Foxglove by Adalyn Grace

Author:Adalyn Grace [GRACE, ADALYN]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published: 2023-08-22T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-THREE

SIGNA GAVE LITTLE THOUGHT TO WHAT SHE DID NEXT. THINKING would require feeling, and she had no desire to suffer through anything of the sort. Not yet.

Moments after Blythe had fled, William returned in a panic to find Signa hugging her knees, unblinking as she watched the foal.

“Miss Farrow?” Fear edged his voice.

Had she been able to see herself, Signa might have understood why he drew a step back as she stood to face him. She would have seen the wildness in her eyes and the straw in her hair. Would have seen the way she flexed her fingers as though her nails were claws, and the pain that cracked her expression like a porcelain cup. One wrong word, one wrong move, and she would shatter.

“Leave me alone.”

“It’s getting late,” William whispered. “I’ve come to accompany you back to the manor.”

She cut him a look so scathing that his mouth snapped closed. Only after a long moment of staring down at the foal did he step inside and scoop it into his arms. “Stay as long as you’d like, then. But I’m putting the foal with his mother.” William said it like a question, so Signa nodded. It would be better that way, if she didn’t have to look at the foal—at proof of what she was, and the impossibility of what she’d done.

She waited for William to disappear. For the noise around her to settle into swishing tails and softly stamping hooves before she tilted her head up at the ceiling, shut her eyes, and asked, “You’re still here, aren’t you?”

Signa was met by a wave of icy air, and a voice that slipped through her mind like the finest velvet. Of course I am.

“I brought a foal back to life.”

You brought a foal back to life, Death repeated without a hint of emotion to betray his thoughts. The silver in your hair is gone, as well. How are you feeling?

The question was so ridiculous that she couldn’t contain her bitter laughter. How was she feeling? God, she couldn’t even begin to process it.

Tell me how I can help, Little Bird. Signa knew he pressed closer when her fingertips numbed from the chill of his body. Tell me how to make this better.

That was just it—there was no making it better, and the reality of that was sinking in too quickly to process.

“I feel like I’m being pulled in a thousand directions.” The admission was quiet, whispered from her most fragile depths. “I’m tired of people being afraid of me. I’m tired of feeling like I’m not enough. No matter what I do, I’m disappointing someone. But the one I truly feel most disappointed in is myself, because I hate feeling like this, Death. I thought I was done.”

Death’s voice came as easy as the autumn breeze, sweeping in and lulling her into its comfort. If people are afraid, he said, then let them be afraid. Your shoulders were not meant to bear the weight of their expectations, Signa. You were not made to please others.

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