by Melissa Grey
Ivy had watched silently as Echo amassed her collection of candles and trinkets. She hadn’t pushed for an explanation or begrudged Echo the space. After a time, Ivy also started adding to the collection. The candle for Garland had been the first, but her contributions had not ended there. She had acquired a small bowl of colorful beads, their vibrant hues the same shades as the feathers of some of the Avicen who had not escaped the Nest; a porcelain unicorn; a sprig of dried lavender; a painted wooden knight from a chess set; and a maneki-neko, a little white cat with an upraised paw said to bring luck to shop owners. Echo knew who some of the items were meant to commemorate, but not all, and she didn’t prod Ivy for explanations. If Ivy wanted to share, she would do it in her own time.
Their little collection grew and grew, taking over the surfaces of the room. It reminded Echo of a German word she’d come across in a book: Habseligkeiten. A meager collection of treasures that might appear to possess little value but that held great meaning for their owner. It fit their memorial, as strange and varied and cobbled together as it was.
Before meeting up with Rowan to go to the Agora, Echo had made an unplanned stop. She had struggled with finding the right object for weeks, but she had finally spotted it in the window of a gift shop on St. Marks Place. The contents of her backpack clanked together, glass bumping against silver through the newspaper she had stuffed between items. Her boots dragged along the worn stones of Avalon’s courtyard. Stares followed her, as they always did, as she made her way through the foyer, up the grand staircase, and down the labyrinthine corridors that led to the room she shared with Ivy. It was situated as far from the rest of the castle’s inhabitants as possible—knowing that Echo needed her space, the Ala had quietly reassigned her to a more secluded room.
One last flight of winding stairs left her by the uppermost room in the castle’s highest tower. She could feel the draft that perpetually wafted through the room despite its thick wooden door. For the sake of privacy, she and Ivy had sacrificed the possibility of ever being warm. They could not have their cake and eat it too.
Echo pushed open the door slowly. The room was so small that on more than one occasion, she or Ivy had slammed the door into the other when they opened it too quickly.
“You’re good,” came Ivy’s soft assurance from the other side of the room. She sat on the window seat Echo had fashioned from a wooden crate and a few scraps of fabric too small to be good for much else. Her nose was buried in a book, and the late-afternoon sun provided enough light for Echo to read the title: Herbalism and the Healing Arts. A stack of similarly themed books sat on the floor at Ivy’s feet. The Avicen’s central leadership and fighting arm weren’t the only groups devastated by the attacks. The healers had also seen their numbers diminished. They were often the first to rush toward disaster, but unlike the Warhawks, they had no armor to protect them. Ivy had lost time in her training while they’d been on the run in London and she was determined to get back on track. That Ivy would resume her studies wasn’t even a question; the Avicen needed her and she would be there for them.
Echo kicked the door shut behind her and unslung her pack from her sore shoulders. The bowl and the addition to their memorial weren’t the only items with which she had returned. She unzipped her bag and dumped its contents onto the bed. Curiosity drove Ivy from her perch to inspect the spoils of Echo’s trip into the city.
“Where’s Rowan?” Ivy asked.
“He got lost on the way back,” Echo said.
Ivy froze. “What?”
“He’s okay. It was the in-between. It spit him out on the Upper West Side, but he’s on his way. He’s okay. Everyone’s okay.”
A frown creased Ivy’s brow. “That’s not good.”
“No, ma’am, it is not,” Echo agreed, injecting bravado she didn’t quite feel into her voice. “But everyone’s alive and accounted for, so I’m counting it as a victory.”
She set aside the silver bowl, ignoring the drumbeat of urgency she felt when she touched it. As much as she wanted to use it right away, she still lacked several key ingredients required for the locator spell. Until each item was found, the bowl—despite the enchantments laced through its metal—was about as useful as a candy dish.
Ivy reached for the heavy textbooks Echo had plucked off a shelf at Enchanting Essentials. One was an anatomical text—similar to Gray’s Anatomy but with chapters devoted to Avicen and Drakharin anatomy—and the other was a compendium of spells, potions, salves, and poultices for treating wounds of the magical variety. Both had been among the Ala’s extensive library, and like everything else the Avicen had left behind, they had been lost to the mage fires that had cleansed any trace of the Avicen’s existence. The fires were a contingency plan they had hoped never to use.
“You found them,” Ivy said, her tone reverent. She traced a finger down the gilded spine of one book as if it were actually gold. “Echo…thank you.”
Echo shrugged off Ivy’s gratitude. Her heart was still too heavy to allow for any amount of graciousness. She felt Ivy’s gaze on her as she sorted the rest of the items: a few more books for the Ala, some glass vials for the bloodweed elixir, a half-crushed box of granola bars. Ivy remained silent until Echo picked up the last object: a candle in a heavy glass jar, its label sporting a cheery illustration to accompany the name of the scent.
“ ‘Cookies and Cream,’ ” Ivy read. She met Echo’s gaze with a knowing smile, her eyes a touch watery.
Echo nodded. She rearranged the items on the windowsill to make room for the candle. They were running out of space, but this one required a decent spot. “For Perrin.”
“I think he would’ve liked that,” Ivy said. She fished a box of matches out of the milk crate that functioned as an end table and lit the candle. Its scent was sugary and artificial, but it was enough to make a lump form in Echo’s throat.
She and Ivy stood in silence for a while, watching the candle’s meager flame flutter to and fro. The room’s perpetual draft refused to let it burn calmly. It was a peculiar vigil, and not one likely to be understood by anyone outside of that room, but that was what made it fitting.
Echo knocked her shoulder into Ivy’s. The harsh reminder of the fragility of life and the inevitability of mortality was making her maudlin. “I’m glad you’re here,” she told Ivy. She didn’t say that enough, especially considering their lives could be snuffed out any day, as easily as Perrin’s or Altair’s or those of any of the dozens of people they’d lost in the past few months.
“Are you getting sappy on me?” Ivy asked, rubbing her eyes in a valiant attempt to conceal their wateriness.
“Maybe.” Echo thrust her hands into her pockets. “I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you for being the Ron to my Harry. The Samwise to my Frodo. The Tom to my Huck.”
Ivy let out a sniffling laugh. “I get it. I love you, too.”
“The Watson to my Holmes—”
“Please stop.”
“The Horatio to my Hamlet—”
“Echo, everybody died in that play.”
“—except for Horatio. The Sancho Panza to my Don Quixote.”
“The Sancho who?”
“The Piglet to my Pooh.”
“Okay, now you’re just insulting me.”
A knock on the door interrupted them.
“Come in,” Echo called, hastily wiping moisture from her eyes. The tears hadn’t quite fallen, but they’d been close. The banter had helped. Ivy gave Echo’s shoulder a quick squeeze, her eyes similarly red-rimmed.
The door was pushed open slowly, and a head covered in tawny golden feathers appeared. Rowan peered into the room. His sweaty hair-feathers stuck up at odd angles and his cheeks were flushed. He must have run all the way up the stairs.
Ivy broke the silence first. “Hey, Rowan. Heard you took the scenic route home.”
Echo hadn’t even realized she and Rowan had been staring at each other like slack-jawed idiots. She shook herself internally and launched herse
lf at him.
“Hey,” Rowan said, sliding through the door that never quite fully opened. The second he was inside, he had an armful of Echo.
“I’m glad you’re safe,” Echo said into his neck.
“Yeah,” he said, squeezing her back. “Me too.” The hug went on for what felt like an eternity, but Echo was reluctant to let him go. He was so solid in her arms, so real and alive and safe. Only when Ivy cleared her throat did Echo step away.
Rowan took a moment to rake his gaze over the odd array of trinkets and candles and mementos placed around the room. His eyes landed on the still-burning cookies-and-cream candle. He looked at Echo, and there was no hesitation in his expression. Just empathy, raw and open. “For Perrin?”
Sometimes she forgot how well he knew her. Almost as well as Ivy did. In some ways, even better. Echo held nothing back from Ivy, but Rowan had awakened parts of her she hadn’t known existed. She answered him with a nod, not quite trusting the steadiness of her voice.
Ivy climbed over the stack of books she’d been reading and settled on the bed. With three people in the room, there was no place else to comfortably sit. Or stand. Or exist, really.
“You sure you’re okay, Rowan?” Ivy asked. “Echo said the in-between was acting wonky.” Ivy might have been Echo’s best friend, but she was Rowan’s, too. They had begun to grow apart once adolescence had dug its claws into them—Rowan and Echo’s relationship playing no small part in that—but the events of the past several months had erased the petty differences that divided them. They were family, all of them, for better or worse.
Rowan pushed aside a pile of clothes Echo hadn’t bothered to fold. Why fold clothing if you were just going to wrinkle it with wear? He perched on the bed next to Ivy and wiped at the sweat on his brow with a towel he’d draped across his shoulders.
“I’m fine,” he said, even though Echo could see he was still a bit shaken and trying to hide it. “I ran into the Ala on my way up here. There’s a meeting in the library in five.”
Ivy reached across him to pluck a bottle of water from their stash in the crate beside the bed and offered it to him. He accepted it with thanks and then downed half of it in a single gulp.
“You smell,” Ivy said helpfully.
“Like a bouquet of beautiful roses,” said Rowan.
“And sweat,” Echo added. “With a hint of old cheese.”
It was comfortable, the three of them insulting each other. It almost felt like old times.
Rowan sniffed his armpit. “I do not smell of old cheese.”
“Anyway,” Ivy said, drawing out the last syllable to signify how done she was with the topic of Rowan’s body odor. As if she hadn’t started it. “Who’s going to be at this meeting? What’s it about?”
Rowan eyed the silver bowl. “That, I’m guessing. And my jolly jaunt to the Upper West Side.”
“Okay,” Ivy said, clapping her hands once and pushing herself off the bed. “I don’t know about you two, but I don’t want to keep the Ala waiting.”
Rowan finished off the water and left the bottle on the box serving as Echo’s nightstand. “Me neither.”
“Great,” Ivy said. She looked from Rowan to Echo before coming to a decision. “I’m gonna go.” She smiled at them both. “It’s nice to see the two of you getting along. Your angst was getting tiresome.” With that, she left.
Echo snorted, then grabbed her bag. She could feel Rowan’s eyes on her as she put aside the things she didn’t need and replaced the things she did.
A heavy sigh sounded as he stood. “Ivy’s right.”
“She usually is,” said Echo. She risked a glance at Rowan. “I really hate that about her.”
The smile that graced his lips was reluctant but sincere. “Me too.” He wrung his hands, looking older than his eighteen years. “Look…I just had a brush with death, and it got me thinking, because mortality is terrifying and you deserve more than what little I said at the train station. Things between us have changed since…since Ruby”—he stumbled over the words as if tripping over the memory itself—“and I just want us to be okay. I want us to start over. As friends, if nothing else. I don’t want all the terrible things that have been thrust upon us to ruin that. You may not be my girlfriend anymore—and I’m fine with that, I am, I’ve changed, too—but you’re still my best friend. I don’t want to let you go.”
“Maybe you should,” Echo said. “Everyone who gets close to me gets hurt, kidnapped, or killed.”
Rowan stepped over the mess on the floor and went to Echo. His hands came to rest on her shoulders, a comforting weight. “And none of that is your fault.” He gave her a playful shake. “You hear me?”
Echo couldn’t help the upward tic of her lips. “I hear you,” she said. Her small smile faded. “But I’m not sure I believe you.”
“Well, tough cookies. Because I’m right,” said Rowan. He tapped one knuckle against the underside of her chin. “You aren’t the reason any of this has happened. This is a lot bigger than you or me or Caius or even Tanith. You’re not to blame for anyone getting hurt, but if I know you, you’ll figure out a way to help them. You always do.”
Echo laid her hand atop the one that still rested on her shoulder. His skin was warm. “Thanks,” she said. “I needed to hear that.”
Rowan looked as if there was something more he wanted to say but, for whatever reason, wouldn’t. He slid his hand out from under hers and stepped away. “Anytime,” he said, with an air of finality. Echo could practically see the walls he was erecting between them. “But Ivy’s right. We shouldn’t dally. The Ala gets cranky when she has to wait.”
CHAPTER SIX
The library of Avalon Castle had once been beautiful.
When the Avicen first sought refuge on the island, the shelves of the library had been bare. In place of books, cobwebs had taken root, crowding into the empty spaces. Loose pages of tomes long disappeared littered the floor like carpeting, waterlogged from the rain let in through the holes in the ceiling. The chandelier that had once hung proudly above the room’s center had fallen, its chains rusted from decades of neglect. Echo had commandeered the aid of Rowan and a few of his Warhawk friends to move it—the half-destroyed brass monstrosity was heavier than it looked—and it still sat, neglected, in a corner of the library, a mournful reminder of the glory days of Avalon. The Ala had taken to using it as a place to dry her laundry. An ignominious end for such a grand furnishing.
The paper mulch had been swept away, revealing hardwood floors that had seen better days. Beneath the rotting floorboards was solid stone, impervious to decay. Each day, the shelves rediscovered their purpose as the Ala filled them with books salvaged from her chamber at the Nest by the mages who had gone to clear it out before human authorities could discover signs of the Avicen’s habitation beneath Grand Central. Echo had added to the collection with books found in her travels. She wanted to help the Avicen rebuild—she was not Avicen by blood, but they were the family who had taken her in when her own had proven too hostile to ever be a home. Echo carried one of the volumes of what she assumed to be Avicen mythology she’d found in Perrin’s shop, along with the triptych she’d taken from the hidden alcove in his office. The book she would contribute to the Avicen’s modest but evolving library—it wasn’t right for so much of their written history to be lost. Echo knew what it was to be untethered. She’d felt that way when she’d first run away from home, before she’d settled into the library on Fifth Avenue. Nothing anchored the soul like a story, and the Avicen had left behind so much at the Nest.
In its current state, the library was less than halfway to what could be labeled good repair, but it was comfortable enough. Echo sat down on one of the wooden benches that the Ala had unabashedly relocated from the castle’s garden to what was now, inarguably, her library. She used the room to meet with the remaining Warhawks, to convene informal councils on how food and necessary supplies would be distributed to the refugees housed within the castle, to plan t
heir steps into an uncertain future. It wasn’t as homey as her chamber at the Nest had been. Echo let herself indulge in a moment of longing for the place that had been her second home; she missed the soft couches and the mountains of pillows and the welcoming glow of candlelight. It had been a place of solace and safety for her. After a turbulent childhood, it had been one of the first places where Echo had found peace. And now it was gone, like so much else.
Dorian and Jasper had claimed the only other viable seating in the library—a cozy nook in front of a picturesque bay window—while Helios, the Drakharin Ivy had brought home, sat on the floor nearby. They were a motley crew, but they were her motley crew. Their presence soothed the parts of Echo that ached when she let herself dwell too long on the sadness nibbling at the edges of her heart.
Echo reached for the box of Gushers she’d swiped from a grocery store on her way home. At least there were still snacks. There would always be snacks, so long as she was alive and able to steal them. She offered one of the pouches to Ivy, who politely declined, and another to Rowan, who took not only the proffered one but also the one Echo had claimed for herself. Greedy bastard. Echo replaced her stolen Gushers and tried to open the foil package as quietly as she could while the Ala spoke. Jasper chomped unabashedly on a handful of sugary cereal, also stolen, straight out of the box.
“Thank you for coming,” the Ala said, as if any of them would decline an invitation from her. As the only surviving member of the Council of Elders, she was the de facto leader of the Avicen.
“Thank you for having us,” Jasper said. He shook the box of cereal in his hands, peering into it dolefully. “Though I must say the refreshments leave something to be desired.”
“Then steal your own food, Jasper,” Echo said around a mouthful of Gushers. Ingrate.
Before Jasper could fire off a retort, the Ala cleared her throat. “We have much to discuss, and little time to waste on the merits of junk food.” She picked up a notebook from the writing desk that had been one of the few bits of furniture in the library worth salvaging. For as long as Echo had known the Ala, her mind had appeared to be fathomless, full of a seemingly infinite store of knowledge gleaned from a millennium of existence. But now Echo noticed moments when the Ala would trail off mid-sentence. Her onyx eyes would glaze over and, for a few seconds, it would be as if she weren’t there. She always shook it off and claimed it was nothing, but Echo had seen the same lapse in the other Avicen who had fallen under the kuçedra’s enchanted slumber and been awakened by the elixir Ivy concocted. They had returned, but it was as though parts of them were still missing, still trapped in the darkness in which the beast had shrouded them. They were back, but they weren’t quite whole. The Ala had never needed to write things down to remember them before; now she used notes like a crutch, lest she forget during those awful, lost moments.
