She would kill the queen and retrieve her child. The gods had provided a way and delivered them both into her hands.
But the Temple Boy was watching too. The queen had called out to him, so Ghost had bided her time, listening, stretched behind the roses in her mud-colored cloak, waiting for her moment. They made a lovely picture, the three of them, traipsing through the garden, and Ghost had become lulled by the scene, entranced by the queen’s song and quieted by the moon-drenched sky.
The Temple Boy—Bayr—had come and gone. He too had been caught in the queen’s spell. He had held Ghost’s child, his young face shining with adoration. Alba was so loved. So wanted. So revered. And the knowledge had filled Ghost with joy and hope.
Then the moon moved behind the clouds and the enchantment was broken. Hope became horror, joy became realization. The gods had not delivered the queen into her hands. They had shown her all the things she wasn’t, all the things she couldn’t give, and they had said, “Disappear, little ghost. Go away. Give us the babe. She belongs to us.” And when the moon peeked out again to see if she’d heard, the beams of light revealed a hatch near the base of the south garden wall, wooden and welcoming, and slightly ajar.
“Disappear, little ghost. Go away,” the gods whispered once more. They’d even provided a way out. The roses had brushed her skin, biting her with their thorns, forcing her out from among them and closing in like brambles behind her.
“Run away,” they whispered. And she did.
It was much harder to get inside the walls than it was to get out. The garden hatch opened onto a flight of rough-hewn steps leading down to an earthen tunnel that eventually led her onto the heath far beyond the wall. The exit was so narrow a man would struggle to use it for escape, and it was concealed by grass and boulders and half covered by bushes that harbored all manner of creatures. The creatures urged her to flee as well.
Ghost raced across the moor, blood streaming from one hand, her knife clenched in the other, seeking the refuge of the forest, drawn to the tree where she had hidden her coins, to the place where the grass curled in ragged tufts, sprouting around shapes in the soil. A small stone was placed beneath the tree, too perfect and smooth to be coincidence, and she wondered if it marked a grave. Mayhaps it could mark her own. She had a knife. And she was brave. But she was not brave enough.
She collapsed beneath the boughs, hiding her face in her arms. She didn’t want to live, but she was too tired to die. She was hot and cold, rage and resignation, but she’d made a choice. Alba could be a princess instead of a slave, a daughter of a queen instead of the offspring of a ghost. She would never look on her mother and see a monster or an aberration.
“I have nothing to give,” she moaned, her face pressed to the earth. “I have nothing but love, and my love will not shelter. My love will not save, or clothe, or feed. My love will only harm.”
She had hate—bitter and biting. She hated the king and she hated his queen. She hated the moon and the moor and the innocent door in the wall that should not have been so easy to find. She hated the burn in her heart and the faith she couldn’t shake, even though life had never given her reason to hope. She hated the people of Saylok for bowing to a king who lied to them.
But her hate was no match for her love.
“I have nothing to give you,” she moaned again, and this time she spoke to the child she’d borne, the child who’d grown in her body and reshaped her heart.
“So I will give you a queen. I will give you a beautiful queen who sings to you,” she wept. “I will give you a father who rules a kingdom, and a boy to watch over you. I will give you a life without hiding, a world without fear, a home I cannot give you on my own. This is what I will give you—the only thing I can give you. A life without me in it is the only thing I have to offer.”
She ran her palm across the stone and closed her eyes, too tired to move, too weary to care that someone might find her when the sun rose. And then she slept, hoping she would never wake.
She lay facedown beneath Desdemona’s tree, a rumpled brown cloak without form or features. At first Dagmar thought she was dead, an old soul who had sought solitude in the forest to meet her end. He knew immediately she was female. The white hair was loose and unplaited—the hair of a woman, not a warrior. He formed the star upon his brow and called out in warning, as much for her sake as his own, but she didn’t move. No scent of death surrounded her, no blood stained her cloak, and when he rolled her to her side, he felt the warmth of life beneath his hands. Dirty streaks lined her cheeks, and the silvery brooms of her lashes made no headway in the grime. He realized she wasn’t old at all, but she was clearly in trouble.
Her eyes fluttered open and he hissed, startled, and stumbled back.
She didn’t scramble upright or scamper away, as he expected her to. Maybe she couldn’t, but her eyes tracked him without interest or fear, as though she were resigned to whatever fate had in store. She gazed at him wearily for several seconds before closing them again, hiding her luminescent orbs under blue-veined lids.
“Are you wounded?” he asked.
She didn’t respond, but she didn’t appear to be in pain.
“If I help you sit, can you drink?”
She opened her eyes again, and he took her interest for assent.
He approached her once more and pulled his water flask from around his neck. Kneeling beside her, he slipped his arm beneath her shoulders, and propped her against him so she could drink. She didn’t pull away or protest, and when he held the flask to her dry lips, she drank thankfully.
Was this the creature Ivo had spoken of? She was not a wraith, nor a specter, but she was frightening to behold. And she was thirsty.
“Who are you?” he asked. “Where have you come from?”
“Who are you?” she whispered, her voice as colorless as her skin.
“I am a Keeper of Saylok. I live in the temple.”
“I am a ghost, and I live beneath this tree,” she rasped, the words clear but oddly pronounced.
He frowned down at her, convinced Loki—or Master Ivo—was playing tricks on him. But the girl was not a vision or an apparition. Her flesh was real beneath his hands, and his water flask was completely empty.
“I am not the only one living beneath this tree. There is someone buried here. See this stone?” The girl touched Desdemona’s marker. “It is a good place to die.”
“My sister lies beneath this tree. That is her stone, and it was not a peaceful death,” he contended.
She stared up at him, solemn, compassion in her gaze.
“Is that why you are here? To die?” he pressed. He did not want to think about Desdemona.
Her eyes closed again, and her slight form trembled against him. “It is what I wish.”
“Why?”
She dropped her gaze and pulled the hood of her cloak over her head. Her pale nose, smudged with dirt and protruding from draped folds, was the only part of her face he could see.
“If you truly wanted to die, you wouldn’t have drunk all my water,” he said mildly.
“Mayhaps my body wants to live,” she whispered. “But I do not.”
“The will is a stubborn taskmaster,” he agreed. “But if you aren’t going to die, there are better places to live.”