Snakeroot

  The despair he’d been feeling gave way to dread.

  “Do you understand what she means?” the healer asked.

  Connor didn’t want to answer.

  It’s nothing. Of course she’d be having nightmares about her brother. Bad dreams. Hallucinations after exposure. That’s all it is.

  Rational as his excuses were, Connor knew they were lies.

  “Oh God, Adne.” Sabine halted in the doorway, gazing at her friend. Tess and Ethan stood in the hall just behind Sabine.

  Clearing his throat, Connor could only manage to mimic the healer. “She’s out of immediate danger.”

  Sabine crossed the room and took up Connor’s abandoned post, kneeling beside Adne and taking her hand. At Sabine’s touch, Adne grew restless again, mumbling.

  Frowning, Sabine leaned closer. Connor had to stop himself from grabbing Sabine and hauling her away.

  After a moment, Sabine pulled back and looked over her shoulder at Connor. “Is she saying what I think she’s saying?”

  Connor ground his teeth, wishing he could deny it. Sweat broke out on his brow and his pulse became frenzied by panic. He felt utterly helpless and he couldn’t bear it.

  Tess came into the room and whispered quietly to the healer. The robed woman nodded and quickly left them, closing the door behind her.

  “Tell me why you’re so upset, Connor.” Tess gave him a measured look.

  With a rough laugh, Connor gestured to Adne. “I’d say it’s obvious.”

  “That’s not it,” Tess replied.

  “You’d better fess up,” Ethan told Connor. “She’s the boss of us now.”

  “What?” Connor frowned at him.

  Sabine sat on the edge of the bed. “Tess is our Guide now.”

  “Since when?” Connor threw a startled glance at Tess.

  “Since this morning,” Tess answered. “So if you don’t mind . . .”

  Connor hesitated, looking quickly at Shiloh. The new Striker hadn’t uttered a word since they’d arrived in Adne’s sickroom. Not that he seemed ever likely to be a big talker.

  “Shiloh is part of the team,” Tess said, following Connor’s gaze.

  “One big happy family, are we?” Connor muttered. When Tess gave him a withering look, he held up his hands in surrender. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to repeat Adne’s words. “Sabine heard it too. She can tell you.”

  Tess lifted her eyebrows, turning to Sabine.

  “It sounded like she thought she was talking to Ren.” Sabine shrugged. “She’s been saying his name.”

  A shadow passed through Sabine’s eyes. “But there’s something else.”

  “What’s that?” Ethan asked, frowning at Sabine’s worried expression.

  “‘Don’t let him take me,’” Sabine answered. “She also says, ‘Don’t let him take me.’”

  “Who?” Ethan shifted his weight, uneasy.

  Sabine shook her head, looking to Connor.

  “I don’t know,” Connor said. “I have no idea what she’s talking about.”

  “Tell him about the tracks,” Tess said to Sabine.

  “What tracks?” Connor looked at Sabine sharply.

  “Odd as it seems,” Sabine told him, “it looks like a wolf dragged Adne from the middle of the garden to the back door of the mansion.”

  “A wolf?”

  “There were wolf tracks in the snow alongside the drag marks,” Ethan said.

  Connor felt worse by the minute. “Are you trying to tell me that Adne was out in the garden in this weather, she passed out, and a wolf brought her back? Was it Shay? You mean Sarah Doran really saw him?”

  “None of us know what really happened, Connor.” Sabine managed a pretty wolf-like snarl. “But there were wolf tracks in the snow.”

  “But they weren’t Ren’s tracks.” Ethan crossed his arms defensively when they all fixed him with incredulous stares. “I’m just putting it out there. There were wolf tracks and now Adne’s talking about her brother.”

  “Renier Laroche is dead.” Sabine’s voice was brittle. “Emile killed him. We saw it happen.”

  Tess nodded and said gently, “I’m sure that if a wolf somehow came to Adne’s aid, then in whatever state of confusion she experienced, it might have dredged up memories of her brother.”

  Though Connor didn’t find much reassurance in the image of a wolf clamping its jaws around Adne and pulling her through the snow, it was at least helpful that Tess’s explanation about why Adne would be saying Ren’s name made sense.

  “Connor.” Sabine looked at Adne, who’d gone still again. “I know you’ve been worried about her. Is there anything else we should know?”

  Connor tensed, reluctant to speak about Adne without her knowledge. It felt like a betrayal.

  “If you want us to help her, we need to know what’s really going on,” Sabine said. “If there is something else going on.”

  Dropping into a chair as the weight of his fears took over, Connor said, “She’s been having nightmares. Nightmares and headaches.”

  “Nightmares about what?” Tess asked.

  Connor shook his head. “She doesn’t like to talk about them. I’ve always assumed they were about Ren and Monroe. About their deaths. But now I’m not so sure.”

  “I’m surprised she won’t tell you about them,” Sabine said. “That’s not like her.”

  “I know.” Connor rested his head in his hands. Sabine had said what he’d been afraid to: Adne had never held anything back from him. Not ever. But now he felt like he barely glimpsed what she was thinking and feeling.

  “Maybe she feels guilty.”

  They all looked at Shiloh in surprise.

  “I don’t mean to intrude,” he said, uncomfortable with their sudden focus on him.

  “You aren’t,” Tess told him. “Please go on.”

  Shiloh threw an apologetic glance at Connor. “I don’t know Ariadne, but from what you’ve said, she sounds very loyal. Maybe her nightmares make her feel disloyal and she’s afraid to tell you that.”

  “How would dreams make her feel disloyal?” Ethan asked.

  “The other thing she’s been saying, ‘Don’t let him take me,’” Shiloh replied. “That sounds to me like she can’t stop herself from being taken. She needs someone else to intervene. And, no offense, but she was calling out for her brother. Not for you.”

  An uncomfortable silence settled over the room.

  Knowing the others were waiting for him to speak, Connor finally sighed. “Well, it’s a theory.”

  “If I may . . . ,” Shiloh began, looking to Connor for permission.

  “Have at it, man,” Connor told him. How much worse could this theory get?

  Shiloh nodded his thanks and turned to Sabine. “She might be more willing to talk to someone else. A girlfriend?”

  “Girl talk?” Sabine laughed. “You don’t know me either, friend.”

  Shiloh ducked his head, blushing.

  Seriously? Connor was beginning to have doubts about this guy. Was he going to ask a monster’s permission before chopping its head off?

  “You’re not giving yourself enough credit, Sabine.” Ethan grinned at her. “You can do girl talk, I’m sure.”

  “I suppose.” Sabine nodded.

  “Good,” Tess said. “When Adne recovers, I’ll want her supervised, but not too obviously. Sabine, why don’t you train her to lead tours—but draw the training time out so you can chaperone her while we get to the bottom of this.”

  “She won’t like being told what to do,” Sabine said. “Or having me look over her shoulder all the time.”

  “I think she’ll take it in stride.” Tess glanced at Adne. “She’ll expect consequences for weaving without permission. The assignment will be her probation.”

  “My tours are punishment now?” Sabine raised an eyebrow. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  Ethan had covered his mouth, pretending to cough, but it was clear he was laughing pretty hard.

/>   “Is this why you never come to see me work?” Sabine asked, her smile curving wickedly. “I guess we’ll be talking about punishments too.”

  Tess cleared her throat. “All right then. I really should get the healer back in here.”

  “What should I do?” Connor was almost afraid to ask. His estrangement from Adne was out in the open now, and Connor felt both dejected and vulnerable.

  “The best thing for you is to stay busy,” Tess answered. “And I’ll be taking care of that.” She looked from him to Ethan. “In fact, I have work for both of you.”

  “Does it involve overtime?” Ethan asked, grinning at Sabine. “Because I think my domestic bliss might be in jeopardy.”

  “It probably will, given the nature of this business,” Tess said. “Anika’s decided it’s time for us to go back into the field.”

  “To do what?” Ethan frowned. “I thought the war was over.”

  “It is,” Tess said, sounding a bit wary. “But after the theft in the library, the Arrow has been under a lot of pressure to make sure our future is secure.”

  “How does one secure a future?” Sabine smirked. “That sounds awfully meta to me.”

  “I agree.” Tess nodded. “And I don’t think Anika is completely happy with this new strategy, but like I said, she’s been under a lot of pressure.”

  “Holt and company?” Connor asked.

  “Yes, Holt, but unfortunately there’s a growing emphasis on company,” Tess said. “While Anika is busy trying to hold everything together, Holt has all the time he wants to bring people to his way of thinking. Anika is conceding on this issue because she hopes it will keep him from interfering in other areas of the Academy.”

  “So what does Holt want us to do?” Connor stood up, straightening his duster.

  “He wants us to round up the Keepers.”

  ADNE WAS AWAKE for a long time before she opened her eyes. She stayed hidden behind the dark veil of her eyelids, afraid to face the world.

  What am I going to tell them?

  There were no good answers to the questions she would have to face. No explanations to justify her actions.

  And just as she’d known they would be, a little crowd of worried Searchers huddled around Adne’s bed when she finally opened her eyes.

  “There’s my girl.” Connor bent and kissed Adne’s cheek. “How are you feeling?”

  “Okay.” Adne tried to smile at him, but her frantic pulse was distracting her. He’ll want to know what happened. They all will. I don’t even know what really happened. “How long have I been out?”

  “A few hours,” Connor answered. “We think . . . no one is sure when exactly you lost consciousness . . .”

  He watched Adne’s face, waiting for her to fill in the empty space, but Adne just nodded, unwilling to answer the questions Connor didn’t ask.

  Her friends were polite, of course, expressing their concerns over Adne’s well-being before diving into the interrogation she knew was coming. Propped up in bed, Adne tried to answer each question truthfully, but vaguely, and soon she could see frustration registering on her friends’ faces.

  I don’t have a choice. They would never understand.

  Adne snuck a glance at her hand. Her skin was smooth, unblemished.

  I remember thorns and blood and fire.

  Closing her eyes, she too easily recalled the ripping of her skin, the burning of her flesh—but it had all been in her head. How could it have seemed so real?

  Agony wasn’t all Adne remembered. She could still hear heavy footfalls in the snow. A voice with an entrancing low, rich timbre.

  It wasn’t real. None of it was real.

  Except the wolf.

  When Adne had made it clear she’d said all she was going to about that strange night—which wasn’t much at all—Sabine had told her about finding wolf tracks beside the drag marks where her body had been hauled through the snow. But when Sabine had asked if Adne remembered a wolf in the garden, Adne had kept silent.

  Days had passed, and life had returned to its usual rhythms, and Adne held the truth back.

  I heard them howling.

  • • •

  “Adne?” Sabine’s voice pulled Adne from her thoughts. “Did you want to add anything?”

  Adne wasn’t surprised to find the entire tour group staring at her, waiting for her answer. Sabine probably was equally unsurprised that Adne hadn’t been paying attention to the narrative as the tour progressed through Rowan Estate.

  “No, thank you,” Adne answered, making sure to smile at the tourists.

  It had to irk Sabine that she’d been assigned the worst apprentice ever. Adne couldn’t believe otherwise. But Sabine never showed irritation at Adne’s shiny new absentmindedness, and Adne presumed that Sabine’s kindness was a sign of concern.

  Adne’s own lack of annoyance upon being reprimanded for her nighttime excursion to Rowan Estate and subsequent assignment to assist Sabine with the tours derived from her own fears. Though Adne sensed her punishment was intended to be of the “be careful what you wish for” variety, Adne didn’t mind the days confined to Rowan Estate and kept under Sabine’s guard. The night in the garden had frightened Adne enough that she welcomed Sabine’s vigilance . . . at least so far.

  And at least enough that she felt guilty about being such a poor tour guide, more of a burden to Sabine than anything resembling helpful. Adne had a hard time keeping on task, whether it was during the actual tours or studying the history and anecdotes necessary to keep visitors entertained. Most days Adne could barely recall things about Rowan Estate that she should have known offhand. There didn’t seem to be room in her mind for any of it.

  Since the incident (that was what Tess called it when doling out Adne’s punishment), there were only two things that Adne could concentrate on for sustained periods of time: the hazy memories of what transpired in the garden and the contents of the papers she’d found just before something or someone had beckoned her into the winter night.

  Adne studied those papers when she was supposed to be memorizing the tour scripts. While other facts and stories slipped in and out of her mind, unable to find a resting place, Adne had no trouble committing what she’d discovered in those old pages to memory.

  Perhaps the exception could be accounted for because of the unsettling information scrawled across the yellowed paper. Or maybe it was because Adne was certain that information had profound implications, but she wasn’t sure what those implications were.

  I should tell someone.

  That thought crossed Adne’s mind at least twice an hour, but it was always chased away by that low voice.

  This is a secret. It’s our secret.

  Adne repeatedly justified her silence about the pages by assuring herself that anything they might have once revealed was made obsolete by the Rift’s closing.

  It didn’t matter that all Keepers were not created equal.

  It didn’t matter that the Harbinger’s bond to this world had been manifested physically as well as magically.

  It didn’t matter that the Searchers’ salvation, the long-awaited Scion, shared the same blood as the bringer of their doom.

  All of that was past. What Adne knew would someday feature in the footnotes of a history book or as obscure trivia about the Witches’ War.

  As she rationalized the keeping of these secrets, one crack in her resolve remained.

  Logan, too, carried the blood of the Harbinger. And Logan had hired thieves to ransack Rowan Estate’s library.

  Logan was hunting for something. And Adne couldn’t help but wonder if she’d found it. Even if she had, she didn’t know why Logan would risk exposing himself to the Searchers. He must believe there was something to gain by tapping into the origins of the Keepers.

  But what?

  The tour group began to move along the hall, and Adne tried to listen with interest as Sabine described the estate’s art collection. This part of the tour was utter fabrication given that Bosq
ue’s paintings of captured Searchers in torment had been disposed of and replaced by greatest hits of the Dutch masters and landscapes by William Sonntag. But Adne only managed to focus for two paintings before something turned her head toward the far end of the hall.

  The sound was so quiet, Adne considered for a moment that she’d simply imagined it. Only for the sake of curiosity, Adne took a couple of steps in the direction from which the noise that might not have been a noise came. She heard it again.

  Muffled, but plaintive, with a keen edge that could not be silenced.

  Adne glanced at Sabine, who was directing the herd of tourists into the next room. Determining that she could slip away for a few minutes without causing alarm, Adne stayed toward the back of the group, and when the last visitor had entered the conservatory, Adne quickly walked in the opposite direction.

  Keeping her footsteps light, Adne followed the strange sound. It pulled her down the hall as if she held a string that someone on the other end was slowly winding up. The sound led her around a corner into a hallway whose rooms were hidden behind closed doors.

  Still following the noise, Adne approached one of the doors and pressed her ear up against it.

  A shaking breath. A choked-off sob.

  Someone was inside. And they were crying.

  Adne didn’t knock. Instead, she turned the doorknob and slowly pushed the door open.

  The weeping stopped suddenly.

  “Who’s there?” a woman’s tremulous voice called out.

  Adne peeked her head into the room. Her throat closed up when she recognized the questioner.

  Sarah Doran’s eyes were bloodshot, her face chalk white. She was kneeling on the floor beside an open steamer trunk, and her arms were wrapped around what appeared to be a baby’s blanket.

  “Oh, Ariadne.” Sarah squinted at Adne, and some of the hostility left her voice. “I don’t mean to be rude, but is there a reason you’re here?”

  Letting herself into the room, Adne approached Sarah cautiously. “I’m helping with the tours.”

  “The tours.” Sarah’s face scrunched up. “How quickly they’ve forgotten this was someone’s home.”

  Adne began to frown, but then she noticed the room’s features. Unlike the opulence of Rowan Estate’s other rooms, this bedroom was simply appointed. And it looked as though someone was still living in it. A hooded sweatshirt was casually thrown over the chair beside a desk that was piled with books. The closet door was open and Adne saw boys’ clothes hanging inside.