by V. E. Schwab
Panic rippled through Will’s chest. “How long ago?” he asked.
Lightning cracked across the freezing sky.
“Is she alone?” demanded Robert over the storm.
“She took two of her guard,” answered Eric. “But none have come back.”
“Send two more,” he ordered. “Everyone else, get inside.”
Once within, Robert took to pacing. Will looked through the windows at the worsening storm. This was all wrong.
“When did she leave?” asked Robert.
“About an hour ago, when she found his note.”
Will cringed, and Robert stopped mid-stride. “What note?”
Eric frowned, and produced a slip of paper. “He left a note when he snuck out.”
The air in the room seemed to freeze as his father turned toward him. “How did you end up at the lake?”
“They dragged me there,” said Will.
“But not from here, so from where?”
He hesitated.
“I will ask you once,” warned Robert, “so answer well. Why did you leave this house this evening?”
Before Will could speak, someone else did.
“I heard the Lady say it was the storm.”
The voice came from an old woman in a crisp white cloak. One of his mother’s attendants. “He went for the storm,” she chirped again. “He wanted the storm.”
Robert stiffened, and spun on his son. “Is that true?”
Will took a step back.
“The Lady knew the Lord would be angry,” she prattled. “And so she went to find him first.”
Will took another step back, and vowed to smother the old lady in her sleep.
“William.” Robert’s knuckles went white on the grip of the knife at his belt. “Did you seek out the storm? To what end would you…” But he didn’t need to finish the question. He knew. It showed in the tensing of his jaw, and his grip on the knife. Will was too tired to lie, but knew better than to voice the truth. Still, Robert took his silence for confession.
“And I thought you’d learned,” he said quietly as he slid the knife free. “Roll up your sleeves.”
Will took a third step, and came up against a shelf.
“Hold him down,” ordered his father as Will reached blindly back, and felt something sharp on the shelf. He curled his fingers around it as Eric strode toward him, but just then the doors flew open, and a damp guard announced, “She’s here, sir. Lady Dale is back.”
6
Robert and Will hurried to the foyer as Lady Dale and her guards strode in. Icy rain coated their cloaks like frost, their cheeks flushed and their hair matted to their skin from the storm. Will reached for his mother, but Robert cut him off, stripping her cloak and wrapping his arms around her in a single gesture.
“You are the life and death of me,” he said.
She soothed him with a touch. But then her eyes found Will, and widened at the sight of him. Half the blood had washed away in the rain, but his face was still cut and his eyes hollow. She pulled away, and stepped past Robert toward him. Will hugged her close, shivering as his cheek met hers. She was cold as ice.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. He said it again and again until she ran her hand over his hair.
“It’s all right,” she cooed. “You’re safe. I’m safe. You’re here. I’m here.” It was something she used to say, when he had nightmares.
“Katherine,” said Robert. “Let’s get you warm.” She began to pull away. Will didn’t want to let go, but she slid from his embrace. “In the morning, Will, you must tell me everything.”
Will nodded.
“Come,” pressed Robert.
”I’m well,” she said, as she took her husband’s hand. But she did not look it. Dread crept through Will as he watched them go. He stood in the foyer, surrounded by the guards, and felt… lost. Something was wrong. So many things were wrong, and he didn’t know what to do, so he stood very still and waited. Everyone else waited, too, as if they could feel the wrongness taking shape.
And then, sometime later, Robert returned.
The look on his face was unlike any Will had ever seen. Anger he recognized, and frustration, but the thing threaded through Robert’s features was fear.
“Father,” started Will, but when Robert spoke, he did not speak to his son, did not even acknowledge his presence.
“Take him to his room,” he said. “And make sure he stays there.”
With that he turned, and left the hall.
* * *
Will’s room had two locks, one on the inside, and one on the out. He listened to the outer bolt grate across the wood, and tore the damp cloak from his shoulders before sinking into the nearest chair, cursing the storm and Phillip and himself.
He did this. He provoked his cousin and left the note and chased the darkening clouds, and his mother… she was just cold, he told himself. Chilled from the rain. She would be fine. She would be fine, and Robert’s anger would fade into relief, and in the morning they would unlock Will’s door and he would go down and have breakfast, and sit across from his father, his mother between them like the bridge she was.
He closed his eyes, and sank back in the chair, and played the scene, listening to his parents go on about the spring festival, and the food, and the coming year, talking just to fill the quiet.
* * *
The guards did not unlock Will’s door.
By morning, the storm outside had passed, but clouds still hung over the Great House.
Lady Dale was not well.
Will could feel it, even before he heard the news in the guards’ lowered voices beyond his door. They said she had a fever and had stayed in bed, at Robert’s orders. Will remained bound to his rooms, spared his father’s wrath only because Lord Dale spent every moment with his wife.
“How sick is she?” asked Will through the wood of his door, but the guards beyond went silent. He asked again, but they refused to answer. They didn’t leave, though. He could hear their shifting weight on the floor. And if he looked out the window, and down, his eyes met more white cloaks lurking in the yard beneath. He was trapped.
Will himself began to pace. He crossed the room a dozen times, and when that did not help, he reached for his pendant.
It wasn’t there.
He cringed and closed his eyes, trying to remember. A glint of silver lost among splintered wood and bent metal. The lakeside. His gaze went to the window, to the sloping hill of Dale. It wasn’t far, not really, but with a barred door and a guarded yard, the stretch of grass between the lakes was worlds away. The air wavered nervously around him and he clutched his hand into a fist against his chest as if he could conjure the calming magic from memory.
It didn’t work.
That first day was torture, the passing of time marked only by the shifting sun and Will’s fraying nerves. The air hummed as he paced, as he tried to read, tried to sleep, tried to do anything but think about the walls of the room and the many more walls separating him from his mother.
She would be all right.
Katherine Dale was strong, and it was only a fever. She was made of magic. She would be fine. Robert was making a show of it, of their confinements, to punish him.
Will watched the sun sink as he played out the scene a dozen times, tweaking his father’s tone or his mother’s words, but in every version she sat bright-eyed in her bed and chided her husband for being so silly. In some versions, she’d even laugh.
Will swore once or twice that he could hear it, but soon he realized that it was nothing more than the restless wind.
7
That first night, Will dreamt again of blood-streaked air. The wind around him laughed, and laughed, and the laughing grew and twisted with the tunnel of air until it coiled around him, rising into screams, and he woke.
* * *
The second day he lay on the floor and closed his eyes and tried to picture the fields, the swaying grass, Nicholas’s lessons, while the pages o
f the books and the bed sheets all fluttered in the nervous air.
* * *
The nights were nightmares and the days were worse.
* * *
Will woke, and shivered, his breath escaping in clouds as he sat up.
The room was freezing, but he’d had to leave the windows open. The memory of what he did to the coffin was too fresh in his mind. He couldn’t risk that happening to the Great House. The nervous wind was growing worse.
It was now the fourth day of confinement. Four days bound to his room with no pendant and no word of his mother and no visitors save the guard who delivered his food, coming and going in stony silence. Four days of waiting. Three nights of nightmares.
The cold air rustled around him, tugging at his clothes as he stood, and tangling in them as he crossed to the window.
The first thing he saw was the crisp blue sky.
The second thing he saw were the flowers.
His heart dropped like a stone.
People were setting flowers on the great steps. White wildflowers, the kind that grew in the fields year-round, bloomed even in the dead of winter, and because of that were seen as tokens of health.
Prayers for health.
The top of the steps were piled with the stems of small white blossoms.
No.
He looked down and found the set of guards beneath his window, silent and sober. He might be able to get out, but they’d never let him back in to see her. He spun and strode to his door.
“Let me out,” he said, banging on it. He knew they were out there, the guards, he could hear them moving, hear them talking, but they never answered.
“Eric!” he ordered. Nothing.
“You have to let me see her!” he shouted, striking his fist against the wood.
The wind coiled dangerously around him and he rested his forehead against the door as he tried to calm down. It didn’t work. There were white flowers on the great steps. White wildflowers.
The wind kept growing. It began to tug at him, not just his clothes, but his skin. He held up his hands, and watched as his flesh thinned, the tips of his fingers threading like smoke through the air. Maybe… his gaze went to the gap between his door and the floor. Whenever he slipped, he felt the thinning, the running of his edges, but he’d always resisted. He’d been afraid. What if he let go, what if he vanished, and couldn’t come back together again?
He had to.
His hands always came back. His body returned to body. And just as something in his bones—deeper, even—drew him into wind, he would have to trust it to draw him back again.
And so, the wind began to pull him apart. And as his body thinned, so did his thoughts, blurring in his mind. His pain and fear and anger weakened, his focus broke apart, and it felt good and he didn’t care, didn’t care about his body or his life or this town or Robert’s wrath or his mother’s sickness, none of it mattered, nothing matter—
Will came violently back to himself, and collapsed, gasping on his hands and knees. Back in his mind and his skin, he felt disgusted. How could he think that? How could he be—
The bolt slid back, and his door opened.
Will staggered to his feet and turned to find Eric waiting, flanked by two other guards in white. For an instant, Eric’s eyes widened, and Will wondered if some part of him hadn’t come fully back, but when he stole a glance in the mirror, he saw that he was fully there, if ashen.
“You’ve been summoned,” said Eric at last. Will’s hopes rose until he added, “Lady Dale is dying.”
8
Robert stood before the door, arms crossed. When Will hurried toward him, the guards trailing behind, he did not move, did not look up.
“Father, what’s going on? How is she? Eric said…”
“You’re a monster, William.” The words were said low, but Will still heard. “You know that. I don’t care what word you use. A witch or a demon or a godthing. You’re a thing. But a powerful one.” Robert straightened, and stepped toward his son. His eyes were rimmed red when he met Will’s gaze. “If you’re so powerful, fix this.”
Will’s eyes widened. “I am no healer.”
“You speak to the moor. Tell it to save her.”
“Father, I can’t—”
Robert took hold of Will’s collar, and slammed him back against the wall. “If you love her, make it save her.”
He let go of Will abruptly, and said, under his breath, “If you do not save her life, so help me, I will not spare yours.” And then he strode away.
Will stood there, stunned. And then he heard his mother, calling through the door. He went in. And stopped.
Katherine Dale sat up in bed, her black hair clinging to her face with fever.
She smiled when she saw him, but it was thin, tired.
“William,” she said. “You came.” There was something missing from her voice, replaced by a faint sound when she breathed, a shhhh sound. He came to the bed, and kneeled, but when he took her hand, he nearly recoiled. Her skin was cold as stone.
“They wouldn’t let me come,” he said, voice hitching. “I would have come. I didn’t…”
“Hush now,” she said. “And listen to me.”
“I didn’t know.”
“William. Listen.” He listened to the sound of her breathing and thought of Robert’s threat. He bowed his head and tried to picture the sound in her lungs as wind, but it was useless. His power didn’t work that way.
“Look at me,” she said, guiding his chin up with her other hand. He met her eyes. There wasn’t enough life in them, and he felt the panic welling in his chest. The air hummed, and his mother tightened her grip on his hand.
“Dale is your home and your inheritance,” she said. “You must look after it. And you must be careful. Now more than ever.”
“Please…” he whispered, but he couldn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t know how.
He heard the door open behind him.
“Tread lightly, my sweet,” she whispered.
Will felt Robert’s hand come down on his shoulder, heavy as a house. He stiffened, but held his mother’s gaze.
“You should rest,” said Will softly. He got to his feet and leaned forward, placing a kiss on his mother’s temple. It burned beneath his lips.
He gave her hand a last squeeze, and then let go.
* * *
Lady Dale was wrapped in black.
The pyre was erected on the landing halfway up the great stairs, and was made from the festival wood. All of Dale was draped in garlands. The Great House gardens had been stripped bare to wreath the city, blossom and wildflower and grass and stem woven together into streamers that ran from the royal house down the steps and through the streets, turning the hill of Dale into a bed of color.
They set the fire at dawn, Robert and Will standing at opposite ends of the pyre, the people gathered at the base of the steps. Will watched the fire reach his mother’s black cloak, and pictured her burning beneath it, hair crumbling, skin peeling away like paper. The wind lifted, and he closed his eyes, but the firelight echoed against his lids. He dug his nails into his palms until they bled. Something new had come over him, something worse, more engulfing, than fear and anger and pain and panic and anything else he’d ever felt. Sorrow. The wind sang with it, low and sad, and the fire danced.
Will felt the weight of a hand on his shoulder, and opened his eyes.
“This is your fault,” Robert said, his tone ice. From the base of the steps the two men must have looked like a family bound by grief. But Robert’s grip tightened. “It should be you.”
Tread lightly, my sweet.
Will bit his tongue, and tried to pull away, to take a step forward, but Robert followed, forcing him toward the lip of the landing. Will twisted out of his grip but his father grabbed him by the collar, his blood-shot blue eyes meeting Will’s sad gray ones for only an instant before he threw him backward, off the landing, and down the great steps. He hit the first stairs hard, his s
houlder cracking, before the air sprung up to break his fall. By the time he hit the path at the base of the steps, hands thrown out to brace himself, the wind had sprung up, coiled and cushioned his fall, his body seeming to hover a moment above the stones before dropping him. The people gasped, and drew back.
Robert stormed down the steps as Will struggled to his feet, tasting blood.
“This thing,” announced Robert, “is not my son. He is a monster.”
Will straightened, the wind churning around him, rippling his cloak. He took a step away and the crowd shifted, moving back to avoid him.
“He is a witch. He summoned the storm that—”
“Enough,” said Will, clutching his shoulder.
“—killed my wife.”
“That’s not true,” begged Will, the air whipping up around him. “I would never, ever…”
But whatever spell his mother had cast over Robert, over Dale, it died with her. His father’s eyes were filled with hate, and the people stood and watched, but made no move. The guards, too, stared on. Will looked around, and saw Sarah, eyes wide with shock, and Phillip, smiling. His head snapped back to Robert when the crowd gasped, and saw that his father had pulled free his knife.
“Don’t do this,” said Will as the wind tore at him, his limbs thinning. “Don’t make me—”
Robert lifted his blade. “You brought the storm,” he growled, gesturing up the steps to the pyre. “You murdered her.” He charged forward.
“Stop,” ordered Will, and the wind responded, and slammed into Robert, sending him back several steps. But it wasn’t enough to stop him. He bent his head and struggled forward, and this time when Will tried to retreat, a pair of hands shoved him forward toward his father and the knife.
Will took a breath as Robert slashed the blade across his chest. The people gasped. But there was no scream, no blood. Will’s whole body wavered, like smoke, the knife passing straight through. Will looked down at himself, eyes wide.
“Witch,” someone shouted.
“Demon.”
“Stop,” said Will.
“Monster.”
“Murderer.”