The moth fluttered into the carriage like a shred of night. Absurd, how her sister dressed them in red. Black was so much more appropriate for the souls of men who’d chosen this shadow of an existence in the name of love. The Dark One wondered who this one had once been. There were so many who’d drowned themselves for her and her sisters in village ponds or castle fountains. It seemed only just that she was now feeling the same pain she’d inflicted so often. Just…The Dark One wasn’t sure she’d ever used that word before.
Pain bore interesting fruit.
Just like love.
Why did she still need to know what had become of the infant? She wanted to swat the moth away, since it might be bringing her images of the boy. She’d visited the baby a few times in secret, at night, when only the wet nurse was sleeping next to the crib. She’d gently pushed her finger into the tiny fists, and she’d touched his brow to give him the protection of her magic. And she’d been scared of what moved inside her. It would stop as soon as she severed the bond connecting her to the father. Wouldn’t it?
The Dark One caught the moth, and the images came.
A river surrounded by steep and densely wooded slopes. A building, big, old, with whitewashed walls. The Fairy heard the chime of a bell. And the cry of a child. She heard it so clearly, as if it were calling her. A woman stepped out of the gate in front of the building. She was wearing the black habit of a nun. A convent? In contrast to her mother, Amalie despised churches. Therese of Austry still prostrated herself every morning in the underground cell where the Goyl were keeping her prisoner. She worshipped her god like she treated her servants: “Look, I am lighting candles for you. Protect me. Grant all my wishes. Destroy my enemies.” Why a convent? Maybe because of the superstition that Fairies dissolved into water if they ever crossed the threshold of a church. Had Amalie forgotten that a Fairy had attended her wedding in the cathedral?
The building had many windows, but the moth took the Fairy to the one from where the cries were coming. And there was the infant. Wrapped in layers of pale blue cloth and white lace, he was barely visible in the arms of the young nun. But the tiny hand grabbing the black habit was the pale color of red moonstone.
Though dawn was still hours away, the Dark One had Chithira stop the carriage. She didn’t want to feel what she was feeling. Relief, as though she’d recovered a piece of herself.
She stepped down from the carriage. The countryside around her was very different from the wooded riverbank she’d just seen through the moth. Lotharaine? No. The convents there looked different.
She was still holding the moth between her hands. What should she do? She’d kept that child alive. She owed him her protection, even if what she felt for him scared her.
She let the moth fly.
She told it to find Kami’en and to show him the images she’d just seen. He loved the child. He loved him so much. He would find him.
The night was lit brightly by the two moons. They both hung in the sky so large they looked as though they might descend to earth at any moment. Donnersmarck was looking up at them. He’s getting stronger, his eyes said when they met hers. Please! Protect me! She should’ve also protected the child that lived only through her. Instead, she’d sat in a glass cage and bemoaned her lost love.
Should she tell Donnersmarck that nothing he’d learned as a soldier was going to help him in this fight with the stag, nothing he knew about himself or this world? He probably sensed it. His fear looked so alien on his face, as alien as what was stirring inside him.
She went to his horse, took the reins, and looked up at him.
“What exactly are you afraid of?” she asked. “That he’ll make you forget who you are? And? Look at your memories. Most of them are of pain, struggle, fear. He won’t take your joy or your love or your strength. He won’t let you forget to eat, sleep, or breathe. True, he knows nothing of yesterday or tomorrow, but might that not be a good thing? You’ll see, he knows much more about the now.”
Donnersmarck didn’t understand what she was saying, but soon he would.
“Stay with him,” she said to Chithira. The dead, she’d learned, knew much more about this world than the living.
Donnersmarck peered after her as she stepped into the night.
If she wanted to find the strength they all needed of her, she would have to be alone. The wide countryside around her seemed to know nothing of time. It made her feel young again. And the Dark Fairy let herself grow until she could feel the clouds in her hair. For far too long she’d made herself small, made herself fit into their world.