“She hates me,” Soren adds.
...and foolish, apparently.
As I climb through the window, my coat catches on the frame with a quiet rip. Soren pulls me loose, and we sneak through a dark room. The floor creaks loudly under our feet.
I hear a thud, a groan, then a candle flickers, illuminating a severe woman with sharp eyes, and Soren knocked out on the floor by my side. Hot, clever, foolish, and unconscious.
I summon my power, ready to fight back. It crackles along my fingers like veins of ice in a frozen lake.
“Well, well, well, what do we have here?” the woman says.
Chapter 23
Soren
The world is a white ache, and I’m shivering. My eyes burn from the bright gray clouds. I close them, rolling over, forgetting where I am.
“It’s going to rain,” a familiar voice says.
My eyes fly back open. “Gerda?”
“Not Aunt Gerda to you anymore?”
I glower. “Not when you hit me over the head with a—” I rub the lump on my temple.
“A metal pan. Next time knock. Sneaking in through the window is for thugs and thieves.”
I sit up slowly, knowing well enough that if I move too quickly, I’ll get dizzy and she won’t forgive me if I get sick on her floor. “I’m not a thug or a thief.”
“Oh no?” she asks, her voice a sarcastic air of surprise.
Kiki sleeps across the room, curled up in a chair. I scrub my hands down my face. I hope that Gerda didn’t strike her with a blunt object too.
“I knew she was fae the second I saw her. Dangerous, Soren.”
I’m not awake enough yet to say something to protect her from my aunt’s distaste for magic.
“They’re looking for you,” Gerda warns. “They’ve looked here.”
I raise an eyebrow. Ouch. Bad move.
Gerda brings me a ball of snow for the swelling on my head. I follow her slim lines to the tight coil of her light hair. Her hazel eyes meet mine, and I wonder how much of her appearance she shared with my mother. The only thing I have left is the shard of the mirror I took from the hut on the hill before we fled the Roost.
The cold soothes the welt from the pan but drives the chill in my bones deeper. “Thank you,” I mutter. “You didn’t tell them—?”
“Despite what you may think of me, I’m not stupid. You earned that title by coming here and who knows how many other dumb, thoughtless things you’ve done over the years. Shall we take a tally?”
“You can try, but then I might overstay my welcome,” I counter.
“You already have. Why are they looking for you anyway?” Her gaze drifts over to Kiki. “Never mind.”
“She didn’t tell you?”
“She said that she didn’t know you. That you kidnapped her and were bringing her—”
My heart skips a beat.
Gerda wears her slyest smile. “I’m kidding. You look like you saw a ghost.” Her voice takes a leap across the water.
“What do you mean?”
She shakes her head and repeats, “Never mind.”
“I want to know.”
She stalks over to me and leans close, her nose nearly bumping mine. I wonder if she and my mother smelled alike. “I’d have to trust you in order to tell you, Soren. You made it clear that you don’t care enough to make it any of your concern, Blackthorne.”
I get to my feet, disregarding the spinning. “Don’t call me that.” No, I can’t imagine Gerda is anything like my mother.
She grunts.
“Whatever you’re alluding to in the past about waiting for Kiki, it’s my concern now. We just came from the Morgorthian Mountains. I remember the old stories…The Hero’s Horn, the ravens, and kings. You told me it was a bunch of garbage, stories the weak-minded tell around the fire to keep the ghosts away…”
She hisses, “I wanted you to learn to think for yourself, Soren.”
“Vespertine said—”
Gerda shuffles backward. “Vespertine?” she whispers and goes very still as if the name itself is as cold as the mountains.
“She really didn’t tell you?” I ask, gesturing to Kiki.
“No, she was tired and concerned about you; not that she should be—”
“And what did you tell her?”
“I told her not to trust you, that you’re a rowser with no regard for his family.”
Ah, I see. She grips the old grudge, refusing to let it go.
“I thought the book belonged to my mother,” I say defensively. I just wanted a piece of her aside from the broken mirror.
She scoffs, but then her eyes blaze the way they have every time the subject of my mother comes up. They were sisters and apparently bitter enemies. “I tried to be your other mother, even though I’m not her,” she says with venom.
We’ve had this conversation so many times I can’t blame my head for pounding.
“I tried to take care of you after you lost her and then again when your dad died. And your repayment? Run off with Trotter to gamble away the one thing—”
“But Dad…” I don’t finish. Instead, throw my hands up in the air. I can’t win this battle; I’ve tried and I’m too cold and worn out to make another attempt.
She bears her opinions as clearly on her skin as I do mine.
“So tell me, what are you doing here?” Her voice is frosty.
“I’m going to run off to Trotter again as soon as I can, but not for tiles. I’m back because we’re uniting the people.”
“Are you now?” Gerda asks with a hand on her hip, but her eyes soften as though she’s been waiting for someone—me—to say this.
Kiki stirs and looks at me apologetically. She rubs her eyes and says, “What did I miss?”
“Breakfast. Are you hungry?” Gerda asks with unusual politeness.
