him back.

Her body had reached the coffin. Shane was shouting her name, but it sounded distant and hazy. Aurora raised Fi’s hands. Light gathered at the tips of her fingers, sparks of pure white magic. Fi gasped, a tear sliding down her cheek at the light that felt so familiar.

The Witch gathered all the magic into a single finger and then pressed it against the seam of the coffin. Light spilled out, running like water down the black stone, pulsing and bright. She could feel Aurora’s presence like a warm sunlit day full of the soft scent of roses.

Suddenly, Fi’s ears rang with a voice. It whispered with the rustle of the wind through the willows outside, the tinkling song of silver bells.

I’ve waited so long for this day.

It was Aurora, inside Fi and all around her. Light filled her vision, blinding white like she was looking directly at the sun, and when she blinked it away, she was somewhere else. The spire of the Spindle Witch’s dark tower rose from the carpet of white bones—but for one instant, one second between blinks, it had looked inverted, as if she were seeing Briar’s white tower rising from the black thorns instead.

Two lonely towers. Two Witches waiting for a rescue. Just as Fi had always suspected, these stories were infinitely more tangled than they first appeared.

Yes, Aurora breathed, close in her ears. We found her in the tower. She was all raw magic at first—no skill, only instinct. But she learned fast. So fast.

The scene had changed. They were inside the tower—the same empty tower Fi had wandered for weeks. Except it didn’t look so lonely or empty. She recognized the Spindle Witch’s room from the pictures scratched into the wall, but now it was crammed with Fi’s unsteady desk and some other furniture, all laid out together as if to make a worktable. The surface spilled over with heavy leather-bound books, some wide open while others bristled with so many bookmarks and scraps of notepaper Fi doubted anyone could find what they’d marked.

The Lord of the Butterflies and Aurora sat on the floor, poring over a line of glowing runes that seemed to be shimmering on the surface of the stones.

The Lord of the Butterflies had his hair pulled back into a half ponytail, the rest of his long brown locks spilling over his neck and into the folds of his sea-green robes. Beside him, Aurora chewed thoughtfully on the tip of a quill. She was wearing a fine red velvet dress with sweeping sleeves, but she’d pushed them back to her elbows, straggles of her golden hair escaping from a messy bun. She had kicked off her boots and left them in a pile in the doorway, her crown with its gleaming ruby rose carelessly tossed onto a heap of cloaks.

Fi swallowed. They didn’t look regal or imposing. They looked . . .

Happy.

“Are you feeling any of this, dear?” Aurora asked, and Fi’s eyes were drawn to the last figure in the room.

It was the Spindle Witch, but not as Fi had ever seen her. The girl sat in the wide window with her long golden braid dangling over the sill. At Aurora’s question, she lifted her head and reached dutifully out the window.

Her body jerked unnaturally, her fingers curling and flinching away as though she’d been pulled back by some invisible force. The runes beneath Aurora and the Lord of the Butterflies flashed at the same moment, a pulse running through them like a ripple across glassy water. Now that Fi was looking, she could see the runes weren’t so much a language as a spiderweb of crisscrossing threads and whorls.

The phantom voice filled Fi’s ears again. An ancient and powerful enchantment ran through the entire tower, imprisoning the Witch and her magic forever. It stood unbroken for centuries . . . until we came along.

Fi shivered, watching Aurora and the Lord of the Butterflies pulling and tugging on the lines of the spell. Sometimes the girl’s body jerked in response, her head snapping like a puppet’s.

She paid them no mind, all her attention focused on something in her lap. Her fingers flashed with gold as she tied it together with strands of her hair. Fi wasn’t sure if the uneasy feeling rising through her was Aurora’s or her own, but all she could do was watch.

In the folds of the young Spindle Witch’s skirt lay a dead crow. Part of it was still covered in a tatter of black feathers, and part had been picked down to the bone. Both eyes were gone, and one foot was mangled and gnarled. Still, the Witch worked over it tirelessly, knotting each broken bone back together. When she was finished, she slipped down from the windowsill and set the corpse on the floor, sitting back on her heels.

Fi couldn’t tear her eyes away. Brows knit in concentration, the Spindle Witch lifted one hand and then pulled, as if on an invisible thread. The bird twitched, one glossy wing quivering.

The Spindle Witch yanked again, harder. The crow let out a harsh squawk, hopping on its gnarled foot as it was dragged back to life. Black feathers drifted onto the girl’s skirt as it flapped its mutilated wings.

“Stop that,” Aurora warned, her voice sharp.

The Spindle Witch ignored her, cooing and coaxing the bird toward her. It hopped once. Twice.

Aurora’s finger flashed with light. She brought it down quick, snapping the golden threads of hair that held the bird together. It collapsed into a pile of feathers and brittle bones.

“Ow!” the Spindle Witch cried, jerking back as though she’d been singed. “That hurt,” she hissed, wrapping an arm around her waist.

The Lord of the Butterflies chuckled. “I’ve warned you many times, little spider. You have to learn to sever that magic from yourself before you use it, or whatever happens to that magic happens to you. Knots, twists, braids—tie it off. Otherwise, it’s still connected to you. And a clever Witch like Aurora can use that to hurt you and teach you a lesson.”

The Spindle Witch shot Aurora a venomous look, yanking more threads of gold from her hair. She stretched them between her fingers, tying a series of messy, ugly knots as she bent to repair the bird.

Aurora sighed, rubbing her temples. “You shouldn’t encourage her like that.”

The Lord of the Butterflies smiled, enigmatic. “I’m a teacher, Aurora. It’s what I do.”

The crow flapped to life again, hopping desperately across the threadbare rug. The Spindle Witch held out a hand, but the skeletal creature tried to take to the air, flapping unevenly. The Lord of the Butterflies rose and snatched it in one hand.

“Better,” the man praised. “But there’s another lesson here. Your hair is a powerful conductor of your magic, a medium like no other—but it is still a part of you. Like an offering of blood, it is a conduit through which magic can flow both ways.” He gestured to the broken pieces of hair on the floor, the ones Aurora had snapped. “Once you’ve severed it, it’s no longer part of you. That protects you. But you don’t exactly have control of it anymore, either.”

The bird in his hand struggled, driving its razor beak into the hand that squeezed it.

The Spindle Witch’s eyes were bright with awe. “Like you and your mirrors,” she said.

“Precisely,” the man agreed. “That is why they are free to do as they choose and we don’t always agree anymore. To give something its own magic is, in essence, to give it life.”

The Lord of the Butterflies let go of the patchwork bird. The creature screeched and dove for the window. The bones sticking out of its wing caught the sill, and it unraveled before it even hit the ground.

“It’s not true life, though.” Aurora scooped the bird gently into her hands, straightening out the bent body. “It’s a facsimile at best.”

The Lord of the Butterflies clicked his tongue in disappointment. “Oh, Aurora. Who are we to decide what true life is?”

The man’s eyes were fixed on the Spindle Witch as he said it. The gleam there reminded Fi of the man who’d written the letters she found in Everlynd’s library—the Witch who had excavated the deepest places of the earth in his pursuit of magical knowledge, who had severed an entire family line from magic forever just to see if he could. A man who knew no boundaries.

Aurora’s eyes had turned hard. “Why don’t you wrap this up, and I’ll bury it for you,” she suggested, handing the crow’s corpse to the Spindle Witch. The girl hurried away, fondly smoothing the short contour feathers around its rotted head.

Aurora swung her cloak onto her shoulders.

“I have to get back to Leonesse,” she told the Lord of the Butterflies as she stepped into her boots. “The lords of the council are in an uproar again. But I’ll try to make time to come back soon.”

“You won’t be missed,” the man informed her coldly. “In fact, you’ve wasted so much of your time and talent trying to keep hold of this”—he held out her crown, the winking circlet dangling from the end of his finger—“I hardly recognize you as my assistant. Let alone my best student.”

Aurora ignored the barb. Still, she hesitated as she reached for the crown. “I’ve begun to have doubts about her,” she whispered, glancing over his shoulder to the girl spreading the crow out on her vanity, humming as she wrapped the dead bird in pale blue cloth. “That magic she uses . . .”

“It’s magnificent,” the Lord of the Butterflies said, his lips curled into a sharp smile. “In fact, she’s given me a whole new perspective. Those little threads of life our friend manipulates, the ones she says run through everything—I wonder if the same is true of magic. Witches, their spells, the objects they create—even the earth itself. If I could learn to manipulate the threads of magic the way the little spider tugs at threads of life, there would be nothing I couldn’t do.”

Aurora’s hand tightened to a fist, the crown digging into her skin. “That’s a dangerous idea. Magic should have limits. You taught me that.”

“Did I?” the Lord of the Butterflies asked airily. “Maybe I was thinking too small.”

The memory ended there. White light fuzzed at the corner of Fi’s vision, the images fading into the soft glow. But beyond her, somewhere inside Aurora, she knew there was more. An argument and a battle of iron wills. The creation of the Siphoning Spells, and the breaking of a dear and trusted friendship. But that moment—that had been the crack opening between them that yawned into a chasm.

Fi thought of the letters she’d found in the library of Everlynd. The veiled messages the Lord of the Butterflies had sent to Aurora as he detailed his twisted experiments and his admiration for the little spider—each letter more contemptuous and spiteful than the last. Why had Aurora shown her this particular memory? So she would know how dangerous the Spindle Witch was? Or was it the Lord of the Butterflies she was warning Fi about?

Fi almost toppled over as she found herself thrust back into her own body. The last of the light left her in a blinding flash. For just one moment, she thought she could see Aurora herself, more beautiful than she had been in any statue or picture book illumination, smiling with a spark of magic in her crystal-blue eyes. She reached out soft hands, laying them on either side of Fi’s face.

You are worthy, Aurora whispered.

Then Fi blinked, and Aurora was gone, and so was the lid of the coffin. The vines had returned to the walls, just stone carvings once more. Fi’s legs felt a little wobbly.

Shane grabbed her by the shoulders, less to hold her up than to shake her. “Are you okay? What was that?” she asked, clearly unnerved.

“Aurora,” Fi said, barely a whisper. “And I think we’ve been invited to enter her real tomb.”

With the lid gone, the coffin revealed not a body, but a set of stairs leading down, farther into the mountain.

“After you,” Shane muttered.

Fi nodded, slipping over the edge of the coffin and leading the way down the stairs. She didn’t know what Aurora had hoped she’d understand from the memory, but she’d have to ponder it later. She had a feeling she and Shane had almost reached the end of the tomb . . . and their briefly rekindled partnership.