I knew he could hear my heart as it ratcheted into a thunderous beat. I gave him a hateful little smirk, anyway, yanking my chin out of his touch and leaping off the stone. I might have aimed for his feet. And he might have shifted out of the way just enough to avoid it. “Isn’t that all you males are good for, anyway?” But the words were tight, near-breathless.
His answering smile evoked silken sheets and jasmine-scented breezes at midnight.
A dangerous line—one Rhys was forcing me to walk to keep me from thinking about what I was about to face, about what a wreck I was inside.
Anger, this … flirtation, annoyance … He knew those were my crutches.
What I was about to encounter, then, must be truly harrowing if he wanted me going in there mad—thinking about sex, about anything but the Weaver of the Wood.
“Nice try,” I said hoarsely. Rhysand just shrugged and swaggered off into the trees ahead.
Bastard. Yes, it had been to distract me, but—
I stormed after him as silently as I could, intent on tackling him and slamming my fist into his spine, but he held up a hand as he stopped before a clearing.
A small, whitewashed cottage with a thatched roof and half-crumbling chimney sat in the center. Ordinary—almost mortal. There was even a well, its bucket perched on the stone lip, and a wood pile beneath one of the round windows of the cottage. No sound or light within—not even smoke puffed from the chimney.
The few birds in the forest fell quiet. Not entirely, but to keep their chatter to a minimum. And—there.
Faint, coming from inside the cottage, was a pretty, steady humming.
It might have been the sort of place I would have stopped if I were thirsty, or hungry, or in need of shelter for the night.
Maybe that was the trap.
The trees around the clearing, so close that their branches nearly clawed at the thatched roof, might very well have been the bars of a cage.
Rhys inclined his head toward the cottage, bowing with dramatic grace.
In, out—don’t make a sound. Find whatever object it was and snatch it from beneath a blind person’s nose.
And then run like hell.
Mossy earth paved the way to the front door, already cracked slightly. A bit of cheese. And I was the foolish mouse about to fall for it.
Eyes twinkling, Rhys mouthed, Good luck.
I gave him a vulgar gesture and slowly, silently made my way toward the front door.
The woods seemed to monitor each of my steps. When I glanced behind, Rhys was gone.
He hadn’t said if he’d interfere if I were in mortal peril. I probably should have asked.
I avoided any leaves and stones, falling into a pattern of movement that some part of my body—some part that was not born of the High Lords—remembered.
Like waking up. That’s what it felt like.
I passed the well. Not a speck of dirt, not a stone out of place. A perfect, pretty trap, that mortal part of me warned. A trap designed from a time when humans were prey; now laid for a smarter, immortal sort of game.
I was not prey any longer, I decided as I eased up to that door.
And I was not a mouse.
I was a wolf.
I listened on the threshold, the rock worn as if many, many boots had passed through—and perhaps never passed back over again. The words of her song became clear now, her voice sweet and beautiful, like sunlight on a stream:
“There were two sisters, they went playing,
To see their father’s ships come sailing …
And when they came unto the sea-brim
The elder did push the younger in.”
A honeyed voice, for an ancient, horrible song. I’d heard it before—slightly different, but sung by humans who had no idea that it had come from faerie throats.
I listened for another moment, trying to hear anyone else. But there was only a clatter and thrum of some sort of device, and the Weaver’s song.
“Sometimes she sank, and sometimes she swam,
’Til her corpse came to the miller’s dam.”
My breath was tight in my chest, but I kept it even—directing it through my mouth in silent breaths. I eased open the front door, just an inch.
No squeak—no whine of rusty hinges. Another piece of the pretty trap: practically inviting thieves in. I peered inside when the door had opened wide enough.
A large main room, with a small, shut door in the back. Floor-to-ceiling shelves lined the walls, crammed with bric-a-brac: books, shells, dolls, herbs, pottery, shoes, crystals, more books, jewels … From the ceiling and wood rafters hung all manner of chains, dead birds, dresses, ribbons, gnarled bits of wood, strands of pearls …
A junk shop—of some immortal hoarder.
And that hoarder …
In the gloom of the cottage, there sat a large spinning wheel, cracked and dulled with age.
And before that ancient spinning wheel, her back to me, sat the Weaver.
Her thick hair was of richest onyx, tumbling down to her slender waist as she worked the wheel, snow-white hands feeding and pulling the thread around a thorn-sharp spindle.
She looked young—her gray gown simple but elegant, sparkling faintly in the dim forest light through the windows as she sang in a voice of glittering gold:
“But what did he do with her breastbone?
He made him a viol to play on.
What’d he do with her fingers so small?
He made pegs to his viol withall.”
The fiber she fed into the wheel was white—soft. Like wool, but … I knew, in that lingering human part of me, it was not wool. I knew that I did not want to learn what creature it had come from, who she was spinning into thread.
Because on the shelf directly beyond her were cones upon cones of threads—of every color and texture. And on the shelf adjacent to her were swaths and yards of that woven thread—woven, I realized, on the massive loom nearly hidden in the darkness near the hearth. The Weaver’s loom.
I had come on spinning day—would she have been singing if I had come on weaving day instead? From the strange, fear-drenched scent that came from those bolts of fabric, I already knew the answer.
A wolf. I was a wolf.
I stepped into the cottage, careful of the scattered debris on the earthen floor. She kept working, the wheel clattering so merrily, so at odds with her horrible song:
“And what did he do with her nose-ridge?
Unto his viol he made a bridge.
What did he do with her veins so blue?
He made strings to his viol thereto.”
I scanned the room, trying not to listen to the lyrics.
Nothing. I felt … nothing that might pull me toward one object in particular. Perhaps it would be a blessing if I were indeed not the one to track the Book—if today was not the start of what was sure to be a slew of miseries.
The Weaver perched there, working.
I scanned the shelves, the ceiling. Borrowed time. I was on borrowed time, and I was almost out of it.
Had Rhys sent me on a fool’s errand? Maybe there was nothing here. Maybe this object had been taken. It would be just like him to do that. To tease me in the woods, to see what sort of things might make my body react.
And maybe I resented Tamlin enough in that moment to enjoy that deadly bit of flirtation. Maybe I was as much a monster as the female spinning before me.
But if I was a monster, then I supposed Rhys was as well.
Rhys and I were one in the same—beyond the power that he’d given me. It’d be fitting if Tamlin hated me, too, once he realized I’d truly left.
I felt it, then—like a tap on my shoulder.
I pivoted, keeping one eye on the Weaver and the other on the room as I wove through the maze of tables and junk. Like a beacon, a bit of light laced with his half smile, it tugged me.
Hello, it seemed to say. Have you come to claim me at last?
Yes—yes, I wanted to say. Even as part of me wishe
d it were otherwise.
The Weaver sang behind me,
“What did he do with her eyes so bright?
On his viol he set at first light.
What did he do with her tongue so rough?
’Twas the new till and it spoke enough.”
I followed that pulse—toward the shelf lining the wall beside the hearth. Nothing. And nothing on the second. But the third, right above my eyeline … There.
I could almost smell his salt-and-citrus scent. The Bone Carver had been correct.
I rose on my toes to examine the shelf. An old letter knife, books in leather that I did not want to touch or smell; a handful of acorns, a tarnished crown of ruby and jasper, and—
A ring.
A ring of twisted strands of gold and silver, flecked with pearl, and set with a stone of deepest, solid blue. Sapphire—but different. I’d never seen a sapphire like that, even at my father’s offices. This one … I could have sworn that in the pale light, the lines of a six-pointed star radiated across the round, opaque surface.
Rhys—this had Rhys written all over it.
He’d sent me here for a ring?
The Weaver sang,
“Then bespake the treble string,
‘O yonder is my father the king.’”
I watched her for another heartbeat, gauging the distance between the shelf and the open door. Grab the ring, and I could be gone in a heartbeat. Quick, quiet, calm.
“Then bespake the second string,
‘O yonder sits my mother the queen.’ ”
I dropped a hand toward one of the knives strapped to my thighs. When I got back to Rhys, maybe I’d stab him in the gut.
That fast, the memory of phantom blood covered my hands. I knew how it’d feel to slide my dagger through his skin and bones and flesh. Knew how the blood would dribble out, how he’d groan in pain—
I shut out the thought, even as I could feel the blood of those faeries soaking that human part of me that hadn’t died and belonged to no one but my miserable self.
“Then bespake the strings all three,
‘Yonder is my sister that drowned me.’ ”
My hand was quiet as a final, dying breath as I plucked the ring from the shelf.
The Weaver stopped singing.
CHAPTER
21
I froze, the ring now in the pocket of my jacket. She’d finished the last song—maybe she’d start another.
Maybe.
The spinning wheel slowed.
I backed a step toward the door. Then another.
Slower and slower, each rotation of the ancient wheel longer than the last.
Only ten steps to the door.
Five.
The wheel went round, one last time, so slow I could see each of the spokes.
Two.
I turned for the door as she lashed out with a white hand, gripping the wheel and stopping it wholly.
The door before me snicked shut.
I lunged for the handle, but there was none.
Window. Get to the window—
“Who is in my house?” she said softly.
Fear—undiluted, unbroken fear—slammed into me, and I remembered. I remembered what it was to be human and helpless and weak. I remembered what it was to want to fight to live, to be willing to do anything to stay breathing—
I reached the window beside the door. Sealed. No latch, no opening. Just glass that was not glass. Solid and impenetrable.
The Weaver turned her face toward me.
Wolf or mouse, it made no difference, because I became no more than an animal, sizing up my chance of survival.
Above her young, supple body, beneath her black, beautiful hair, her skin was gray—wrinkled and sagging and dry. And where eyes should have gleamed instead lay rotting black pits. Her lips had withered to nothing but deep, dark lines around a hole full of jagged stumps of teeth—like she had gnawed on too many bones.
And I knew she would be gnawing on my bones soon if I did not get out.
Her nose—perhaps once pert and pretty, now half-caved in—flared as she sniffed in my direction.
“What are you?” she said in a voice that was so young and lovely.
Out—out, I had to get out—
There was another way.
One suicidal, reckless way.
I did not want to die.
I did not want to be eaten.
I did not want to go into that sweet darkness.
The Weaver rose from her little stool.
And I knew my borrowed time had run out.
“What is like all,” she mused, taking one graceful step toward me, “but unlike all?”
I was a wolf.
And I bit when cornered.
I lunged for the sole candle burning on the table in the center of the room. And hurled it against the wall of woven thread—against all those miserable, dark bolts of fabric. Woven bodies, skins, lives. Let them be free.
Fire erupted, and the Weaver’s shriek was so piercing I thought my head might shatter; thought my blood might boil in its veins.
She dashed for the flames, as if she’d put them out with those flawless white hands, her mouth of rotted teeth open and screaming like there was nothing but black hell inside her.
I hurtled for the darkened hearth. For the fireplace and chimney above.
A tight squeeze, but wide—wide enough for me.
I didn’t hesitate as I grabbed onto the ledge and hauled myself up, arms buckling. Immortal strength—it got me only so far, and I’d become so weak, so malnourished.
I had let them make me weak. Bent to it like some wild horse broken to the bit.
The soot-stained bricks were loose, uneven. Perfect for climbing.
Faster—I had to go faster.
But my shoulders scraped against the brick, and it reeked in here, like carrion and burned hair, and there was an oily sheen on the stone, like cooked fat—
The Weaver’s screaming was cut short as I was halfway up her chimney, sunlight and trees almost visible, every breath a near-sob.
I reached for the next brick, fingernails breaking as I hauled myself up so violently that my arms barked in protest against the squeezing of the stone around me, and—
And I was stuck.
Stuck, as the Weaver hissed from within her house, “What little mouse is climbing about in my chimney?”
I had just enough room to look down as the Weaver’s rotted face appeared below.
She put that milk-white hand on the ledge, and I realized how little room there was between us.
My head emptied out.
I pushed against the grip of the chimney, but couldn’t budge.
I was going to die here. I was going to be dragged down by those beautiful hands and ripped apart and eaten. Maybe while I was still alive, she’d set that hideous mouth on my flesh and gnaw and tear and bite and—
Black panic crushed in, and I was again trapped under a nearby mountain, in a muddy trench, the Middengard Wyrm barreling for me. I’d barely escaped, barely—
I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe—
The Weaver’s nails scratched against the brick as she took a step up.
No, no, no, no, no—
I kicked and kicked against the bricks.
“Did you think you could steal and flee, thief?”
I would have preferred the Middengard Wyrm. Would have preferred those massive, sharp teeth to her jagged stumps—
Stop.
The word came out of the darkness of my mind.
And the voice was my own.
Stop, it said—I said.
Breathe.
Think.
The Weaver came closer, brick crumbling under her hands. She’d climb up like a spider—like I was a fly in her web—
Stop.
And that word quieted everything.
I mouthed it.
Stop, stop, stop.
Think.
I had survived
the Wyrm—survived Amarantha. And I had been granted gifts. Considerable gifts.
Like strength.
I was strong.
I slammed a hand against the chimney wall, as low as I could get. The Weaver hissed at the debris that rained down. I smashed my fist again, rallying that strength.
I was not a pet, not a doll, not an animal.
I was a survivor, and I was strong.
I would not be weak, or helpless again. I would not, could not be broken. Tamed.
I pounded my fist into the bricks over and over, and the Weaver paused.
Paused long enough for the brick I’d loosened to slide free into my waiting palm.
And for me to hurl it at her hideous, horrible face as hard as I could.
Bone crunched and she roared, black blood spraying. But I rammed my shoulders into the sides of the chimney, skin tearing beneath my leather. I kept going, going, going, until I was stone breaking stone, until nothing and no one held me back and I was scaling the chimney.
I didn’t dare stop, not as I reached the lip and hauled myself out, tumbling onto the thatched roof. Which was not thatched with hay at all.
But hair.
And with all that fat lining the chimney—all that fat now gleaming on my skin … the hair clung to me. In clumps and strands and tufts. Bile rose, but the front door banged open—a shriek following it.
No—not that way. Not to the ground.
Up, up, up.
A tree branch hung low and close by, and I scrambled across that heinous roof, trying not to think about who and what I was stepping on, what clung to my skin, my clothes. A heartbeat later, I’d jumped onto the waiting branch, scrambling into the leaves and moss as the Weaver screamed, “WHERE ARE YOU?”
But I was running through the tree—running toward another one nearby. I leaped from branch to branch, bare hands tearing on the wood. Where was Rhysand?
Farther and farther I fled, her screams chasing me, though they grew ever-distant.
Where are you, where are you, where are you—
And then, lounging on a branch in a tree before me, one arm draped over the edge, Rhysand drawled, “What the hell did you do?”