Gilded Cage (Dark Gifts #1)(43)

More time passed. Still Winterbourne did not visit. Still Thalia did not appear, a plate of scones in one hand and a jug of cool lemonade in the other. Still naughty Puck did not come bounding up, tail wagging, a scrappy bundle of feathers between his small, sharp teeth.

Euterpe’s headaches became worse. The pain was bad even when she sat quite still in her chair in the garden. The buzzing of the bees was so loud as to be unendurable. She felt dizzy when she stood. She stole a glance at her own reflection in the parlour mirror one day, just to see how bad she looked. But the face that stared back at her was still radiant, pink-cheeked, unshadowed and unlined. She was still twenty-four and beautiful.

Forever twenty-four.

Fear slid down her spine like a cold key, stopping her breath.

‘What has happened to me?’ she asked Silyen the next time he appeared, walking down the box-hedged path from a garden gate that was always just out of sight. ‘Why am I not getting older? Why do I never see anyone, apart from you? It feels like it is summer always. And my head is getting worse. I can barely think straight any more.’

She studied his face; emotions passed across it, as insubstantial as cloud over sky. Then finally, like the sun, that smile – the same she’d seen the very first day all those years ago. It was Thalia’s smile, no doubt about it. And it had indeed been years since Silyen had first walked into the garden. Euterpe realized that now.

Years in which he had changed from boy to man – and she had not changed at all.

Euterpe’s skull felt as though it was breaking in two like an egg being cracked from within. She was terrified of whatever strange new life might come crawling out, naked and misshapen.

‘This will hurt,’ Silyen said, holding out both hands to pull her to her feet. ‘But it’s about time. I’m quite curious, too. Mother’s told me about it, but not the whole story. And Zelston’s never uttered a word.’

He put his hands on Euterpe’s shoulders to steady her. Then he turned her slowly around to face the house.

Orpen Mote was a charred ruin.

Her childhood home. Everything she had ever known: burned to ashes. She remembered now. It had been an accident. An ember fallen from the hearth as the household slept.

She and Thalia had been away from home that night, at a ball at Lincoln’s Inn. Winterbourne had shaken her awake in the early hours, in a cold guest room. She remembered how she had felt in that instant: breathless with longing that he had finally come to her instead of waiting till their wedding night.

Until she saw from his terrible expression that that was not why he had come at all.

Her parents had died from the smoke without ever waking, their Skill useless to save them, their slaves, or their home.

Euterpe gasped at the onrush of memory. Only Silyen’s hands held her up as she swayed.

‘Look,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘There.’

She looked to where he pointed. Three people stood close together, a small white-and-tan dog running in circles around their feet, whining. She recognized Thalia’s graceful form, the strong, dark figure of Winterbourne – and there, supported between them, herself. Tears streamed down her other self’s face. Her hair was loose and unkempt, and she seemed unable to stand upright under the weight of her despair.

As Euterpe watched, the grief-stricken girl’s knees buckled. Winterbourne caught her in his arms and tenderly lowered her to the ground.

Euterpe saw herself huddle face down upon the scorched and ash-strewn earth. She heard herself let out an inconsolable cry and scrabble through the grey muck as if hoping by some miracle to unearth her parents, whole and unharmed.

Then the first bird dropped from the sky.

None of the three they were watching noticed. They were already surrounded by so much devastation. But Euterpe and Silyen saw what the trio did not.

They saw the wind whip through the still air, sending a plume of ash gusting upwards like a filthy geyser. Debris spiralled in the eddy and a charred and blackened tree, gutted by fire, toppled to the ground.

Another bird fell heavily: a mallard, flying from the lake. The sky above the ruins of Orpen darkened, and a tangle of cloud was spun by an unseen hand into a skein of storm. Rain lashed down. More small feathered shapes plummeted to the ground.

Euterpe heard Silyen inhale sharply.

‘You,’ he said. He sounded almost excited. ‘Your Skill. Incredible.’

Euterpe didn’t feel excited. She felt sick at heart. Her Skill terrified and disgusted her.

‘Look!’ the pair of them heard Thalia say, as she directed Winterbourne’s gaze away from the girl in his arms. The two stared towards the water meadow on the far side of the river, the one that fed the moat.

The river had created a natural firebreak and the fields there had remained fresh and flower-filled, even as the house burned. But now the grass was bending, waving, as if under an approaching wind – and where it bent, it died.

‘It’s her!’ Thalia cried, raising her voice to be heard above the drumming rain. ‘It’s not something she can control; it just happens. I’ve seen it once or twice before, when she’s been really upset. But I’ve never seen anything like this. We have to stop her.’

Puck gave a shrill howl and huddled closer to the stricken girl’s skirts. Then the breath went out of him and his legs folded. He curled up against his mistress in death, as he had in life.