“Beware the birth of May,” it hisses.
With a loud yelp, I fall back, and the world comes to its full speed again. I’ve collided with Ann, who has bumped into Felicity, and so on, like a row of dominoes.
“Gemma!” Ann says, and I realize I’m holding fast to her.
“S-sorry,” I say, wiping the sweat from my brow.
“Ugh. Here.” Felicity hands me a handkerchief.
The pump organ’s blast of missed notes calls us to sing, and I hope its garish tones can mask the frantic beating of my heart. Hymnals are lifted and girlish voices rise without question of a bulwark ever failing. My lips move but I cannot sing. I’m trembling and drenched in a cold sweat.
Don’t look. But I must, I must….
I slide my eyes ever so carefully to the right, where moments ago an angel’s bloody trophy hissed a warning I don’t understand. But now the angel’s face is peaceful. The gorgon’s head sleeps. It’s only a picture in a window, nothing more than colored glass.
My blood will not settle, so I sit, alone, and read the letter from home I put away earlier. It is the usual twaddle from Grandmama, with mention of this party and that social call and all the latest gossip, but I’ve no head for it at present. I am surprised to read that Simon Middleton asked after me, and for a moment, my gloom is dispelled, and then I hate myself for allowing my thoughts to be turned so easily by a man; and just as quickly, I forget to hate myself and read the sentence three times over.
Just behind Grandmama’s letter is a note from Tom.
Dear Gemma, Lady of Pointed Tongue, he writes. I am writing this under duress, as Grandmama will not grant me peace until I do. Very well, I shall meet my obligation as a brother. I trust you are well. I, myself, am simply superb, never better. My gentlemen’s club has expressed a very keen interest in me, and I’ve been told I shall face a rigorous initiation into their sacred rites before the season commences. They’ve even been so kind as to ask after you with all manner of questions, though I can’t imagine why. I’ve told them exactly how disagreeable you can be. So you see that you and Father are wrong about me after all, and I shall try to be kind and acknowledge you on the street with a nod and a smile when I am a peer. And now, my duty finished, I leave you. Fondly as is possible given your unsuitable temperament, Thomas.
I crumple the note and throw it into the fire. I desperately need advice—about my brother, the Order, Wilhelmina Wyatt, the realms, and this magic inside me that both astounds and frightens. There is only one person I can turn to who might hold the answers to all my questions. And I shall go to her.
CHAPTER THIRTY
AT THE BRAMBLE WALL, I LEAVE MY FRIENDS. ANN PUTS her face close to the barbs that separate us. “Aren’t you coming?”
“Yes, later. There is a matter I must attend to.”
Felicity is suspicious. “What is it?”
I sigh dramatically. “I must speak to Asha about a matter between the Untouchables and the forest folk. A dispute.”
“Sounds terribly dull,” Felicity says. “Best of luck.”
Arm in arm, they hurry toward the castle, which juts up from its nest of vines like a bony mirage.
The smudge pots that line the dusty road to the Temple belch their colorful smoke. Usually, the scent is of the sweetest incense, but today, there’s a different smell, something sharp and unpleasant. The Hajin seem agitated. It is as if they await a promised storm.
“Lady Hope,” Asha says with a bow.
“I must approach the well of eternity,” I say, heading for it without stopping.
Asha keeps pace with me through the maze of corridors. “Lady Hope, my people are afraid. The forest folk accuse us of collaborating secretly with the Order—”
“And have you?” I query.
“Surely you do not believe it also?”
I don’t know what I believe anymore. The Order has some plan, and I intend to have answers about that when I leave. We’ve reached the Caves of Sighs. “Asha, I need to be alone.”
She bows again, shielding her eyes. “As you wish, Lady Hope.”
Circe’s body floats beneath the glasslike surface of the well. She seems weightless, yet I feel her presence so heavily I can scarcely breathe.
“So you’ve come back after all.”
I need your help. Try as I might, I cannot choke out those words.
“Something is at hand, and I want to know what it is!”
Her voice is like a dying woman’s. “You understand…the price…for my counsel?”