of no better word to describe it. Tearing. Renting, your skin from muscles, your muscles from bone. It will be a pain at once so exquisite and so horrifying that it will devour you whole. And it will be swift. You won’t even have the dubious relief of opening your mouth to scream.
You will no longer have a mouth.
Nor eyes, nor face, nor limbs. You will no longer have a human body. You will exist as nothing but smoke and pain.
I require that you hold on to one single, final thought during this agony: I will live.
Without it, every bit of you, every last lingering essence, will merely evaporate. Your parents will have nothing left to bury.
I wish I might be there for you when it happens. I wish I might be a better guide for you, my beloved girl. You are my great-great-grandchild. You have my husband’s eyes. And yet I remain trapped, old and blind, at this miserable distance, countries away, mired in my worry.
The first Turn has destroyed so many of our kind. Do not become one more early death.
All my love,
—Rue
Chapter 9
I walked along the outer walls of Iverson, looking for other doors, a cracked window, anything that might let me slip back inside without having to brave the flock of girls that still jostled about the main entrance. I walked at first without really seeing where I was going. I just needed to get away. The memory of Armand’s cold, empty eyes followed me like a cloud above my head.
There were no other unsecured entrances, but I found several windows out of reach and four oddly elfin wooden doors set back deep in stone arches. These were so small I’d have to stoop through them and so old the wood had blackened. They were also locked.
By then I was very much alone. I no longer heard anything but a solitary blackbird way off, testing out the notes of an amorous invitation. And the wind through the branches of the oaks and elms, a low rustling sibilance that swirled around me in a language I almost understood.
Still no drumbeat of the sea.
I discovered why soon enough. I’d been walking and walking, and even though the day was brisk, I’d begun to perspire. I reckoned I’d covered about a half mile of wall by then, or so it seemed. When I looked up, I saw the tip-top of what might have been my tower past the crenellations; the diamond window was still open. I was squinting up at that, wondering idly if anyone had ever thought to scale that high—a medieval prince, perhaps, determined to steal through the window to claim his princess—when I rounded another corner and found myself at the end of the isle.
The forest cut short. The sea was visible but far away, a sparkling smudge against the horizon, dusky flecks of boats sprinkled upon it. The ground I’d been treading tapered from grass to rocks, lots of rocks, until that was all there was. Huge tan and cream boulders sloughed down a cliff, strewn along a beach far below.
The bridge to the mainland stood on dry, spindly legs. There was no seawater beneath it, only sand laid out in ripples.
I stopped, confused. I closed my eyes and opened them again.
No water.
The brownish-gold sand surrounding the island gleamed with isolated puddles. Silvery shimmers bent the air above each, fairy air, dancing in mirage.
I edged closer to the rim of the cliff. The scent of earth and brine washed up and over me, raw in my lungs. My first step upon the nearest of the boulders roused it into a growling hum.
I set my teeth. I would ignore it. I’d come all this way, and I wanted to see the beach. I wanted to climb down there and dig my fingers into that sand, because it looked damp to me. And I had seen the water last night. It was not another delusion.
My boots were sturdy but not especially meant for climbing; the soles had worn slick. As I crept down, long strands of hair blew across my eyes, stuck in my lashes. My fingers groped for purchase among the pits and crags.
Still, I was halfway down before I fell. It was simple, stupid. I had my weight on a loose stone and then I didn’t. The stone pushed free of the pile and I was careening backward and downward with a hand still clenched in my skirt, too astonished even to shriek.