Spindle Fire by Lexa Hillyer

Author:Lexa Hillyer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-03-08T16:00:00+00:00

19

Aurora

I don’t remember, Queen Belcoeur had said in a whisper that wormed into Aurora’s chest and made it ache with cold. It was real. It had to have been. It means something, she’s sure.

Aurora slips out the Blackthorn gate, closing it with a quiet creak behind her. She doesn’t want to wake anyone. But especially not Heath. He looked so young when she’d stared down at his sleeping form a few minutes ago, lying on the rug beside the smoking orange embers that had been the small fire in his study. And faraway too, like she was looking not at him, but at a reflection of him in a body of water—wavering, rippling. She didn’t want to lie to him. Somehow this—taking his maps and notes and sneaking out while he sleeps—seemed better.

So, she thinks as she makes her way across the dewy fields, the queen is too mad to have any answers. Madness is not uncommon among the fae. Two hundred years ago, the North Faerie had been an expert chess player and a brilliant scholar of astronomy and philosophy, before her mind began to play chess with itself and left her frail, blithering, and wild-eyed. A great tragedy, considering her tithe had been logic. By the time she was murdered, she had long since lost her powers and her ability to rule, except in name.

But maybe Aurora can help Belcoeur remember why she made this place, and for whom she has been waiting all these years. For someone to free her?

Aurora has laid awake night after night thinking about the profound sadness—even fear—she heard in the queen’s voice. The way out of here is not, she senses, a logical one at all, but an emotional one.

The clue she keeps clinging to is the image of the hand-woven cottage, with the steaming teacup in the window—that, and the distinct sense Aurora had when viewing the tapestries that every scene was in some way a representation of a piece of the real world. There must be some reason behind Belcoeur’s choices. If Sommeil is a warped version of her world, then perhaps, Aurora thinks, the answer to how to get out lies in understanding the differences between the two.

For the first time, Aurora realizes that being an outsider could mean she, unlike the others here, can unravel this mystery. And besides, she knows she won’t be able to look Heath in the eyes again until she has proven herself to him.

Though the night fell rapidly, dawn now approaches with an agonizing slowness, the white lip of the horizon quivering. Aurora focuses on that pale line in the distance. Even though it’s risky, even though it means heading back alone into the Borderlands, she has decided to look for the cottage again. If Belcoeur was expecting someone to arrive there, it must be important.

If she were home, she knows, Isbe would scold her for going so far without her.

She misses arguing with Isbe.

She misses everything about Isbe.

She can hardly think, she misses her so much.

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