Page 21

There’s been a sighting — a real one. Nothing else yet. Your shadows have also been spotted, so stay safe.

- M

My shadows. The azeroths are here.How? When?I crumple the note with shaking hands. Did I lead them here, or had they already been following my sister?

I peer out the window. Gloomy blue shadows still hug the buildings across the way. Pools of yellow light dot the street. It’s that hazy pre-dawn time when every shadow seems to twitch and shudder in an invisible wind.

I snap the window shut and yank the curtain closed. The crowcraws at me again, claws tapping as it paces back and forth across the nightstand.

“You’ll have to wait,” I tell it sharply.

The notepaper is soft between my fingers. I smooth it out again and press it flat between two books. A sighting. It’s better than nothing.

I need to take Maddox’s messenger to the aviary, but there’s no chance I’m going outside when it’s anything other than bare, blinding daylight. Stalling, I shower, brush my hair far longer than necessary, and dress and undress three times. Standing in front of the open closet, I try to tamp down my mounting frustration. I keep hoping courage will jump out at me.

Clothes have always been my comfort. My little hobby of costume making was honestly earned — I taught myself tailoring in the long years of isolation, poring over books, fighting with fiddly fabrics, pricking myself endless times with pins. Mother was indulgent and didn’t say a word about it being an unfit pastime for a prince. What else was I going to do with my time?

But everything I’d painstakingly sewn with my own hands over the years was gone by the time I arrived at The Sanctum,turned to ash. I couldn’t even bring myself to mourn it. It felt childish when our mother lost her life in the same fire.

After my first week here, Syril dug an entire wardrobe out of The Sanctum’s basement for me — boxes and boxes of show clothes, costumes, and forgotten laundry left in a hurry, all from decades ago when The Sanctum’s upstairs was a human hotel. It was the kindest thing anyone had done for me in a long time, and now my closet is full of beautiful colors and fabrics.

Yet lately I’m not comforted by them. Looking at them makes me itch, makes me worry. With Maddox’s warning fresh on my mind, my preoccupation with the wardrobe feels supremely frivolous.

With a huff, I pick out something simple — charcoal grey woolen trousers and a soft, buttery sweater in the same color. With some effort, I fit the slits I opened in the back of the sweater over my wings.

“Crah,” the crow says in the mirror behind me.

“Come on.” I hold out my wrist.

The crow observes me with one beady eye until I scratch its cheek. Birds and fairies have always been kin. In the old days, wherever a fertile fairy king went there was sure to be food for all birds. Abundant crops for the seed-eaters. Berries for the crows. Fish in the rivers for the herons.

“I’m not fertile, you know,” I tell the crow.

“Rrrrk,” it retorts, shaking itself.

You’d better get on that, maybe.

The Sanctum’s aviary is on the roof, up the rickety back staircase. It seems messenger birds are outdated these days, with cellphones and all, but Syril keeps the aviary maintained. The roost is mostly full of pigeons — fat, soft, and friendly. I like them very much. I show the visiting crow where to find seed and vegetables, and it makes a few uncertain stabs at a chunk of greenery before flying to sit atop the weathervane and surveythe neighborhood. The aviary is mostly empty, so I take a few handfuls of seed to the un-fenced area behind the garden where the pigeons sit in the sun.

The daylight and the open space of the roof clears my head of lingering shadows. My fears are probably just unfounded paranoia. The Sanctum is protected by dryad magic, and even azeroths would hesitate to trespass on the threshold of an old and powerful shadow dryad like Syril.

“Hey!”

The shout nearly startles me off my feet, and I gasp as my heart slams into my ribs. The pigeons scatter with an eruption of wingbeats. Once my heart stops trying to crawl out of my throat I recognize the voice, but it doesn’t do my heart any better. Ezra stands at the garden fence, wearing thick gloves and holding a bin.

“Are you okay?”

“Pardon?” I look down at myself, but there’s nothing wrong.

He drops the bin and strips off the gloves. “What are you doing over there? There’s no fence!”

“It’s fine.”

“It’sdangerous,” he insists, leaning over the fence. “Come on, you shouldn’t be there.”

“Ezra.” I fold my arms, feeling irritation pinch my brow. “I’m a fairy. Fairies aren’t afraid of heights.”

I surreptitiously hide my defective wing behind my back. He’d better not mention it. But he doesn’t even look, instead heaving himself over the fence with a grunt.