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Papa says some of the trees in the forest are a thousand years old. They were here before anyone alive now was born, even the Queen, even before the Alchemist and the Sorceress bound time to blood and metal—if there ever was such a time. These trees will be standing tall long after we’re gone. Yet they aren’t predators like wolves or people. The roots beneath my feet don’t live for centuries by causing other plants to shrivel and turn gray. And their time cannot be bled from them. If only we were more like trees.
If the Sorceress exists, she’s not listening to our prayers.
My hand trembles as I take the coin—the pulse in my own fingers feels as if it’s coming from within the coin, all the life this little thing could give me. Give Papa. All the life it’s already cost someone else.
Not waiting to be dismissed, I curtsy before hurrying from the room, rattled by the image of the old woman’s throat moving as the year entered her blood.
How can I still hold feelings for Roan, who comes from a family who treats a year of life like a cube of sugar? Whose family has destroyed mine, and so many others?
I smile to myself, thinking of how Amma would grumble if she knew Alia were staying up late to hear fairy tales. It’s hard to believe that there was a world before blood-iron. Worse, there’s no use in it, while we’re trapped with what we have. But listening to the seamstress speak, I find myself missing that world, if it ever existed.
Papa and I left our books behind when we were chased from Everless, and he hasn’t bothered to hide his contempt for stories since then. You can’t afford to have your head in the clouds, he told me once, after I’d begged to hear one on my cold cot in Crofton. I never asked again.
“The Alchemist told her: ‘In order to make you immortal, I must have your heart for safekeeping.’ So she transformed her whole heart into a word she whispered in his ear. His throat moved like he was swallowing it down. Then, he passed her a handful of pebbles and told her to eat them, and she would live forever.”
The next day, Lora informs me that I’ll be working at a small party of nobles in one of Everless’s prettiest follies: an enclosed garden courtyard heated year-round by a fire pit fed by melted blood-iron. Time makes the flame burn bright and long. I try not to retch at the thought.
I’ve swept my hair forward to conceal my face—and though I am no longer the skinny, knobby-kneed girl of my youth—I’m terrified that Liam will remember me. And I’m terrified that Roan will not.
It makes my teeth grind, now, to think of the kindness Roan showed him—the kindness that Liam betrayed. But to betray someone, you must first care for them. I doubt Liam Gerling knows that feeling at all.
“He insulted the young captain and lost his tongue for it. He’ll do no such thing again.”
“Now mind your own business,” she tells me, in the sharpest tone I’ve heard her use, “and your business will mind you.”
Lady Sida’s words curdle my thoughts: I say she eats their hearts to stay young.
Never swear unless you mean it, or by swearing send the Alchemist for your soul. An old singsong warning we used to say as children.
Lying feels like trying to hold an eel in my stomach: the truth wants to wriggle its way out.
A drop of sweetness mixes into the grief inside me. It’s only a drop in a sea, but in that moment, it feels like everything.
fox to the forest snake of lead
And besides—what do I have to lose, if I’ve already lost everything?
I slip between my blanket and the mattress soundlessly, like a knife into its sheath.
I tell myself that if I’m lucky, no one will notice me; I try not to think about the fact that I have never been lucky.
“It does take time to enter—and you never know how much,” Liam says, the threat present beneath the words like distant thunder. “It could be a day, or fifty years. And when it bleeds you, the door mechanism stains your hands, like this.” He holds up his own. “It’s meant to show when someone has accessed the Everless vault—or tried to. But that’s the least of your worries—Captain Ivan will do worse, if you’re found where you don’t belong.”
sing: “Your voice is an hour’s rose; your soul a loving thief. I’ll follow you through the fledgling woods, till your heart is mine to keep.”
