by Melissa Grey
“There you are,” Altair said as they approached. “Fern will show you to the rooms you’ve been allocated—”
“Where’s Echo?” Ivy asked. There was no time to waste on pleasantries. Altair glared at her, no doubt filing away her impertinence. But she was no soldier and she couldn’t care less if he viewed her as insubordinate. She’d followed instructions and brought the rest of their party to Avalon. She’d done her part for Dorian. And although the piece of her that had driven her to pursue the healing arts yearned to help the survivors of the attack, she knew that there was one person who needed her more.
—
Ivy entered the room quietly. When the door closed with a click, Echo’s head shot up. Her face was tearstained and her eyes puffy, and when she saw Ivy, a fresh sob racked her body. Through the closed door, Ivy could hear Altair’s deep voice relay instructions, but for the moment, nothing existed but the sight of the Ala lying still, the veins on one side of her body oddly swollen, and the sound of Echo’s broken weeping. Ivy rounded the bed as fast as she could and gathered Echo in her arms. Tears soaked through her T-shirt as she brushed Echo’s hair back. It was dirty, sprinkled with the same dust Ivy had seen on some of the Avicen, and tangled, but still soft compared with feathers. As a child, she’d been jealous of Echo’s hair. It was like silk beneath her hands, and a rich dark brown that reminded Ivy of fresh soil. She’d envied Echo her ability to walk on the surface without having to hide. She used to think Echo’s life was so easy compared to hers.
“It’s okay,” Ivy said. Echo made a noise halfway between a laugh and a sob. “All right, it’s not at all okay, but it will be.” She pressed her cheek against Echo’s hair, barely noticing the dirt and the sweat. “I know it will be.”
Ivy couldn’t bring herself to look over Echo’s shoulder at the Ala. If she did, she might start crying too. The Ala was the closest thing either of them had to a mother. Echo’s mother might still be alive, but Ivy’s had died in childbirth and she hardly remembered her father. When she was three, he’d gone off on a scouting expedition to the Philippines with a handful of Warhawks and had never returned. Even the sight of the Ala’s hand, so dark against the white sheets, was almost enough to crack Ivy’s heart in two.
“I can’t lose her.” Echo’s voice was low and broken. “I can’t.”
“You won’t,” Ivy said. She would give her life to make sure that didn’t happen.
Though they were separated by birth and biology, Echo was a sister to Ivy and she was hurting. Ivy held herself together, willed her tears to remain in place. There would be time for her to fall apart later. But now her best friend, who had been so strong for so many, needed someone to be strong for her. And while Ivy couldn’t fight a monster or restore their ruined home, she could at least do that.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Echo gave Ivy a minute alone with the Ala. She stepped out of the Ala’s room and into the hallway just as Altair was mid-sentence.
“Sage, Violet, bring him to the east wing—”
At the sound of the door opening, all eyes turned to her. Echo knew her face was still splotchy from crying and her cheeks felt puffy and swollen, but with their various bruises and cuts, none of the others would be winning any beauty contests anytime soon. They hadn’t seen her cry, so she could pretend it hadn’t happened. The two Warhawks—Sage and Violet—flanked Caius. Sage’s hand rested on her sword, fingers drumming against the pommel as if she anticipated resistance from Caius. Or hoped for it. To his credit, Caius was the picture of obedient compliance. He caught Echo’s gaze, took in her disheveled state, and offered her the half smile she’d come to know so well. Rowan, on the other hand, refused to even look at her.
“Echo,” Altair said, “Rowan will show you to your room.”
“Um,” she said. While she appreciated that Altair was either too emotionally detached to remark upon her tears or simply didn’t care, she wasn’t sure alone time with Rowan was the best idea he’d ever had. They weren’t ready for that yet. She wasn’t ready for that yet.
Caius seemed to catch on. “I’ll go with her,” he said.
Echo let out a relieved breath, not quite a sigh.
Rowan clenched his jaw so tightly that Echo could have sworn she heard his molars grinding together. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to talk to my girlfriend alone.”
Girlfriend.
He had called her his girlfriend.
Like he still thought she was. Like he still felt she was deserving of that title. Like the past three months hadn’t happened.
Echo caught the way Caius’s expression turned to stone. After a beat, he inclined his head in a gesture of chivalrous concession. “Of course,” he said. His eyes cut to her briefly, but Echo couldn’t read what she saw there.
She hadn’t told him about Rowan. Not in so many words. Not as explicitly as he deserved. Caius knew that Rowan was important to her, but she’d neglected to mention the particular nature of his importance. Altair’s curious expression made Echo want to curl into a tiny ball and evaporate into nothingness.
Without another word, Caius turned on his heel and marched toward the east wing, forcing his guards to scramble to catch up. Even though his current station was barely above that of prisoner, he maintained his imperious composure.
Echo watched his retreating form as Rowan and Altair watched her. She couldn’t bear the thought of looking at either one of them. Especially Rowan. But then Altair cleared his throat, and Echo couldn’t ignore them any longer.
“Rowan will see to it that you have everything you need,” Altair said. His burnt-orange eyes were heavy, either with exhaustion or with the horrible weight of the day. Echo was beginning to realize just how little she knew about the man who was now in charge of them. “Once you’re rested, I can show you the others.”
“Others?”
“The other victims,” Altair explained. “The Ala wasn’t the only Avicen struck down by the kuçedra.”
It made sense, though Echo hadn’t let herself entertain the idea of more victims, held in a state between life and death, with darkness crawling through their veins. She wanted to retreat to the Ala’s room, to curl up at her side. But instead, she followed Rowan as he led her down a dimly lit passage. He didn’t look at her as he walked, his stride slightly too fast, and for that, she was secretly, shamefully glad.
The walk from the foyer to Echo’s room felt longer than it probably was. Despite what he’d told Caius, Rowan walked beside her in silence, letting the air around them fill with all the things they should have been saying and weren’t. Echo busied herself by trying to memorize the path they were taking, but there were so many hallways with identical maroon carpeting and dark, dilapidated walls that she knew she’d get lost anyway. Most of the doors were closed, but through the open ones, Echo caught brief glimpses of rooms that spoke to the house’s former beauty. A grand piano sat in a darkened parlor, partially covered by a sheet of old canvas. A library with shelves empty save for dust made Echo’s heart scratch at the walls of her chest. She missed her library—her home. She wondered if it would look the same when she returned—if she returned—or if the fundamental fabric of her being was too altered by the events of the past several months for her to ever look upon her cramped little room, with its fairy lights and old-book smell, with the same eyes.
Rowan came to a stop in front of a door at the end of a long corridor. “This is you,” he said, fiddling with an old skeleton key, gaze darting from the small window to his left to the faded carpet beneath his feet. “Altair had some of the Warhawks sort out rooms when you were with the Ala.”
The key’s tarnished brass highlighted the soft golden glow of his skin. Fading sunlight danced over the texture of his tawny feathers. Before any of this happened—before the firebird had ruined just about everything—Echo would have sunk her fingers into those feathers and pulled him in for a kiss, smiling against his mouth at his surprised laugh. The urge to do just that tugged at her with a
persistence difficult to ignore.
When Echo didn’t move to enter the room, Rowan finally looked her straight in the eye. “I’m right down the hall,” he said. “Third door on the left. You know…in case you need anything.”
He turned from her and began to walk away. Echo knew that if she let him go without trying to salvage even the tiniest sliver of their friendship, she would lose him forever. She didn’t want that. It had been easy to forget him when she was with Caius. Easier still when Rose made her presence and her desires known. She’d thought she was ready to let Rowan go, but seeing him again, being this close without Caius or Rose standing between them, it was suddenly obvious that she’d been lying to herself.
“Rowan,” she said. The tapestries on the walls seemed to swallow the sound of her voice.
He stopped, but didn’t turn around. A current of shame washed through Echo. He couldn’t even bear to look at her.
“I’m sorry.” It wasn’t enough, but it was all she had, all she could offer him.
Rowan didn’t say anything, but he didn’t leave either. His shoulders sagged an inch.
Once the words were out, the rest of what Echo had felt simmering beneath the surface poured forth of its own accord. It wasn’t just that Rowan needed to hear it. Echo needed to say it. Ruby might not have been her friend, but she had been alive, and because of Echo, she wasn’t anymore. The spirits of the dead deserved better than silence.
“I know I don’t deserve to be forgiven for what I did, but I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to kill her. I just wanted to make it stop. I wanted to keep everyone safe. I didn’t think—I didn’t—” Her voice cracked and hot tears pricked her eyes. Rowan’s head angled toward her, giving her a view of his profile. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I’m so sorry.”
Rowan kept his silence for so long that Echo gave up hope of getting a response. Dust motes drifted in the sunlight cutting across the floor. She turned to the door of her room. She had her hand on the brass knob when he spoke at last.
“I brought her back home.”
The metal was cold against her skin. Now it was her turn to keep her eyes averted. A faded pattern was embroidered on the edge of the rug, picked out in thread she assumed had once been gold.
“I couldn’t just leave her there,” Rowan continued. “So I carried her back.”
The fate of Ruby’s corpse hadn’t even occurred to Echo. She imagined Rowan struggling under the weight of Ruby’s lifeless body. She thought about him trying to navigate his way through the in-between like that. She tried to picture the shock and horror on the faces of the Avicen waiting by the Nest’s main gateway, a morbid tableau watched by the unseeing eyes of the arch’s iron swans. Her knuckles whitened as she gripped the doorknob tighter.
Until a few months ago, the war had been an abstract concept to them. She, Rowan, and Ivy had sat in a café in London and laughed about the Warhawks and Altair and training that she’d been so certain Rowan would never need to use. A cease-fire had been declared long before any of them had been born; everything they knew of war had come from the pages of Avicen history books, stories too distant to seem real. But for all their imagined invincibility, the war had found them. And Echo had been the one to introduce Rowan to his first dead body. Unlike the Ala’s band of orphans and runaways, Ruby had parents. Echo had met them only in passing, but she hadn’t thought about them, either. Because of her, they had lost a daughter and Rowan had lost his innocence. The guilt was so massive, Echo felt like it was clogging her airway, preventing her from breathing.
“I know you didn’t mean to do it,” Rowan said. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. I’ve replayed it over and over in my mind. Sometimes, it feels like the only thing I can see.” He looked up at her, hazel eyes raw with emotion. “I just—I need some time, okay?”
Echo nodded. “Okay,” she said, barely managing to croak out the word.
She watched his back as he left. He walked down the hallway and opened the third door on the left, just like he’d said. But he didn’t enter the room. His hand rested on the knob, one finger tapping the brass. She couldn’t see his face, but there was something to the set of his shoulders that she recognized. There was a way he breathed, slowly and with precision, when deep in thought. He was so quiet, so still, that she thought it might be best to go into her room and leave him to his contemplation. But then, he turned on his heel and said, “This is a terrible idea, but…”
He left the rest of the sentence unspoken and strode to where Echo still stood in front of her door. Before she could cobble her thoughts into a coherent shape, Rowan’s mouth was on hers. His hands gripped her arms, firm but still gentle enough to allow her to slip away if she wished.
His lips were warm and chapped and heartbreakingly familiar. There was none of the studied grace of Caius’s kiss, none of the artful elegance honed over two centuries of practice. Rowan’s kiss was a little clumsy, but that artlessness was what made it perfect. Echo raised her hands to slide them along his cheeks, following the line of his jaw and then sinking her fingers into the soft feathers at the nape of his neck.
Echo had a second to think that he tasted like fruit punch before a memory that was not hers crashed through her consciousness.
The warped wood of the corridor’s floor was replaced by grass, slick with rain, and muddy soil. The ceiling disappeared. Thunderclouds darkened the sky. Rain—angry and persistent and flavored by the salty air of the sea—soaked her clothing. She would have been chilled to the bone if not for the body pressed against hers. The softness between her fingers was not feathers, but hair. Silky, dark brown hair. She opened her eyes.
No, not her eyes. Rose’s. And it wasn’t Rowan she was kissing. It was Caius.
Startled, Echo pulled away, and she was herself again.
She stepped back, feeling for the door behind her, needing its solidity to remind her of where she was. Of who she was. Her ragged breaths weren’t pulling in enough oxygen. She was in Avalon Castle. Not on the island where Rose had died. She was inside, not out in the rain. And it was Rowan standing before her. Not Caius. Pain blossomed at the base of her skull, and she wasn’t sure if it was because of the magic she’d used earlier or the mess of memories and identities crowding her brain.
Rowan dropped his hands. “I’m sorry,” he said, voice soft. “I had to do that.” He peered at her, brows drawn, sensing something was wrong, but not quite sure what. He was blaming himself for her reaction, Echo realized. Crap. He shook his head and added, “I shouldn’t have done that.”
Without giving Echo the chance to explain, he turned and went to his own room. The lock clicked behind him, and the quiet of the hallway swelled around her. She went into her room, half blind to its formerly lavish furnishings, her skull pounding with pain. She’d experienced slippage before, but not like that. The memories that came with the other vessels were rarely that forceful. She needed to lie down. If only she could talk to the Ala about it.
She touched a hand lightly to her lips. Her throat constricted and tears stung the corners of her eyes. The mattress was as hard as a rock; it barely sagged beneath her when she sat on it. She dug her fingers into the coverlet—the only thing about the room that seemed marginally new—and listened to the sound of her own beating heart. The castle was huge, but even here, she could hear the occasional creak of floorboards as Avicen milled about their rooms. And each and every one of them was depending on her to be some kind of savior. How could she save anyone when she couldn’t even save the people who meant the most to her? How could she bear that kind of responsibility if all she brought her loved ones was pain? Echo was surrounded by people and yet she had never felt more alone.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The next morning, breakfast was delivered to Echo’s room by a sullen Warhawk. His resentment simmered hotter than the still-steaming porridge on the tray he carried.
“Thank you,” Echo said, only half meaning it. “I know this is beneath you.” The Warhawk o
ffered her a curt nod in response and turned on his heel to leave, the sound of his boots muffled by the carpet, his white cloak billowing rather majestically behind him. Definitely too majestically for someone who had been relegated to breakfast duty. Echo wondered what he’d done to piss off Altair.
She sat on her bed and ate quickly. The porridge was in desperate need of sugar, and the coffee was bitter and badly burnt. Seconds after she scooped the last bit of porridge from the bowl, a knock sounded at her door. She left the dishes on the tray and sprang from the bed to answer it. Altair waited outside, his feathers immaculate, his white cloak as spotless as freshly fallen snow.
“There’s something I’d like to show you,” he said. And that was it. He turned and made his way down the hall, expecting Echo to follow. A brief rebellious urge seized her, but she ignored it in favor of grabbing her boots and pulling them on as she hopped down the corridor after him. Definitely not as majestic as a Warhawk.
Altair led her to what had once been the castle’s ballroom. The high ceilings were decorated with a mural so faded Echo could barely make out the shapes. Fat little cherubs peeked through the peeling paint in one corner, while a beast that was either a narwhal or a disfigured unicorn pulled a carriage in another. The center of the mural was blackened with stains, most of which could be attributed to the chandelier hanging in the middle of the ceiling. The dawn of electric lighting had passed Avalon by, and smoke stains and ancient wax clung to the chandelier’s brass frame. Crystal teardrops dangling from its many arms caught the midmorning light and cast it about the room in a kaleidoscope of rainbows.
