first.
As for love? It was worse than a weakness.
Love broke you. After all, it was love, wasn’t it, that had made Ayla weep for weeks after the death of her family, had made her curl up, unable to move. Love was what made you invite death, wish for it, crave it, just so that you could be freed from your own pain.
Once Rowan had gotten Ayla back on her feet and given her a new start, Ayla had vowed to herself that she would never let love break her again.
Ayla shuddered now and leaned in closer, her nose nearly brushing the chart. She couldn’t help but notice that her face was the only one on the chart that had just the one thread connected to it. The rest of the ink faces had threads of all colors branching out from them—friends, siblings, lovers.
Slowly, as if in a trance, Ayla kept searching for familiar faces. There were so many she half recognized, people she’d glimpsed in Kalla-den, villagers and merchants. Was Rowan on this chart? Was Faye?
Was Luna?
What color did you get when you were connected to a corpse?
Ayla stood on her tiptoes, searching. There. Faye, with her wild eyes. There was a black thread connected to her. Ayla followed it—but the face on the other end of Faye’s thread had been scratched out. Her black thread led to nothing.
That must have been Luna.
Ayla stared at the scratch mark that had once been Luna’s face, willing the truth to not be the truth, but it was too late; she had already figured it out; she knew why the thread was black; it was horrible and sickening and the only explanation that made any sense.
Why did Kinok keep this chart? What good did it do him to know all of these connections?
Unless . . . unless he was using human relationships against them in some way, to keep them in order, to keep them in line.
The thought hit her like a roll of thunder. The answer to the mystery of Luna’s death.
It hadn’t been a punishment for something Luna did. Wasn’t her, wasn’t her, Faye had said.
Because Luna hadn’t done anything wrong.
Luna’s death had been a punishment for something Faye did.
That was what this chart was for. To find human weaknesses—and exploit them.
It was beyond cruel, beyond sick.
It was the work of a master manipulator.
Gods, no wonder Faye had gone mad. Take me instead, she’d screamed. Kill me instead.
A creak in the hallway outside Kinok’s door wrenched Ayla back to the present. She dropped the tapestry and leaped away from the chart, pressing herself up against the wall. Luckily, nobody came inside. The footsteps passed, heading down the corridor outside. She wasn’t safe here. Breathless, ears ringing, she slipped out of Kinok’s bedchamber. Replaced the hair in the latch. Closed the heavy wooden door behind her. Then she practically ran down the corridor, away from the freezing room and the dead hearth and the chart of faces, weblike and fragile.
She turned a corner and headed down a narrow hallway, running blindly for the staircase that would take her up into the light and the warmth, her breath coming in harsh gasps.
Ayla tried to keep track of her turns as she hurried down the halls—left, left, right—but all she could hold in her head were the drawings, Benjy’s tiny ink freckles, her own inky hair, and she lost track—left and then right—no, right and then right. She was hopelessly disoriented.
Then she came up short beside a door with a golden knocker shaped like a harp.
The music room.
She reached into her pocket and gripped the cool metal key Crier had given her. Panting, Ayla nearly dropped it twice before she finally got it into the lock. But it turned, and the door opened, and here: the music room.
Her momentary gasp of relief fled into another feeling altogether—wonder. Fear. Crier hadn’t exaggerated the thick walls. As she shut the door behind her, the room’s silence enveloped her like a living creature, or like velvet pressed over her mouth. The inside of the music room was beautiful—spacious, with a high vaulted ceiling. Ayla could make out the big dark shapes of what must have been two dozen musical instruments, even more, hanging on the walls. But stars and skies, the silence. It felt somehow familiar, tomb-like. It took her a moment to figure out what this place reminded her of.
Another place, dark and empty. Another place she’d been entirely alone, with nothing but the wind inside