Chapters (45)
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
Talon. She realized she’d memorized his tattoos as if they were a glyph and wondered what would happen if she visioned them like one. Would it summon him? She smiled at the thought. That would be sharp. He wasn’t so bad to have around.
She reached the cliff’s edge and descended on her wings down the rock-cut stairs, but as they curved and Bellatrix’s garden came into view, she slowed and stopped. The lady was sitting there on the same stone bench where she’d braided Magpie’s hair. She seemed to be looking out into the canyon, but one glance at her face made it clear that whatever she was seeing, it wasn’t the familiar landscape.
Her beautiful face was a portrait of longing, of loneliness, and need. And her eyes were the eyes of one who knows exactly where the border lies between hope and despair and who has stood before it many times and looked across. Magpie had never seen such a look and a wave of sympathetic misery washed over her to see Bellatrix in such a state. She who was so brave . . . But it was more than bravery that bound Bellatrix here and kept her from joining the seraphim in the high planes.
What was it? She’d called it obstinacy, but even Magpie, who had but a sprout’s understanding of it, could see that it was love, and it shivered her.
Love. She’d always thought of love as . . . affection, the look that passed often between her parents, or the feel of their arms around her. But wasn’t it this too, the core of iron in someone’s soul that made them capable of impossible things? It seemed a terrifying force.
If Kipepeo had never fallen to the Blackbringer, Magpie wondered, where would the world be now? If Bellatrix had followed the path laid out for her, had lived her life in the world, crossed the river as a biddy, and joined the seraphim when it was her time, there would have been no one here to notice when things began to go wrong. There would have been no one to trick the Magruwen, and Magpie might never have been. It was the lady’s tragedy as well as Fade’s that gave a flicker of hope to the rest of the world.
Magpie longed to give her hope in return. She thought of telling her of her dream, of the sparks trapped inside the Blackbringer, but she was afraid. What if it was all a fancy? Or would it be worse if it wasn’t? Even if she could rescue some souls, surely Kipepeo had long ago subsided to darkness. Surely his spark couldn’t be among those dull embers after so many thousands of years. She resolved to say nothing of it.