by Bree Barton
“Mumma, please.” Shay had tears in her eyes. “Please don’t do this.”
“Out,” Celeste ordered. “Now.”
For one tense moment, everyone was rooted in place. Pilar on the mat, Stone off to the side, Shay and Celeste locked in a standoff, staring each other down.
Celeste won. Pilar had a feeling she always did. Shay said nothing. Just stomped out of the Gymnasia.
Once she was gone, Celeste softened. She fixed her blue eyes on Pilar. Shay’s eyes.
“Please understand. I’m not trying to be harsh. It’s just that there are healthier ways to heal.”
She brightened suddenly.
“Now that I think of it, I haven’t seen you at the circle. I’m leading a session this afternoon. Why don’t you join us?”
Pilar cracked her neck.
“Why would I do that?”
“Because if you are going to be a part of this community, Pilar, you should try actually being a part of it.”
Pilar unwrapped her hands, taking her sweet time. Tilted her fists frontward, then backward, then in circles. Stretched the muscles in her wrists.
This wasn’t about Celeste. To go to the circle was to get comfortable.
She didn’t want to get comfortable.
“If you come,” Celeste said, “perhaps we can discuss a way to keep the Gymnasia open.”
Pilar was about to tell Celeste to go dangle her carrots elsewhere when Stone said, “Please.”
He was looking at her, not Celeste.
“Please do it, Pil. Sparring has made me happier than I’ve been in . . . I can’t even remember. I don’t want to give that up.” He took a breath. “I’ll come to the circle, too, if that makes a difference. So you won’t be alone.”
Pilar could feel herself caving. Stone looked so expectant. So trusting.
“Fine.” She turned back to Celeste. “Just this once. But you better not sit my ass on a cushion and make me chant.”
Celeste smiled serenely. “See you there.”
Pilar sat her ass on a cushion, chanting.
More of a hum, really. Not that that made it better.
She’d come to the Manjala two minutes late to find ten black cushions arranged in a circle, graced by ten asses. One of those asses belonged to Stone. Another to Mia Rose.
For some reason, Rose being there made it that much worse.
“Kaara akutha!” Celeste beamed. “Welcome to the circle. Can everyone please make room?”
A bald man gave Pilar his cushion and went to get another for himself.
“Now let your eyes lightly close,” Celeste instructed, once they were situated. “We always start the circle by lighting the candle to anoint the sacred space. Take a deep, cleansing breath. Stay with your nostrils. Be with your nostrils.”
Pilar, who had never given a single thought to her nostrils, kept her eyes open. She watched Celeste light the candle.
“Now together we will make the sacred sound.”
Like clockwork, everyone opened their mouths and let out the strangest sound Pilar had ever heard. Half dying animal, half mating call. She stifled a laugh.
Across the circle, Stone opened his eyes and shot her a pleading look.
Please.
Fine. She opened her mouth. Made the sound. Like eating a hummingbird that got stuck in your throat.
Pilar thought she’d do it once and that’d be it. But people kept sucking in more air for another round. Over. And over. The room was alive with dying hummingbirds.
“This can all feel very new and uncomfortable,” Celeste cooed. “I urge our newer residents to relax into what their conscious mind may not understand. Our job is to be empty vessels and let the kosmos, in its infinite wisdom, provide.”
Pilar closed her eyes to see if it was less strange. No. Stranger. She could feel the vibrations knocking things loose in her head.
She felt someone watching her. Looked up, expecting to see Stone. But everyone’s eyes were closed.
Except Celeste’s.
“There is great healing to be found in this community,” she said smoothly. “But some of us fight it. Can you imagine? The kosmos offers us infinite abundance, yet we fall back on our bad habits and behaviors. We retreat into our wounded selves. In so doing, we drag others down, especially younger souls who look up to us. We thrive on their adoration because it feeds our insatiable need to be loved. Today I invite you to ask yourself: Are you hungry for connection? Or are you hungry for attention?”
Pilar’s mouth went chalk dry.
She wasn’t in the House of Shadows anymore. She was back on Refúj, in the circle of Dujia. Morígna’s words piercing her heart.
Starved for attention.
Her shame burned a hole in her chest.
She was on her feet before she knew it. Bolting for the door.
“Pilar! Wait.”
She didn’t look back. She was halfway down the turquoise hall. After that, peach, then green, then yellow: the path out of the House.
“Please!” a voice called after her. Mia’s.
You didn’t deserve what happened. It wasn’t your fault.
Was Mia saying the words now, or were they only in her head? Pilar could feel her feet slowing. She must’ve stopped running, because suddenly Mia was by her side.
“What happened in there, Pilar? Are you all right?”
“What happened?” She pointed back at the Manjala. “That little show was for me. She only wanted me to come to her precious circle for a public shaming.”
“I don’t think that was her intention. Celeste can be a little much sometimes, but she’s the Keeper. She was trying to offer you a place in the community. That’s her job.”
Pilar’s laugh could have cut glass.
“Do you know what it’s like to have a community, Rose? To have your sisters stab you in the back?”
“I know a little, considering my little sister wanted me dead.” She hesitated. “Both sisters, actually.”
Pilar stood there, fuming. She couldn’t argue.
“But I know it’s not the same,” Mia added quickly. “I saw what Morígna said to the Dujia, and what your mother said to you. I’m so sorry. What they did was—”
“You saw pathetic little slivers. Everyone looked at me like I was a lying slut. Everyone.”
“But you’re not. There’s nothing you could ever do that would have made it your fault.” Her gray eyes softened. “They were wrong, Pilar. Not you.”
Pilar clenched her fists. Unclenched them. Tears welled in her throat. She wanted to believe this. Needed to believe it.
She choked the tears back down.
“‘Be with your nostrils’?” She coughed. “Look me in the eye and tell me that isn’t a heaping pile of swan shit.”
Mia’s face was perfectly still. Then the faintest smile crept into her eyes.
“Perhaps a small pellet of swan shit,” she allowed.
They held each other’s gaze. Pilar wanted to laugh. Wanted to cry.
Mia cleared her throat. “How about we go to the Swallow and get lunch? I have no idea what you’ve been up to, or how you’re feeling about the House. And, well, you are my sister, even if it’s been a rather rocky road. We haven’t talked in days. I’d . . . I’d really like to.”
Mia exhaled. Only then did Pilar realize she’d been holding her breath.
“You’re the only family I’ve got left, Pil. Surely that’s worth fighting for.”
Rose was being gentle. Kind. Pilar could feel herself leaning toward Mia, wanting to tell her how Stone had all but perfected his right hook, how Shay had surprised her in the best possible way. She could feel the words on the tip of her tongue, everything she’d been thinking and feeling. The things about the House she hated, and the things she loved.
It terrified her.
“I want to be alone,” Pilar said, turning on her heel.
Today’s the day, she thought. Today’s the day I leave.
In the Gymnasia, she pu
nched a sandbag until her knuckles bled.
Chapter 20
An Impossible Life
“MIA, SOMETHING’S HAPPENED.”
Mia stood in the Shadowess’s doorway. She’d arrived early for their session—she liked watching the fish swim through the walls, especially now that she’d been spending more time in the Curatorium, helping Lord Shadowess and the other Curateurs tend to the animals. She was excited to tell Muri everything she was learning: how she now took the melonfish notebook with her every day, jotting down notes and making anatomical sketches of the different creatures under her care. In the Curatorium, her healing gifts were not only welcomed, but admired.
Instead she found the door to the Shadowess’s working chambers ajar as Muri sorted frantically through parchments, wire spectacles at risk of sliding off her nose.
“I’ll have to cancel today’s session. I apologize.”
Mia’s heart sank. She didn’t only want to share her progress in the Curatorium. She wanted to tell Muri she had once again offered an olive branch to Pilar, and had it once again rejected. The only family she had left wanted nothing to do with her.
“Maybe tomorrow?” Muri offered. “Or the following morning? I can’t quite predict my schedule at the moment.”
She’d never seen the Shadowess so flustered. “Is everything all right?”
“Everything’s fine. We’ve had some unexpected visitors arrive from the snow kingdom.”
Muri paused. Mia sensed she was choosing her words carefully.
“I want to be transparent with you. The visitors are Queen Freyja of Luumia and her lady.”
Mia’s heart stopped.
Her mother.
Impossible. It couldn’t be. She gaped at the Shadowess, trying to process what she’d just been told.
“I’m sure you have questions,” said Muri.
“My mother is alive?”
“Yes. They both survived the avalanche. Apparently there were more survivors than we thought, which is good news. Freyja and Wynna have journeyed a long way to the House of Shadows.”
“For me?” Mia’s voice was painfully small. “Did my mother come for me?”
Muri’s eyes shone with compassion.
“I don’t know, Mia. I wish I did.”
Mia was reeling, her thoughts racing too quickly to hold on to. Breathe, she told herself, reaching instinctively into her pocket, where the bloodbloom charm was waiting. She marshaled all the Shadowess’s training, calling on the breath work they’d done together.
But her breaths remained shallow. Sharp.
The little tree did not bloom.
“You don’t have to see her, Mia. It’s entirely up to you. You’ve been doing so much good work here. I’m proud of you. If you feel you’re not ready to have that conversation, you don’t have to. It’s your choice.”
Mia nodded, only half hearing the words. In theory she knew she could say no.
But theory was worthless in matters of the heart.
The unexpected visitors were gathered in the Swallow. The heart of the House, the place where residents and guests alike ate, talked, and laughed together. Just like our kitchen in Ilwysion, Mia thought. She conjured up the square wooden table, the simple meals of potato cakes and sweet brown mustard.
The memory ached.
Her feet slowed as she neared the Swallow. Each emotion was more unsettling than the last. For three years Mia had believed her mother dead. Then she’d found her in the snow kingdom—alive, but cold and distant, having chosen a life with Queen Freyja above all else. Then Mia had lost her again, the same night she’d lost Angelyne and Quin.
Now she and her mother were together in Pembuk. Both escaped from Luumia and, before that, from Glas Ddir. Both chasing their physical sensations, and their emotional ones, too. Both fighting so hard to feel alive.
What if her mother had come to the House as her last stop on the way to Prisma, the Isle of Forgetting? What if she and the Snow Queen were only passing through, soon to forget everything, everyone, from their lives before?
“Mia?”
And then she was there. Stepping over the threshold, luminous red waves tumbling down her back. Hazel eyes smiling. Arms reaching for her daughter.
“My red raven,” she whispered.
Mia’s knees buckled. All her plans of remaining calm and reasonable shattered as she fell into her mother’s arms. An embrace she hardly remembered, but that instantly felt like home.
“You’re here,” her mother murmured. “When the Shadowess told us you’d come to the House, I could hardly believe it. I prayed to the Duj to keep you safe, Mia. I hadn’t prayed in such a long time, but I fell to my knees every morning and every night. I couldn’t bear losing you again.”
Mia held her closer. This was everything she’d wanted and hadn’t dared to dream. She buried her face in her mother’s hair, inhaling her unique scent, a little sweet and a little wild, like fresh flowers and woodsmoke. Mia could smell all of it. That alone was enough to make her cry. She flooded her nostrils with the beloved fragrance, succumbing to a heady rush of memories—moments from their cottage, their long forest walks, their lives before.
She caught something new in the aroma: a slight tinge of snow plum. A note of Luumia.
Mia would have been happy to keep her mother clasped to her heart forever, breathing her in, both their cheeks damp with tears. In that moment she could have forgiven Wynna anything. What did it matter if she’d left? They were together now. They didn’t ever have to be apart.
But of course they did. Wynna pulled away first. She wiped her cheeks, then Mia’s, laughing.
“We’re a mess, aren’t we?”
Before Mia could respond, she saw movement behind her mother. A large woman stood quietly, snow-fox cloak draped over her broad shoulders. She had cool silver eyes, tawny skin, and black hair shaved close to the scalp.
“Mia,” Wynna said, taking a breath, “I want you to meet my wife.”
The Snow Queen stepped forward. She had a regal bearing, though not in the way of King Ronan. Whereas he always seemed to be looking down at you, Freyja’s gaze was somehow level, in spite of her height and girth. As if you were not her subject, but her equal.
“Your Grace,” Mia said, dipping her head.
“Please. Freyja.”
The queen enveloped Mia’s hand in a hearty grip.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t able to welcome you to my palace.”
“I’m sorry you no longer have a palace.”
Was that the right thing to say? Mia had never met the queen her mother had fallen in love with, leading her to subsequently abandon her daughters, one of whom went on to destroy said queen’s palace and a sizable part of her queendom.
They were clearly in uncharted terrain.
“Who else made it out alive?” she said softly. “Did Angelyne?” She swallowed. “Quin?”
Gently, her mother took her hands.
“We looked for them. We thought perhaps they . . .” Her eyes were tear bright. “That we could at least put them to rest. But everything was buried. We couldn’t reach them.”
She touched Mia’s cheek.
“They’re gone, my raven girl.”
Mia felt a sob rise in her throat. She didn’t know why. She had already grieved the loss of her sister and the boy she could have loved. Why did it hurt so much to have that loss confirmed?
She thought her mother might fold her into another embrace. She wouldn’t have fought it.
Instead Wynna reached for Freyja’s hand.
As a child, back when she knew everything, Mia’s knowledge of love was unassailable. Love existed between one man and one woman, marriage the holy consummation of that bond. A wife could take her gloves off in the presence of her beloved husband, and only then.
To know how love manifested, Mia had only to look at her parents. Their love was a comet whirling through the sky. They lived and breathed one another, sometimes sharing a single plate at supper, each
with their own fork. In the cottage, whenever her mother walked out of the room, her father’s eyes trailed after her, as if he couldn’t bear to have a wall between them.
Of course now Mia knew the truth. Griffin was being enthralled. Wynna’s doting affection was a fiction. The price she paid to sleep next to an assassin, working quietly and fervently to save the women he aimed to kill.
But this? Now? The tenderness in her mother’s face? The way her eyes sparked when Freyja lifted her hand to her mouth and kissed it?
Mia knew, in the fiber of her being, that this was love.
She thought of Quin. Not the tableaux that so often came to her: their witty banter in the hot spring, their bodies intertwined in the Natha River. Now a bevy of smaller moments sprang to mind. Quin brushing a stray curl from her eyes as they sat beside the lake in Refúj. Your hair is wilder here. I like it. How he beamed with pleasure in the Twisted Forest as she raved about his delectable hare stew. The way he kissed her fingers on the red balloon, saying her hands were even more beautiful than he’d imagined.
What a precious soul he was. Someone to be treasured. Why had she not done everything in her power to protect him?
Till the ice melts on the southern cliffs.
Promise me, O promise me.
“We will rebuild,” said the Snow Queen, dragging Mia from her reverie. “But we cannot do it alone. For thousands of years Manuba Vivuli has offered refuge to pilgrims. My lady and I have come to seek counsel from the wisest minds in the four kingdoms. The Shadowess has promised us whatever resources we require.”
“And your uncle?” Mia’s voice came out sharper than she’d intended. She felt a dull pain in her wrist where the fyre ink flowed. “Lord Dove was interested in resources, too.”
Freyja looked stricken.
“If I had known what he was doing to innocent children . . . in my own palace . . . under my own feet . . .”
A strange, terrible sound came from her throat. Wynna gripped her hand more tightly.
“It’s all right, my love. You didn’t know. How could you possibly have known?”
