By the time I fall into my bottom bunk that night, my limbs are heavy with exhaustion. But whenever I close my eyes, I see Lady Sida’s papery face, her strange words keeping me awake. Some are foolish enough to whisper rumors about the Queen, always under their breaths—but I didn’t expect the same from a Gerling.
And yet . . . Sida’s words don’t seem so absurd, now that I’m turning them over in my mind. To think she was gifted life from the Sorceress is more absurd. I never cared much to think about the Queen, not when Papa and I busied ourselves surviving. But—
“Jules,” a voice whispers. Alia is hanging over the side of her top bunk a few yards away. Even in the dark, I can see her eyes are wide with fear, though she already looks exhausted from a day in the laundry, where she’s been assigned.
“A boy told me that the Alchemist does roam this forest,” she says. “He said he lived here once. He said—”
But her bunkmate, an older seamstress, hushes her gently.
“Dear, if I tell you the real story, will you stop chattering and let me sleep?” The woman has a hint of mischief in her voice, but not malice. Alia nods. The woman smiles and gives me a knowing glance.
“No one knows where they came from—two children who wandered Sempera together, before blood-iron, never parting and never growing old. The Alchemist turned earth into lead and lead into gold. The Sorceress made flowers bloom in winter.”
I smile to myself, thinking of how Amma would grumble if she knew Alia were staying up late to hear fairy tales. It’s hard to believe that there was a world before blood-iron. Worse, there’s no use in it, while we’re trapped with what we have. But listening to the seamstress speak, I find myself missing that world, if it ever existed.
“But the Alchemist—who lived at this estate, like your friend said—grew jealous. So he imprisoned them here and demanded they discover a way to make him immortal as he’d seen the Sorceress do with flowers and trees.”
She’s a wonderful storyteller, and her tale sweeps me away like a song. Papa and I left our books behind when we were chased from Everless, and he hasn’t bothered to hide his contempt for stories since then. You can’t afford to have your head in the clouds, he told me once, after I’d begged to hear one on my cold cot in Crofton. I never asked again.
“It was deep in his forest estate that the Sorceress, locked in a tiny chamber with only crude tools, wove time into blood, and the Alchemist found a way to bind blood to iron, so that the lord could steal time from his subjects and eat it himself.” Others in the room are listening now. Though I can’t see it, I can feel it. “For a time, the lord was satisfied. But soon, he saw his eyes growing colorless and his memory slipping. Death crawled into his frame. Full of rage, he demanded they find a way for him to live forever.”
Alia sits up, clutching her knees to her chest.
“One day, the Alchemist declared that he’d done the impossible: he’d transformed a solid lump of lead into pure time, he said. All the lord had to do was eat it.”
“But the Alchemist was clever,” I hear Alia whisper.
“Correct,” the seamstress replies, sounding pleased. “The cruel lord was poisoned and died, allowing the Alchemist and the Sorceress to escape. They parted ways, and soon discovered that their magic was so powerful, it seeped into the blood of all the people in Sempera.”
“But why did they part ways?” Alia asks.
“The Alchemist hadn’t told the Sorceress that the magic they performed to create blood-iron came at a great cost—the Sorceress’s immortality. She was furious at his betrayal.” The seamstress’s voice takes on a ringing, tragic quality.
“Though it took generations for a single dark hair of her head to turn gray, she aged. Unlike the Alchemist, she loved this life and this world, and didn’t want to leave it. But eventually, she tamped down her anger and returned to her old friend, seeking her immortality back.”
Across the dormitory, another woman with a frail, papery voice begins to speak. “The Alchemist told her: ‘In order to make you immortal, I must have your heart for safekeeping.’ So she transformed her whole heart into a word she whispered in his ear. His throat moved like he was swallowing it down. Then, he passed her a handful of pebbles and told her to eat them, and she would live forever.”
Other girls chime in now with whispered shouts of liar! And thief! My eyes flutter closed, imagining what a stone would taste like.
“Girls, hush and let me finish,” the old seamstress says. “But the Sorceress remembered how the Alchemist had fooled the wealthy lord. Suspecting another betrayal, she decided instead that the Alchemist should be force-fed the little rocks—twelve of them, in all—and then drowned. She did this herself.”
Alia gasps.
“But something curious happened,” the seamstress says in a theatrical whisper. “The Sorceress saw a silvery shadow rise from the Alchemist’s broken body, and dart away across the earth, too fast to chase after. Within the silver, something glowed dark red and pulsing. Too late, the Sorceress realized that the Alchemist had indeed tricked her—he had stolen her heart.”
“Could she get it back? Her heart?” Alia asks. But I don’t hear the seamstress answer. I’m already falling into a fitful sleep, shadowed by nightmares I can’t remember in the morning.
The next day, Lora informs me that I’ll be working at a small party of nobles in one of Everless’s prettiest follies: an enclosed garden courtyard heated year-round by a fire pit fed by melted blood-iron. Time makes the flame burn bright and long. I try not to retch at the thought.
All day, she’s been teaching me and a few other kitchen servants the art of self-effacement: our role, she says, is to make the Gerlings think their meal has simply materialized. My task is to keep their wineglasses full.
From the cellar that feeds up into the walled gardens, I can hear the Gerlings’ aristocratic, musical laughter, the chime of tinkling glasses. Friends, relatives, and other noble families linked by time, have flocked to Everless in the weeks before the wedding. Likely they all want to boast they are among the first to mingle with the Queen and her heir. The aristocrats have swollen from their usual thirty—the four Gerlings and their grandparents, great-grandparents, and most favored relatives—to almost two hundred. They fill the dining hall to the brim every evening, dazzling in silk and feathers and jewels. My nerves flutter as I think of walking among them knowing that Papa meant never to set foot on the estate again.
What if I see Roan? Does he remember the accident—does he blame Papa, or his brother, or me?
Does he remember me at all?
“Now, now, enough with the faces.” Lora gives me a nudge as she sails past me holding a massive cake, decorated with spun sugar. “Tonight they’ll be too far into their wine to notice if you make a mistake.”
“Or they’ll just be quicker to anger,” I point out. But Lora is already gone, replaced by a butler who orders the servants into the gardens.
I swallow, clutching the carafe of wine in my hands so hard I fear it’ll break. I’ve swept my hair forward to conceal my face—and though I am no longer the skinny, knobby-kneed girl of my youth—I’m terrified that Liam will remember me.
And I’m terrified that Roan will not.
The walled garden, small compared to Everless’s grand staterooms, flickers with light from torches held aloft in wrought-iron sconces. Smoke drifts toward the stars overhead. Willow trees sway gently in the breeze, and the heady scents of flowers and wine float along with it. It’s like I’ve stepped into spring, though the stars overhead still have a wintry coldness to them. Beyond the wall, I can see Everless flags shuddering in the icy wind—but it’s transformed here into a gentle, cool breeze, tamed by the time fire.
In the middle of the garden, the fire—white-hot and as tall as me—snaps within a bronze enclosure, sending waves of warmth through the garden. It’s beautiful, but thinking of the wasted time to feed it makes my insides burn with rage. I look quickly away.
Nobles drift through the garden, the women glittering in gowns of velvet and silk, the men tall and imposing and dark- or silver-haired. Rings of gold gleam on dozens of fingers. A trio of musicians fills the garden with treacle-sweet chords.
Instinctively, I look around for Roan. To my dismay, the first Gerling I see is Liam. He’s leaning against a vine-covered wall at the opposite end of the garden, talking to his mother, Lady Verissa.
For an instant, I feel as if I’ve been shrunk down, turned into a child again. Liam was always on the fringes of our little band of friends, a silent and watchful contrast to outgoing Roan. He’d sometimes show up in the doorway, quiet as a shadow, and watch us play. I was wary of him even then, of his stillness and his eyes so dark they seemed to swallow light, but Roan idolized him.
It makes my teeth grind, now, to think of the kindness Roan showed him—the kindness that Liam betrayed. But to betray someone, you must first care for them. I doubt Liam Gerling knows that feeling at all.
Certainly not from his cold mother, Lady Verissa. She must be in her fifties or sixties, though she looks thirty, radiant in an emerald satin gown that leaves her arms bare. She’s beautiful in an unnerving way, with glass-sharp cheekbones and deep blue-violet eyes.
I give them a wide berth as I begin to make my rounds.
The level of wine in my carafe quickly falls—another fine way to spend so many centuries, by drinking it away, though I suppose with so much time to waste, what’s the difference?—and I’m about to return to the kitchen when a woman snaps her fingers at me.
“You—come here.”
I turn, keeping my eyes half-lowered. An unfamiliar tanned noblewoman whose pendant bears the Renaldi crest—a dancing bear—is staring at me, expectantly holding up her wineglass. She’s only a few feet from Liam and Verissa.
I know refusing to pour for her will only draw attention, so I hurry to her side, hoping my servant’s cap will conceal my face, and that darkness and the influence of time will do the rest. And suddenly Lady Verissa’s voice reaches me, although she’s obviously doing her best to be quiet, and I freeze.
“Lord Schuyler’s daughter is here,” Verissa is saying. “Meet with her.”
“You don’t know her name, but you know she would be a good wife?” Liam’s voice is scathing.
“It scarcely matters—” She catches herself, then speaks more evenly. “You can’t inherit Everless without marrying.”
“That’s enough, you fool. Can’t you tell when a glass is full?” the Renaldi woman snaps, and I step quickly away from her. She spins and strides off, dropping something small and gleaming into her wine as she goes.
Still, I linger in the shadows, curious despite myself to hear the rest of Lady Verissa and Liam’s conversation. It gives me pleasure to imagine Liam forced to do something he dislikes, although I feel sorry for the poor girl who will have to marry him.
“Let Roan inherit. He’ll enjoy it more than I will.” His voice makes a shiver race along the back of my neck. With my eyes lowered, I can’t see Liam’s face, but I can imagine his glare.
Lady Verissa fidgets. “You know as well as I do that Roan—”
Her words are drowned out when a drunken cheer goes up from the partygoers. Automatically, I look for its source—and almost gasp. I’ve seen Roan Gerling a handful of times in the past few years, when he made his visits to Crofton. But I only ever saw him from a distance, watching from the shelter of a stall while he made the rounds on his horse.
This is different. Standing at the gates of the garden with his father, Lord Nicholas, Roan is just a few yards away. He’s dressed in an elegant black suit, a golden cravat encircling his throat. His blue eyes shine in the firelight like pieces of summer sky.
I forget everything at the sight of him—the fact that his family is the cause of our ruin and poverty, the fact that he’s engaged to be married to a girl whose beauty, some say, is proof sorcery still exists. For an instant, there’s nowhere I’d rather be than in this garden, on this night, seeing Roan smile.
The next moment, a cry of distress cuts through the buzz of conversation. A red-faced nobleman has another servant girl by the wrist. Bea, who I recognize from the kitchen earlier. There’s a spreading wine stain on his blue doublet, and a carafe of wine in her shaking hand.
“I—I’m sorry,” she stammers.
“Stupid girl,” he growls at her. “I’ll bleed you a month, and maybe then you’ll mind your hands.” His words are slurred, his eyes bulging with rage. He yanks a small knife from his belt. Time seems to melt, to slow like an icicle unwinding in the sun.
And then, in the next heartbeat, Roan is there behind him, reaching out to grip his shoulder and at the same time gently detaching the knife. “Lord Baldwin,” he says with a low laugh. “No need to scare the poor thing. It’s a hideous shirt, anyway. You should be thanking her for doing you a favor.”
Everyone laughs. The man blinks and it’s as if a spell has been broken: he releases Bea, who throws a thankful glance at Roan. He takes the carafe from her, and she slips back into the crowd.
“There.” Roan claps Baldwin on the back and pours from the carafe himself. “Wine fixes most ills, doesn’t it? Drink with me, friend.”
Unconsciously, I’ve moved closer to them, drawn by Roan’s voice, his smile, his kindness the way a bare, hard bulb underground is drawn toward the sun in spring.
And then, Roan’s eyes meet mine. I am breathless, paralyzed, bound in his gaze. He raises a glass.
He winks at me.
Then he tosses back the glass of wine to a roar of approval. Only Liam, I notice, still glowers in the corner.
As the music resumes and people begin to dance, Roan is swept up into the crowd. My heart is pounding. Fear reaches through me too, like the dark and twisting smoke of the fire.
Roan knew me.
I’m sure of it.