Making sure that the guards were still occupied and that the Grandmaster remained in her wooden chair chatting with one of the brides, Daisy and I sneaked out of the night market and made our way back up the city silently. We didn’t share words, and I really wasn’t sure what we could say to each other now, anyway.
Daisy said she was sure the crown was still in the Grandmaster’s study. There would probably be some guards to take care of once we got to the castle, but I figured I could deal with them.
We underestimated how difficult it would be to climb back up the stairway we had come down earlier, though, and by the top I was practically crawling. I wanted to sink down into a puddle and not move for days. Daisy leaned against a wall, trying to catch her breath. At the top, there was a small courtyard that led to the front doors of the fortress, where we’d left from, and Daisy said she knew how to get in.
There were no guards at the front. I hoped that meant we’d just gotten lucky. Daisy must have felt the same, and we slipped through the front door and into the foyer. The layout of the fortress was rather straightforward—with a grand entry hall and stairs leading up to the Grandmaster’s offices. There were halls that branched out to the east and west, one way the kitchen, the other our own rooms. The great hall was dark, though, the candles burning low in their sconces.
Daisy and I were sneaking up the main staircase when we heard footsteps. We quickly ducked behind a pillar as a guard stepped out of the Grandmaster’s office, face shadowed, as he tucked something into his uniform and quickly pressed on down the stairs.
That was much too close for comfort. We slipped through the curtain and into the room after him.
The Grandmaster’s office was a simple large stone room with an intricate wooden desk in the middle that was covered with stacks of paper. There were bookshelves that lined the back wall and a door near the rear that led into her own private quarters. The moonlight was let in through a raven-shaped skylight above us, illuminating the desk itself. As Daisy hurried over to search it, I made sure the door was closed, and I kept an ear out for footsteps. The guard who had come out must’ve been part of a patrol. Another had to be coming by at some point soon.
Daisy riffled through the drawers. “It must be here somewhere,” she muttered, digging through the papers and objects in the drawers.
A dark shape caught my eye on the ground by my foot, and I picked it up. A lavender flower. I hadn’t seen any of those in the city since I’d been here. It reminded me of a kind that, to my knowledge, only grew on the sides of the Sundermount.
Daisy closed the last drawer and cursed. “It’s not here, Fox.”
I tucked the flower into my trouser pocket and nudged my head toward the rear doors. “Let’s look back there, then.”
“She can’t have it on her, can she?”
“No. She wouldn’t be able to carry it for that long without putting it on,” I replied.
“How do you know?”
I . . . didn’t know, honestly. “It stands to reason,” I said. “You felt the temptation before you learned better. And most creatures can hear its call.”
“Wait—does that mean you can hear it?”
I cocked my head and listened in the quiet, but since being woodcursed and Daisy curing me, I hadn’t been quite my fox self. I couldn’t see the magnetic fields north anymore, either. I was sad, but not surprised, to find that I couldn’t hear the crown. I shook my head, to her dismay. “I’m sorry.”
“It must be here,” she said, moving on so that I wouldn’t feel embarrassed.
We moved toward the back of the office, where the door was left slightly ajar. Inside was the Grandmaster’s private study. I peeked my head in first.
“I feel like this is trespassing,” Daisy murmured.
“Now you’re worried?”
“I just—we aren’t supposed to be here.”
“I say she gave up her right to privacy when she took the crown from you,” I replied, irritated, and slipped inside. She followed me, wringing her hands together as if this was the first time she’d ever sneaked around—which I knew was a lie. She and Wen sneaked around all the time behind the seneschal’s back. She should be a professional by now.
In the middle of the room was a war table that showed the different areas of the wood, and what looked like the fog surrounding the city. While the Voryns were trapped here, it seemed that they did have guards whose job it was to patrol the wood to guard against any bone-eaters who might find their way through the fog to Voryn. It also showed where Aloriya and the Sundermount were. The distance didn’t seem that great when viewed on a map like this, though it had taken us four days to travel here. The walls were lined with a bunch of dusty old books I had absolutely no interest in, but something on the wall caught Daisy’s eye.
She caught me by the back of my shirt. “Fox.”
I glanced over my shoulder at her. Daisy let go of my shirt and grabbed ahold of the curtain. I thought it blocked a rather large window, but when she pulled it back, her eyes grew wide with surprise.
29
The Lies of Mount Sunder
Cerys
IT WAS A painting, stretching from one side of the study to the other. The canvas was old and sagging, and the paint had faded, but I could see the story it told, nonetheless. There was one hanging in the throne room of the castle of Aloriya, too, telling of King Sunder’s noble quest to save his people, and his triumphant return with the crown.
This painting, however, told a different story.
The Wildwood was on fire, the city of Voryn was burning, and there was a figure standing in the flames, untouched by them. Was it King Sunder? He commanded flames, like Anwen and the late prince could, like everyone else in his bloodline. And on the other side, past the razed forest, burned and blackened, animals fleeing from the destruction, was a woman. She was brilliant and golden—not like fire, but bright like the sun—and standing with her were all the old gods of the Wildwood. A brilliant stag with branching antlers, a snake as large as an old oak tree, a giant white wolf, a broad hawk bigger than any horse I’d ever seen, and more. So many different creatures, grander than the normal animals that resembled them.
The old gods.
My fingers came to rest on a gray bear in the menagerie.
“Vala,” Fox whispered.
I ran my fingers across her image. She’d stood with the Lady of the Wilds. She must have survived while the rest of them had been corrupted by the woodcurse. She had led us through the wood. She had shown us where Voryn was.
Then Fox asked, “Where’s the crown?” He scanned the portrait. “As the story goes, the Lady gave King Sunder her crown, right? Shouldn’t it be shown here?”
He was right. The crown was nowhere to be seen in this depiction of the story.
There was a sound to our left—a wet cough.
I quickly moved around to the other side of the war table and froze. The oversized piece of furniture had been hiding a guard. He was unclothed and nearly dead; he bled across the ornate rug, a gaping hole in his stomach.
From the wound spread the dark roots of the woodcurse.
I dropped to my knees beside him and began to unwind my bandage. “Hold on,” I told him. “You’ll be okay.”
“Daisy.”
“I just need to undo my bandage, Fox. Can you get an envelope cutter? Or something sharp? Maybe—”
“Daisy.” Fox put a hand on my shoulder and gripped it tightly.
I paused for a moment, then watched as the guard took one last stunted breath—and stopped. His eyes were still open, his mouth caught between one breath and the next, but he was gone. I pushed myself away.
I had never seen anyone die before.
Fox squatted down beside me and picked up a flower that lay beside the body. A lavender. He twirled it around between his fingers before he handed it to me. “There was another one inside the office door.”
My fingers were shaking as I picked the flower from him. A lavender . . . but to my knowledge, they were only found around the Sundermount. “You’ve spent more time in the wood than I have,” I said to him. “Do they even grow around here?”
“I doubt it” was his reply.
I cursed under my breath. It couldn’t be a bone-eater—we would have seen it. But . . . we had seen a guard leaving this office. And the only creature I knew of who could masquerade as a human was— “Seren.”
30
The Fool and the Fall
Fox
“YOU TAKE THE east wing, I’ll take the west!” I told Daisy as we raced out of the Grandmaster’s office and down the stairs, looking for any sign of where Seren had gone. She nodded and quickly disappeared down the east wing hallway. I didn’t have time to worry whether she’d be safe or not. I didn’t have time to worry whether I would.
If only I’d killed that bastard back in the wood when I had the chance. I should have. Why hadn’t I? That was a question I still didn’t know the answer to. There were more questions than answers the longer I stayed a human, and the longer I stayed human the more of myself I forgot. I couldn’t even sense the crown any longer, or else I would’ve sensed it on Seren when he passed us on the way out of the Grandmaster’s office. I couldn’t even smell him anymore.
I checked every room—the kitchens, the larder, the weapons room, on and on into the west wing. The few guards I did find were hidden behind corners or underneath tables. They weren’t dead at all—they were playing card games, sitting on the job. They glanced up when I passed them, asking what I was doing here.
“Exploring,” I lied, and hurried on before they could abandon their card games and come after me.
I hoped I would find that walking carrier of death before Daisy did.
The west wing finally ended at the rampart overlooking the city, and out beyond it were the Wilds, and the mountains in the distance. To catch my breath, I leaned against the rampart. It faced the dark wood, and it beckoned like little else could. The wood was vast and terrifying, and there were no walls or fences or gates. It was wide and wild. If it had been a day—a week before, I would’ve dived into that forest. I would’ve run and never looked back, shoving the memories of the crown, and the ancients, and this city into some forgotten recess of my mind—the food, and the language, and the warmth of Daisy’s fingers laced through mine as we danced, the sound of her laughter, how she looked up at me with her ever-changing hazel eyes. And the look in that guard’s eyes as he died.