As usual, I dream about people dying. But this time, they aren’t getting pulled apart by the Woven. This time people are killing each other, and I’m at the center of it. I’m just standing there while a sea of savagery heaves around me. I have no weapon, and no witch inside me. I am defenseless. That’s not what terrifies me, though. What pulls me up from sleep is knowing that I started it.
I was never supposed to be on this side of the war. There was never supposed to be a war to begin with, because Lillian and I were going to change everything. It didn’t turn out that way. In fact, I think I made it worse, which is probably why my guilt chases me around in my dreams.
Spilt milk. I’m done crying over it. Done crying over Lillian, over my father. Just done with all of it. I’m finally ready for this war.
I was born Outland. Bad grammar, I know, but when you’re born Outland you don’t say, “I was born in the Outlands.” That’s how city folk talk. And, yeah, I’ve been living in the cities since I was seven, but how does that old saying go? “Give me a child until he is seven years old and I will hold his heart forever”? From my experience it’s true. I may have lived a pampered life as Lord Fall, Head Mechanic of the Salem Coven, for over eleven years, but I still remember. The Outlands hold my heart. I wake fully, opening my eyes, thinking, my heart is held.
I roll over in bed and see pink clouds framed in the skylight over me. Rising at dawn is in my blood. It used to drive Lillian crazy. She loved to sleep in on the weekends but I never got the hang of it. Sleep has never been easy for me, not like it is for city folk. I’ve never met an Outlander who couldn’t wait to open his eyes and see the day. To know he made it through one more night.
Morning was when I liked Lillian best, even if she did snarl at me and throw pillows at my head. Her hair a mad tangle, her eyes puffy; she looked terrible in the morning and for some reason I loved that. I loved how she looked before she put on the gowns and jewels and makeup. Before she put on her title. Sometimes I wonder if I could have found a way to keep her like that—my rumpled, red-nosed, morning Lillian—maybe I could have found a way to stop the war. Found a way to stop her from destroying the two people I loved most. Da and her.
I bathe and dress quickly. I put on my simplest clothes—simple, but they’re still of the finest materials. Strange how plain clothes are somehow always the most expensive. There’s no point in trying to dress down, really. Everything I have is still the best. Lillian gave me more finery than I know what to do with. I’ve been quietly liquidating the jewelry, accrued income, and extensive property and channeling it into Alaric’s cause. Blood money never washes clean, but it gives both Alaric and me a twisted thrill to know some of Lillian’s wealth is being used against her.
On my way out the door I poke my head in Da’s room and whisper, “Osda sunalei.”
I don’t know why I still say good morning to him. His spirit isn’t here. It never really was. He didn’t feel at ease sleeping in what was to him a giant room. I look at his narrow bed—the smallest I could find—and think how he used to say he felt like he was drowning in it. He stayed here maybe twice a month at most, even though I got a special pass allowing him to stay within the Salem walls after dark. He forced himself to do it, too, for me.
This is where Lillian’s guards came for him and took him away. If he’d been Outland they never would have found him.
I pass my cold kitchen and wonder if I’ll cook again. I miss it, but I can’t imagine myself cooking anymore. The fun of preparing a big meal is in whom you make it for, not eating it.
I’m still not used to this. This half-life I’m living. I find myself speaking to empty rooms and engaging in mindspeak with thin air. It reminds me of a stupid body trick Tristan showed me when we were kids. You stand in a doorway and lift your arms so that the backs of your hands press into the frame. You press with all your might for as long as you can. Then you step out of the doorway and your arms seem to float up like magic. They feel so light—light, but also sore. Whenever I find myself imagining I hear someone coming home, I think of that sensation. That weightless ache.
I leave my building (another gift from Lillian) and hurry down the street of my oh-so-fashionable neighborhood. Close to the trains, the park, and the Citadel of course. Close to Lillian. She gave me the building five years ago now. I only use the top floor and the roof. The rest I rent out, the proceeds of which go to Alaric. Not that I spent too much time in my building before this year. Usually, I was with Lillian at the Citadel, but we still slept apart every now and again when we both tacitly agreed that we needed a bit of space between us.
I used to enjoy missing her once in a while. I think that’s part of the reason I would go buffalo hunting with Da every year. Spending a month away from her, past the reach of even her enormous range for mindspeak, I would come home so hungry for her I couldn’t see straight. It wasn’t just a physical need, either. I missed the whisper of her thoughts in mine, the chatter of her busy mind as it reeled through the dozens of tasks and goals she set for herself each day. I used to feel such pride knowing that those goals were as selfless as they were ambitious. The to-do list of things she ticked off in her head each day was a list of things that she thought would make the world a better place. How awed I was to be a part of that. How empty I felt the day that chatter stopped.
I pick up the pace, hitting the heels of my boots against the pavement as if to strike these unwanted thoughts beneath them. I have too much to do today to let myself be distracted by ghosts, but I can’t seem to shake them. It doesn’t help that I live in Lillian’s shadow. Literally—the shadow of the Citadel blots out the thin morning light around me as I push open the door of my favorite café. I can’t help but give a bitter laugh at the thought as I taste the tea-perfumed and pastry-sweetened air.
“Something funny, Rowan?” asks Mirabelle behind the till.
She tilts her head down and throws me a look through her eyelashes, pressing her hands against the counter to perk up her breasts. She’s really leaning into it this morning. I don’t even have to use my willstone to see the flush of lust turning her cheeks pink and softening her mouth. I wonder if non-magical people like Mirabelle know that mechanics like me can look right into them and see that they’re ovulating, which sends their hormones through the roof and bathes their brains in dopamine, essentially shutting off all rational thought. I bet they’d be embarrassed.