ran her fingers through the Made girl’s hair, separating it into sections for a braid.
“Aren’t you tired, love?” Leo said suddenly, startling Siena, who twitched and nearly dropped a handful of hair. “Don’t you want to come to bed? Or—Clara’s asleep, but you could wake her. She’d love one of your stories.”
Siena didn’t even look at him. Just kept braiding. “She’s too old for my stories.”
“She’s barely seven years,” Leo said. “She’s a child yet.”
“Stories,” said a new voice. A strange, whispering, metallic voice, a voice like clock gears whirring together. The Made girl looked over her shoulder at Siena, doe eyes wide and unblinking. “I like your stories.”
“I know you do, Yora,” Siena cooed. “You’ll never be too old for them, will you?”
“Never,” said the girl.
Crier felt everything Leo was feeling in that moment. It was a terrible mix of revulsion, guilt, jealousy of the Made girl, and below it all, like an underground river: his love for Siena, his wife. Untouchable, unchanging. Even with all the bad things layered above it.
“Maybe I shall tell you one tonight,” said Siena. “Which would you like to hear, Yora?”
“‘The King and the Black Horse,’” Yora said in her metallic voice.
Crier felt a throb of despair, an echo of Leo’s sadness for—for the little girl in the next room, the seven-year-old girl—Clara; Leo was thinking of her, Clara, his daughter—their daughter, their real daughter—
A falling sensation, another smear of color and firelight and dark, and Crier was back in her own bedchamber. Her own bed. She was alone. Her own hearth fire was cold and dead, long burned out. And she could still feel Leo’s pain like a dagger in her chest. His anguish over Siena’s wavering love, the bone-deep fear that she loved the Made girl, Yora, more than she loved him—or even their daughter.
Yora.
Yora. The name caught in Crier’s mind, a briar. She’d heard it before. More accurately, had read it before. Crier could conjure it up perfectly, her own crystal-clear memory of those two words in Kinok’s handwriting:
Yora’s heart.
She understood something then, something terrible.
Ayla’s family history was in this locket . . .
And it contained the secret Kinok wanted.
She had to tell Ayla, had to warn her. Tonight.
No, it was too late. She couldn’t risk it. Not now—not after everything . . . she wanted to go to her right away, but she knew Ayla was grieving, knew she was furious over their kiss, even if Crier swore that she’d reciprocated, maybe even started it—that she had wanted it just as much as Crier had.
No, she wouldn’t try to find and wake her now. She’d sleep—it had been far too long since Crier had slept, and her body needed a rest.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow morning Ayla would come to her, and Crier would tell her everything.
Crier would find a safe place for Ayla to go—away from here.
But first, she would tell her a thousand other things. That she was sorry. That she loved her. That she would prove it, some way, some day, if only Ayla would let her. That she would help keep her safe, and that when the time was right, she’d find her again.
Tomorrow.
She’d tell her everything tomorrow.
They came at night. They moved silently in the darkness. We didn’t know they were coming until they were already at our doors. They all looked the same. Tall and strong. They all moved the same, too, like monsters in the old stories. Like shadows. Demons from the dead realm.
They had no torches. But when I looked out over the demon army I saw light. At first I couldn’t tell what it was. A thousand tiny specks of light. It looked almost like fireflies.
Then I realized. It was their eyes.
—FROM THE PERSONAL RECORDS OF AN UNNAMED HUMAN GIRL DURING THE WAR OF KINDS, E. 900, CIRCA Y. 51
22
Ayla had spent the day shivering. Not cold shivering, but fear shivering. Adrenaline shivering, raw-nerve shivering, like something was alive and wriggling around inside her bones, making her teeth chatter and the hairs on her arms stand up straight. She nearly dropped a teacup of liquid heartstone, a book, Crier’s bone-handled comb. When she handed over the cup of heartstone, it rattled against the saucer, and Crier frowned a little but miraculously didn’t comment.
She also hadn’t commented on the fact that Ayla had been late that morning. If she had, Ayla would have said: I stopped to help a laundry maid pick up a spilled basket of clothes. It was only mostly a lie. Because