Into the Dim (Into the Dim, #1)(77)

Hectare squinted blearily at Collum, then came to our rescue. “Never mind him, my girl. It is time. Give them the dagger.”

All movement in the chamber ceased. I don’t think anyone even breathed.

“It’s here?” Bran asked in a reverent whisper.

We’d been prepared to beg. To somehow make them understand how important it was that we took the dagger with us. If that didn’t work, we’d have had to steal it. With my mother’s bracelet gone, it was the only way.

Hectare nudged the queen with a gnarled hand. Eleanor stood, then from a nearby table retrieved a carved ebony box. As her ermine cloak glided along the rushes, a delicate scent of summer roses and nutty herbs drifted up.

When Eleanor withdrew the blade from its sheath, a walnut-size opal seized the candlelight and cast it back in blue and green shimmers that sparked across the beamed ceiling and tapestried walls. It was as though someone had captured the moon and imbedded it in the golden hilt.

My hand flew to my chest. Beneath the fabric of my bodice, the lodestone warmed against my skin. Bran reached up to clasp the cloak pin at his throat.

“My bracelet,” Phoebe murmured.

From his place near the door, Collum quietly studied the ring on his right hand.

“Yes,” Hectare said into the silence. “Our world is not yet ready for such a thing as this. It holds a power the ignorant might use for ill. I think it best that it leave this place. But . . . may I see it for a moment first?”

The queen stared down at the dagger, mesmerized.

“My child?”

The sister struggled upright on her cot, her stern command breaking the dagger’s hold on Eleanor. With a grimace, she thrust it back into the sheath and handed it to Hectare.

The nun slid the blade out just enough to examine the hilt. She tilted her head, frowning. “I must have misremembered. I thought . . .” Hectare pursed her lips, and a thousand wrinkles radiated outward. “No matter.” She slipped the blade home and held it out to me. “This old memory is not what it used to be. Take it.”

Blindly, I snatched the dagger and handed it off to Collum. He stared down at the blade. I saw his shoulders bunch and his head bow as he rubbed a thumb over the stone.

Something was gnawing at me, though. Something about the stone. I tried to focus, but as each moment ticked by, a queasy trepidation began to build inside me.

Why isn’t my mom here yet?

“Hectare would speak with the two of you,” Eleanor called, waving Bran and me over. The queen looked wrung out, heart-bruised. “Do not tax her,” she warned in a voice cracked with grief. “For I think she does not have much time left. I must find out where Rachel has gotten to. It is not like the girl to tarry.”

The queen’s footsteps dragged as she went to confer with the guard at her door. Bran and I knelt by the nun’s cot. When I looked into her face, grief coiled through me at the dusky color around her lips.

“I’ve given much thought to you since we met, child.” Sister Hectare spoke in a crackle. Paper ruffling in a breeze. “In my long life, the Lord has seen fit to grant me many gifts. When I look at those two over there”—she gestured to where Collum and Phoebe spoke quietly together—“it is as though I am seeing them through a long tunnel. It was the same with this Celia.”

She coughed, wheezy and weak. Her rheumy gaze switched back and forth between Bran and me. “The two of you now, you are clearer to me.” Hectare reached out and clasped my hands between hers. Her palms felt like silk and sandpaper. “The same yet different from the others.”

A chill raced across my shoulders. I glanced at Bran, but his eyes were riveted on Hectare.

“None of you belong here.” My hands bunched inside the old woman’s skeletal grip. Her gaze fixed with Bran’s as she finished. “Though you two are not so far away as the others. It is difficult to explain, though I see in the young lord’s eyes he knows of what I speak, yes?”

Bran’s response was so quiet, I barely heard. “I do, Sister.”

Spent, Hectare fell back on the pillows. Exhaustion pulled at her parchment lids, but the corners of her mouth lifted.

I turned to Bran, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes. “What’s she talking about?”

“Ah,” came Hectare’s creaky whisper, “the girl does not know.”

Bran closed his eyes. “No, Sister,” he said. “Not yet.”





Chapter 38


BEFORE I COULD ASK EXACTLY WHAT I DIDN’T KNOW, voices sounded outside the door. Collum stiffened, but Eleanor hustled to open it herself. William Lucie rushed in, cradling someone in his arms. She was hooded and cloaked, but I would’ve known her anywhere. Pain struck low and hard when I saw the coarse ropes knotted around her ankles. The severed ends swayed as she struggled weakly in the soldier’s arms.

“No,” my mother whimpered. “Take me back. He’ll punish me again. I said I’d be good. I swore it. Please . . .”

The queen stepped forward, her voice glacial. “What is the meaning of this, Captain?”

He laid my mother gently on a chair draped with soft animal skins and pulled back the hood and cloak. Her eyes were red rimmed and wild as she slumped there, dressed only in a long white shift.

William dropped to one knee to address the queen, his kind eyes pinched in pity. “I found Lady Babcock in her chambers, as you said, Your Grace. Her guard is dispatched. The lady had been most ill-used. Bound to her bed and . . .” A disgusted exhale through his nose. “She’s been scourged, Your Grace. Her back is naught but a shredded mess.”