Twenty-Two: Ceration

I fled to the square, to the small spirit house of cedar and birch. Flickering candles surrounded the wooden structure, and between the candles and the house lay hundreds of dried flower petals in orange, yellow, and red.

I wanted to kick the petals, step on the candles, light the flowers on fire, and burn the house to tar and ash. I needed to destroy something, and not just for the pleasure of breaking. Wood could be distilled to tar. Honey to mead. Iron to gold, with transmutational alchemy. Why was I so different? Why couldn’t I be changed as easily into a form that truly represented who I was? If I burned this spirit house to ash, no one would still call it a house. No one looked at a sequoia and saw only the seed it came from. One admired marquetry for its beauty of form, not the component pieces, or the trees it had been. Why? Why why why couldn’t the same happen to me?! Why did the parts of me, the parts that meant female, have to be used in my definition?

I fell to my knees, knocking over a candle. I didn’t bother to pick it up, and the flame quickly extinguished. My throat prickled. My chest hurt. I dropped my head forward, and my wet hair fell into my eyes, and I let it hang there. Maybe it was time to pick between two ends: male or female, magical alchemy or woodcutting. Why try to make something new? That would make things easier, surely, and then maybe, with Magda…

Again, I saw the change in her eyes when she looked at me, and again, an anvil fell on my chest. But this was my fault, wasn’t it? I’d put off the conversation. I had avoided every opportunity to discuss who I was. I had thought…I had thought she might come to understand, intuitively, that I wasn’t male or female, but another option entirely. That I was a part of both worlds, but somehow also removed from them. That there was something else to me. I had thought her feelings for me would be enough to glean understanding.

I pushed my palm into the stony dirt. I was so tired of the questioning, so tired of having to explain. I had thought I was enough. I had wanted to be enough, for her, and I felt crushed under the weight of knowing that somehow, I had come up short.

A hand smoothed across my neck at the exposed skin there, the fingers warm, calloused, and intimate. I shrugged my shoulders and leaned away.

“I’m not ready to talk about this, Magda. Tomorrow, or the day after.” I wiped at my eyes with the back of my hand, embarrassed and upset that she’d followed me. I didn’t want her to see me like this. She hadn’t earned the right to see me like this.

“I’m not pleased to see you crying, Sorin. Especially with the royal daughter’s name in your mouth.”

My emotions stopped. My heart stopped, although I knew it had to still be beating. That was Mother’s voice. The deepness and disdain mixed so perfectly together into the familiar. I cried out in surprise and sprang to my feet, pivoting around.

It was Amada the master woodcutter. Grandmaster woodcutter, I corrected myself. She wore loose-fitting brown cotton pants and shirt, with a purple wool cloak around her shoulders. Her boots were still the same leather pair she’d had in Thuja, but they were well worn and muddy. Under the gibbous moon, I could make out the familiar cleft to her chin, the shape of her jaw, the tight pull of her hair back into a tail. Her woodcutting tattoo was prominent as well—distinct and without a halo. She was neither conjuring nor imagined. We were reunited, and my heart leapt. I had found her! Or, perhaps, she had found me?

“Mother!”

She smiled at me, and it held the warmth of my childhood bound with the more rational thoughts that wondered about her calmness, and Sameer’s predictions, and that she was here, alone, near a magical glacier and the pivotal treaty talks.

“You shouldn’t have come, Sorin. You need to leave. Now.”

“Leave?” I stood and brushed petals from my pants. “I’ve only just found you. Mother, where have you been? Do you remember woodcutting? Are you afflicted with the same thing as the rest of the guilders?”

Mother sighed. “Come with me. There’s a trail I can put you on that will keep you off the glacier and get you back to Thuja that much faster.” She offered me her hand, and I instinctively reached for it with my right. I touched my fingertips to her palm, wincing at the pain. Mother noticed, grasped them, and raised my bound hand toward her face. “Damn it, why hasn’t this been attended?”

I was surprised at the bite in her words. “Because I’ve been on a glacier, and because we arrived here at night, and because it’s tii.” I pulled my hand from her grasp, ignoring the pain that followed. “My hand isn’t important. I was worried about you.”

I hadn’t expected some overly indulgent embrace, but neither had I expected this brashness. Mother was never affectionate, but she was also never dismissive. I was old enough to take care of myself, and to journey with the royal daughter if I so chose. Her words flustered me and were far too reminiscent of the voice on the glacier, and of Sameer’s warning. Still, I wasn’t going anywhere, especially not without her.

“Mother, where have you been?”

“I was detained.”

“Witches?” I asked. I had to know because all I could hear was Sameer in my head. Baiting me. Warning me. His words battled with memories of Mother, of her hatred of witches, of her dismissal of magic. She couldn’t be a witch. She couldn’t.

Mother stared at me, then, a frown pulling at her mouth. Her hand fell away, and she tilted her head—like she was seeing me for the first time.

“Sorin, you have to go home. Now.”

“No!” If both my hands had worked, I’d have crossed my arms. As it was, the best pose I could manage was one balled fist. “The grandmaster woodcutter is dead, and grandmasters from across the guilds are missing. There are factories, Mother. Factories in Miantri, and on the glacier. The guilds are dying. Guilders are dying on the glacier. They’re losing their memories and skills, just like in the king’s time. It’s not safe here. You need to come with me, to Magda. With you, at least, she has the woodcutter’s guild. She can save at least part of Sorpsi at the talks, and then we can try to sort out what is going on.”

Mother squeezed her eyes shut and let her head fall back. “Damn it, Sorin,” she muttered. “Damn it damn it damn it.”

“Mother, would you please just—”

Mother’s hands moved then, fluid like water but with a speed I’d never seen before. She muttered words I couldn’t hear, and heat descended, first around my ears, then to my neck and shoulders. Sweat erupted across my brow. The candles extinguished, and the flower petals lifted despite the stillness of the air. I batted at them in confusion. Witches? Here? Where? I looked about the square, but I could see only Mother and myself. What was she doing? Some type of witch defense?

Calm down, Sorin, or you’ll end up with a nasty headache.

Had I heard the voice out loud, or had it been in my head? I couldn’t tell, but it was Mother’s voice, so surely that meant she had spoken. Mother was no witch. “Mother, what—”

It’s time to take a rest.

The light from the moon waned as the edges of my vision fuzzed. I tried to speak again, but the heat scalded my tongue and held it prisoner while petals clung to my clothes and skin.

Just lie down.

I clawed at the swirling petals, frantic to clear my vision, but everything before me spotted into drops of moonlight. I fell onto my side on a bed of petals, surrounded by the remains of white candles. Every intake of air coated my throat in stinging dryness, and my eyelids felt like sandpaper. I tried to stand, to speak, to beg for an explanation, but my vision turned black. Finally, I gave into the pressure on my mind telling me to relax. To follow. That I was going home.

*

“Do it again,” Mother said with that infuriating calm she always had when we argued. She pointed to a perfectly fine spot on the wood floor where the fresh finish gleamed. “Do it right this time.”

I clenched my jaw. “If I can redo it to your specifications by tonight, could I meet up with Magda tomorrow? She said Master Rahad would give me a tour of his laboratory, a real tour, and I—”

Mother stepped past me without speaking, into the forest.

“Mother!” I called out after her. “Mother, I haven’t seen Magda in months. Mother, why are you keeping me here?”

“Mother?”

“Mother!”

I awoke, naked, atop a pile of wool blankets in the middle of a fairy ring. Snow coated the branches of the ash and fir forest around me, yet inside the circle, it was warm and the ground clear.

“Hello?” I called out as I tried to shake the dream from my mind. That wasn’t one of my better memories of growing up, and I had no desire for it to linger. “Mother?”

I stood, wrapped one of the blankets around my body, and walked the perimeter of the ring. The fungi were strange and not a type I had seen before—candlestick-shaped and branched, almost like antlers at their top. They glowed, too, the faint green of foxfire, despite the daylight.

That spoke of magic, and I frowned and dug my fingers into the wool. The rough fabric scratched my palms, and when I pulled my hands back, I startled enough to drop the blanket.

My right hand was no longer bound. It was healed. Whole. I gave an experimental kick to my legs. My hips no longer popped, and not even the scabs from my wounds from Thuja were still present.

“Mother?” I called out tentatively. It was one thing to enchant foxfire. To repair muscle was…extraordinary, and unwanted. I ran my hands over the unblemished skin. I’d earned no scars from this. Magic had taken them away, it seemed, this chance to look older and more experienced. I gathered the fallen blanket, sat back on the pile, rammed my fist into the dry ground, then spat.

“Mother? Whoever did this? I didn’t ask to be healed!” I yelled into the bright morning sun. “You should have asked!”

My answer was the song of winter birds and the rustling of foragers. I clutched at my blanket and screamed, at my nudity, and the healing, and because I was tired of witches intervening in my life. I’d have rather lost my hand than this unnatural healing that left no scars. I wasn’t going to be a woodcutter or an alchemist. What did I really need a second hand for anyway? For that matter, where was I, and how far from Celtis, and where was Mother?

“Come out!” I screamed it hard enough to scratch my throat and launch myself into a coughing fit. Birds flew at my voice this time, but still no one answered me.

I muttered a string of curses I’d once heard Magda use. “Fine. Maybe I’ll crush a magical amulet and see if that gets your attention.”

Except…the amulet was in my pants pocket. Unless it had fallen out while the witch had disrobed me… I clawed frantically at my hips, then at the ground. I flung the blankets from my legs and searched through them. Nothing. I sat back down, pulled the blanket over my lap, and looked up at the canopy. Everything was gone, from the amulet to my bloody binding, to my foraging knife. What in the name of the gods was I going to do, sitting out in a forest clearing like some maiden or lost prince in a fairy tale?

Soft footsteps came up behind me. I didn’t need to turn around to know the aroma of cedar on Mother’s cloak that no laundering could remove. I clutched the blanket to my chest and turned. The air warmed as she approached, the snow melting from her footsteps until she entered the ring of dry ground where I sat. Mother had a satchel slung over one shoulder. She slid it from her arm and placed on the moss next to me.

“Some old blueberries inside. Desiccated, but nutritious anyway. Help yourself, since you’re apparently staying a while.”

“Witches, Mother.” I curled my legs up to my torso as I tried to cover myself with a blanket. Too many questions coated my tongue, mostly about how calm she was in a forest filled with witches, and magic. But only one came out. “My clothes. Mother, I’m not—”

“You’ve been out twelve hours. You’re healed. You need to eat. Your clothes were filthy. Master Walerian is conjuring you new ones, or stealing them. He wasn’t clear on which, and I don’t really care.” Mother knelt next to me and turned my head from side to side, inspecting my neck. Her fingers were as cool and rough as they had been since my earliest memories. I wanted to sink into her, to drown myself in the smell of cedar, but how could I when we were both in so much danger?

“Did you not attend the fair then, Sorin?”

Her words took me by surprise, and I blinked several times. “The…the alchemical guild fair?” She’d remembered? She’d never remembered before, which was why I’d missed the event five years in a row.

Mother smoothed a wrinkle on her shirt. “Was there another one running at the same time?”

“I—no. It was cancelled. I’d have missed it anyway.”

“Why?” She sat on a patch of moss next to me, her eyes expectant. Like she knew my answer but wanted to hear my humiliation when I spoke it.

I clutched the blankets tightly to my chest and stuttered. “I had to go looking for you. And when I arrived, the grandmasters were all missing and the fair had been shut down.” And you were missing, and I was worried about you!

Mother crossed her arms over her chest. “So you did not become an alchemical apprentice.”

That was what this was about, then. Her words had no inflection, but I could hear the statement underneath, and it varnished me in shame. I was still unguilded, and that was worse, somehow, than witches, and being in a ring of enchanted foxfire. It was an embarrassment, both to her, and to guild tradition.

“I don’t care much for alchemy anymore.” I looked intently at the moss. The words were hollow even in my own ears. The pride from the fungal pigments that had once swelled in my chest had left only a deflated, hollow space.

“So you are still considering which guild to join?”

I did catch something in her voice, that time. Something that sounded very suspiciously like excitement.

“I suppose.”

Mother’s hand stroked my shoulder, once. She again peered at my neck, then sat back. “Would you consider woodcutting then? There is a welcome place for you here.”

Her voice lilted. She was hopeful. That was almost worse than excited. “Not witchcraft? You seem…cozy with them. The witches.”

Mother laughed and didn’t take the bait. “No, Sorin, not witchcraft. You belong in woodcutting. Your skills are in woodcutting.” She took my chin in her hand and stroked the skin with her thumb. “You are a woodcutter, by birth and by skill. It’s time to join the guild, and thus gain every benefit it offers.”

There was so much warmth in her voice when she spoke of woodcutting that it momentarily filled my chest with a feeling very akin to love. I let my vision blur. Woodcutting was as good as glass or smith or carpentry. At least in this, I had a history and some skill. It mattered to Mother that I was guilded, one way or another, even if the guilds eventually disbanded. If I couldn’t have what I wanted, at least one of us would be happy, and I wanted… I did want her to be happy with me.

“It is decided then. Once Walerian is back, we can have your guild mark placed.” She scooped a small handful of wrinkled blueberries from her satchel and handed them to me. “Here. Eat.”

I took the berries and held them in my hand, letting their desiccated forms roll about my palm. “Walerian is…a witch? He healed me?” I asked, not meeting her eyes.

She evaded, as skillfully as ever. “A woodcutter can’t have just one hand, Sorin, especially not a master.”

I looked up sharply and frowned. Heir or not, that wasn’t how the guild system worked. I was surprised at her for even suggesting it. “I’m not even an apprentice. I’m not a journey. I’ve not earned a mark, much less a title.”

“A child can declare at twelve, Sorin, or after one year of service to a master. You are well past both. This mark is your birthright.”

“But what does that matter?” I dug my fingernails into the ground. “You must have seen what happened in the capital. You must have met some of the afflicted guilders. What about the machines? What about the woodcutter’s guildhall, the smiths, the textile workers—all those empty guildhalls? What about…what about Sameer?” That last part tumbled out uninvited. I mumbled then, for my throat was tightening with emotion. “You’ve got a firstborn son who wants this. A son who is already a master. If you want to carry on a dying tradition, he should be the one you guild, not me.”

Mother’s voice held a familiar cord of tried patience, though her left eyebrow arched. “The guilds aren’t lost, just changing. The guilders are changing, too, although slower than one might like. And Sameer is a textile worker, Sorin, and he is a man. He can be a master or grandmaster through skill and training, but he can never be my heir. Of my two children, you were the one fit for woodcutting. I’ve too much work invested in you, and your skill level is above my own with veneer work. Female or male, or lurking on some other axis as you do, you will inherit from me, regardless.”

Mother’s words sliced me as expertly as a fretsaw. I’d always thought her accepting of my identity, but here we were with her casual rejection of Sameer and coveting some base part of me over which I had no control. Just like Magda.

There was nothing left inside me to break.

“Is the queen dead?” I snapped. I would not fall apart in front of her. I would get the information Magda needed to save the guilds, and Sorpsi, and I would leave. There were no ties anymore, between Mother and me.

Sameer would be so proud.

Mother blinked, then laughed. It came out a thin, tinkling sound that felt at odds with the conversation. “A few days with the royal daughter has you making demands.”

“Damn it, Mother. The queen will cripple Sorpsi with her absence! Where is she?”

Her eyebrow raised. “Hardly, child. Calm down.”

I threw a rock at Mother’s midsection that she sidestepped without a second thought. She tsked, but that same damn smile stayed on her face.

“You’ve never been one for a temper, Sorin.”

I fumed. I had every right to be angry, especially considering I’d been abducted in a swirl of flower petals and was currently sitting in a ring of enchanted, false foxfire.

“I’ve been calm for too long. You’ve cost me apprenticeship after apprenticeship, and now you and the queen are, what? Lurking with witches in the northern forests? Doing…hurting, guilders?” That was a jump, perhaps, but she had to give me something, anything, before my mind spun so far I became unhinged. “You can’t just—just muddle about in state affairs like this!”

Mother shook her head. “I had thought both of us proficient at muddling about in areas we shouldn’t be. You should be at home, in Thuja, and well away from all of this business. I don’t begrudge you alchemy, Sorin; I just wish you had explored more than wood finishes. A dual affiliation could suit you.” Mother smiled, and it chilled me. “Rather, it does suit you.” She turned at a sound I did not hear and pointed.

A man approached from the north, two thick leather bags slung over his shoulders. “Get dressed. Walerian will have brought the inks. We can finish your guild mark before sundown. Tomorrow we depart. I’ll take you home myself, to ensure you don’t wander back.” Her voice had returned to that separated coolness that I loathed. I bristled, more out of habit than anything else.

I wrapped a hand around my neck, making sure to keep the blankets up around myself with the other. “I don’t want a tattoo,” I stated as Walerian dropped the bags at Mother’s feet and grunted.

Mother pulled a roll of cotton from the first bag and handed it to me. A flash of softness swept across her face before she turned away.

It was enough to steady my fingers so that the binding went on properly the first time. The other clothes were leather, and the cape and boots trimmed with a fur I didn’t recognize. Still, the thought of the tattoo ate away at all that brash confidence I’d had moments ago. “Mother, are you all right? Really?”

“Hmm?” She looked up at me finally, then wiped dirt from my pants with the back of her hand. “Yes, and so are you.” She gestured with a fragment of bone she’d pulled from one of Walerian’s satchels. “The life you want is right here. You went out looking for it, and it’s found you. Excellent work, and well worthy of a journey piece. Now sit.”

Too many years of bowing to those words and that tone froze me to the ground. The heaviness from the Thujan lake, from Magda’s eyes, and Master Rahad’s words, settled across my lungs like a wet blanket. I couldn’t sit. I couldn’t run. I could only stare at Mother, and that piece of bone.

Walerian placed the ink container on the ground and grabbed me by the arm.

“Hey!” I startled into action and yelled, images of the not-guards from Thuja slamming across my vision. Walerian’s fingers chilled my skin even through the layers of leather. I hissed at him and yanked my arm from his grasp. They couldn’t force this. There were rules.

Walerian moved to grab me again, but Mother raised her hand.

“It’s time, Sorin. No more running.” Mother tilted her head and raised her eyebrows. “You can still get an alchemist tattoo one day, should you find a suitable apprenticeship. Making one choice does not preclude you from making another, later on.”

My heart pounded. It was one betrayal after another, but this…Mother couldn’t.

She stepped toward me, and I stepped back in tandem until I backed into a jack pine. The narrow trunk dug into my back, but Mother was close enough to me now that I could smell the sawdust on her clothes. I hated the way the familiarly helped me remember to breathe, even as I thought my heart might break through my chest.

Mother stroked my cheek, the bone still in her other hand. “It shouldn’t be like this, but it is. You will need to trust me. You know yourself, but I know your skill.” Mother’s fingers trailed down to my neck and thrummed on the spot where the guild mark would be placed.

I needed to run, or scream, or stop this entire chain of events, but the pine felt too big to get around all of a sudden. Mother was a woodcutter, and a woodcutter only. She supported me. She loved me. She’d chosen me. I was her heir and…and…

The tip of the bone, now black with ink, hovered just over my skin. The wetness dripped down, cold and slimy, and made my skin crawl.

“A mark can’t be placed without consent, Sorin. You know that. You’ve earned the mark, and your place with the woodcutters.”

Again, the ink dripped onto my skin, and in the damp, I saw a future of saws and veneer, dust and glue. I saw my pigments used to dye royal crests that Magda would wear as she sat on her throne, ruling with a regent by her side—a regent with black curls and wide hips, but who wasn’t me. I saw Sameer in his textile shop, curling ribbon between a thumb and forefinger and dreaming it was veneer. I saw the factories come, the machines, and take it all away.

I didn’t want this future, not for any of us.

“Stop.”

I met Mother’s eyes. In them was a childhood of strong guidance, of directed patience, of love and partial abandonment. I saw her guide my hand as I cut my first veneer, and her strike me across the face when, in an act of defiance, I threw her favorite knife into the fireplace. That same unyielding love was on her face now.

“I don’t want it,” I whispered, finally. I moved my head, so the wrong side of my neck faced her, and felt the bone tip smear ink across my skin.

“Hold Sorin down.”

I jerked against Walerian’s hands as he pulled my arms back around the tree trunk. He held my wrists with one hand and my head with the other, forcing it back to face Mother. I pulled against him and screamed, but he had my wrists smashed into the bark.

“Stop! Please!”

Heat flared near my feet. Mother stepped away from me, leaving footprints of burnt sorrel in her wake. Desiccated leaves puffed from existence in a flash of sparks. Vines slithered from the ground, from the base of the tree, and wound around my body, cementing me to the jack pine.

Mother smiled but did not speak, and in her smile, I saw no warmth.

And it had been warm when she’d found me last night, though we were in the middle of winter.

It had been warm, and petals had floated in the air, and I had fallen to unconsciousness at her unspoken words.

She had been alone and unharmed despite being sought by witches.

And the sorrel burned at her feet.

And her voice called from my memory, telling me to stay away from unbound guilds. I remembered her warnings. That if I left Thuja, a witch might find me and take all my extraction knowledge and the guild secrets she’d trusted me with. I remembered her chilling words. “There are witches everywhere, Sorin,” she’d whispered into my hair. “They are everywhere, and they don’t need to impale you with a magic sword to take your skills. Not anymore.”

Gods, I was an idiot. A sheltered, unguilded moron.

I pulled against the vines, against Walerian’s hands. I screamed. “NO!” It was a plea—a childish, desperate plea—to the woman who had sheltered me, taught me, cherished me when I hadn’t been a girl. It wasn’t a plea for a witch.

“Calm down,” Walerian said.

A shiver coursed down my body. It was the voice from the glacier. The voice from the guildhall. I froze like a hare. My witch tormentor was here, now, and he worked with Mother! Betrayal intertwined with confusion. She’d worked so hard to keep me away, just to end up here? Forcing a tattoo for a guild I’d never wanted? It didn’t make any sense!

“Sorin has not consented,” Walerian said gruffly.

Mother met my eyes. We stayed locked together for several long breaths. She’d had him follow me the whole way here. She’d tried to send me back, but even then, we’d have ended up in this place, Mother and I. There was a stifling inevitability to this moment, bred from being her heir. I could run, or reject the mark outright, but I could see in her eyes that she would follow me, witch or not, and she would keep asking until my answer was yes.

I let my head drop forward.

“All right.”

The vines fell away.

“Steady now, Sorin.” Walerian’s grip tightened on my wrists, and his other hand forced my head back against the trunk. The bone, when it pierced my skin, felt like the nails from our roof as they rained down upon me, except there were thousands of them now, and they would not relent. I swallowed screams, and pleading, and I yelled at myself to stay still, to not toss my head and pull at Walerian’s hands. A poorly done guild tattoo was grounds for execution under suspicion of forgery, so I forced the shaking from my body and thought of being at home, or at the alchemist’s fair, or back in bed with Magda and her bluntness.

“Halfway done now, Sorin. Just a bit more.” Wetness dripped down my skin and stained the white leather on my shoulder. I pressed my back into the tree bark. I wanted to draw blood there to rival the pain in my neck. When that didn’t work, I tried to imagine what my life would be like after this. What would it be like to enter a guildhall with my mark? Would eyes fall on my neck and smiles return, instead of frowns? Would there be warm greetings and invitations to join tables, instead of aloofness and fear?

I searched for some joy in the images but came up empty no matter how I brought them together. What should have been a mark of pride, earned and submitted to willingly, instead corrupted and tainted my flesh. Each prick felt like a deep stain that even a solvent could not remove.

“It’s done.” Walerian released me as Mother pulled back. She tossed the bone and the ink tray to the ground, where the black spread across the snow. I took a step from the tree and prodded the swollen area of my neck with two fingertips, wincing at the pain. When I brought my hand down, it was stained black and red, the colors swirling into teardrops.

“It hurts,” I managed. They were a child’s words, but what else was there to say? It felt almost like a burn, the skin around the area raised and too warm despite the temperature. It throbbed, it seared, both on my skin and deep inside me, but saying as much would not change its presence on my throat.

“Take care to let it scab over properly, and let the scabs come off on their own,” Mother instructed as she cleaned her hands in the snow. “Otherwise, we shall have to do it again.”

She stood back up and pointed west, farther into the woods. The sun had fallen beneath the canopy, and the forest beyond loomed dark. “We’re less than a kilometer from my camp. We will spend the night there, and you can meet the queen. Tell her about Magda if you like. Show her your tattoo. Tomorrow, we will return home.”

Walerian held out his right hand. The snow around his boots melted, and the bite to the air fell away. “Follow me,” he said as he turned and headed farther into the forest.

Mother hesitated before following. There was no joy on her face, but pride crackled all around her. I wanted to capture it for my own, for her pride in me was seldom so visible, but my mouth tasted like ash and my stomach clenched into cramps.

“Sorin?” she asked. “It’s just a tattoo. The discomfort will soon fade. I’m… It was the right thing to do, for you.”

“I came here to find you and bring you home.”

Mother nodded and gave a terse smile. “And you have. Well done. If the pain in your neck becomes troublesome, you can think about how we can best rebuild the house. Walerian and I had…a discussion about his men’s tactics in trying to find me, so I do apologize for that. Come. It’s time to see the queen.”

She held out her hand to me. When I still didn’t come forward, she stepped in and wrapped an arm around my shoulder. I closed my eyes, unable to move. The queen. I didn’t care. All I could think about was the throbbing of my neck, and the woodcutting tattoo, and that it was over. Everything was over.

My choice had been made.