understood.
In a small cask a thick fluid moved, bubbles rising so frequently they sizzled through the murky liquid. She paused there a moment, watching the viscous liquid until a bubble reached its top, pierced the skin, and snapped open, belching out a smell that reminded Jordan of the docks in summer. Wrinkling her nose against the briny scent, she moved on. Her fingers skimmed the counter’s edges, her chains rustling between her wrists, a reminder of her imprisonment even while she explored the dim space independently.
She paused before a ghostly shape nested deep in a dusty cubbyhole and squinted, forcing her eyes to adjust and define the curve of the bulbous thing so white it nearly glowed from the cabinet’s recess. She gasped, recognizing it. Two black eye sockets peered blindly back at her, the skull leering out at her—its smile broad and amiable. Cheerful in a frighteningly alien way.
Her fingers tightened on the counter’s edge.
She had only seen a drawing of a skull in a book sitting open in one of the more questionable stores in the Below, and only once. Still … this was smaller than she expected. Her own head was a bit bigger, of that she was quite sure. She rolled her lower lip between her teeth and eased back and away.
The cask’s bubbling intensified and Jordan raised an eyebrow, her gaze drifting back toward it. On the counter a bottle shivered and another trembled, walking forward on its round glass edge. Jordan backed up farther. All the jars and bottles with liquid in them—all the containers that had contents able to slosh—sloshed and quivered and danced below the little grinning skull—a child’s skull, Jordan realized—like anxious living things.
Like anxious living things with a secret to tell.
She reached out, wrapped a shaking hand around the skull, and, cradling it in hand, pulled it out of the dark pit it had been condemned to.
The bottles and flasks all stopped their chattering at once. The silence that descended was somehow more disturbing than the clattering noise of a moment before.
There was no sound in the chamber now except for Jordan’s breathing and the strange and ceaseless tapping that sounded from the chamber’s still unexplored corner.
She held the skull so its eye sockets were level with her own wide eyes and she peered into them, wondering what color the eyes had once been. Had they been ringed with thick lashes—was this a boy or a girl who’d lost his or her head? Slowly she turned the skull, pausing again. Jordan drew down a deep breath.
There was magick here—magick that was dark and dirty and disappointing. And had absolutely nothing to do with her.
The goose bumps on her arms raising the fine hairs there seemed to insist this magick wanted to have more than a little to do with her—regardless of her own wishes.
She tried to force her hands to stop their trembling but that only intensified the rattling that shook her straight to her bones. With all the care she could muster, she set the skull back in its cubby and stepped away once more.
Dread uncurled in her stomach, but Jordan headed toward the noise, her feet pulling her body, unbidden, forward. The child’s skull was behind her, and the blackness nestling around it felt just as heavy as the darkness cloaking the corner before her.
Light slipped like quicksilver across the domed surface of a large bell jar. The tapping sound grew louder, more frantic, and she saw a flicker of movement behind the glass’s surface. She drew nearer and the sound intensified, the tapping becoming a soft drumbeat as a dozen pairs of wings—of all shapes and patterns, colors and sizes—beat against the glass in protest of being confined.
Butterflies flew in a controlled panic, wings stroking the glass.
Jordan’s hand flew to the pendant at her neck.
Light blared in the chamber and she stumbled back.
“They’re beautiful, aren’t they?” The Maker’s voice scraped down her spine and Jordan swung around to face him, her chain swinging between her wrists.
She was as free as the butterflies in the bell jar. She could move, but not far enough to mean anything.
The Maker strolled across the floor and flicked a finger against the jar, sending the butterflies into a full- blown panic, their wings clattering en masse against the opposite wall. “Did you know their wings seem to have similarities to the stormcells?”
Jordan shook her head, mute in his presence.
“They build and hold power in their wings thanks to sunlight the way Witches pull storms into themselves. Some believe they bring sunlight—that’s why they’ve been nicknamed sunseekers—that they have a symbiotic relationship with the sun itself, calling to it the way your kind calls to darkness and storms.” He looked her up and down. “Nothing to say?” He frowned. “That is so very frustrating—talking at someone instead of
She looked down, focusing on the spot she knew her feet were hiding beneath the hem of her dress. “
“You’re just like the rest of them,” he said, disappointment clear in his softening tone. “You resent me. You resent this gift I am giving you—this freedom from being Grounded. Do you know what I would give to no longer be Grounded?” His hand dropped forward and he snagged her chain, yanking her forward.
“Let us begin then,” he said, placing her in the chair and pulling the buckles tight across her wrists. “I do not hold your words against you, Jordan. You should speak freely,” he insisted, his mouth so close to her ear as he cinched the final strap that all she heard was the rasp of his words. “Yes, Jordan, if thoughts or words well up in you, you should always speak freely. Or, better yet—
It was Rowen who suggested he stand guard at the river’s edge, letting the horses drink from the shallowest part of the water. “Perhaps we should head directly to Holgate. When Jordan is cleared of these charges, she will need someone to bring her home.”
Jonathan kept his head down, settling Silver’s mane with the brush he’d wisely packed into the saddlebags. “That is a good point, young sir. And as good a direction to head as any.” He tugged at Silver’s ear and the horse flicked it and whinnied good-naturedly. “You could be Miss Jordan’s escort—if not her hero,” Jonathan teased.
“I’m only hero material if your cousin Frederick includes me in his fiction,” Rowen mused darkly.
“There is more hero to you than I think you’ve ever imagined,” Jonathan said, pausing in Silver’s grooming to look across the horse’s back to Rowen. “I tend to believe, if you will indulge me a moment, that a man can never be disproven of heroism unless he fails when pushed to perform. Untested, who knows? You,
Rowen looked away. “So we head to Holgate.”
“Yes. And you consider that you might yet be Miss Jordan’s hero. She is a damsel in distress. What is more worthy a hero’s task than to be a knight in shining armor for a damsel?”
Rowen laughed. Rudely.
Jonathan was not amused. “Consider that you might be the happily ever after to her currently tragic tale.”
Rowen mumbled something devoid of commitment and said, “You read too much fiction.” He cleared his throat. “Perhaps. If I am to be her hero—the happily ever after to her currently tragic tale—then I must say you are a good part of that story. This madness is all made more bearable by the assistance of a fine friend such as yourself. A fine friend is just as important as a fine woman in having a true happily ever after.”
Jonathan snorted. “You might disagree with your current sentiment if you spend more time with Miss Jordan. Unchaperoned.”
Rowen blinked and then burst out laughing. “Perhaps!”
They didn’t hear, see, or smell it until it was on top of Jonathan, its broad flipper hands catching his head and twisting his neck with a crunch so loud Silver bolted as Jonathan crumpled to the ground, the Merrow sinking down with him.
Rowen shouted and fired a shot, but the Merrow sprang away, using its slick tail as a coil and propelling itself after Silver as he streaked into the woods.
