Servant of Earth

1

The winter solstice crept in cold, wet, and heavy with dread.

I stared out into the predawn darkness, tracing a finger over the frost patterns coating the outside of the window. A wintry draft slithered through the gap where the wooden frame had warped with age. As the wind surged outside, a spray of icy rain smacked against the glass.

Another drop of frigid water splatted on my forehead. I yelped, scowling up at the roof. This leak was new—I'd already been woken unpleasantly by the one forming directly over my mattress during the night—and it was just one more sign of everything wrong in my life. I wouldn't have the money to replace the thatching for a long time, if ever, so I grabbed a bucket and set it under the leak. Soon, I wouldn't need to trek to the well for water at all.

As I straightened, a glow through the window caught my eye. In the distance, a golden faerie light shivered through the darkness. Its path was uneven, distorted further by the warped glass. As I watched it move, my chest tightened with worry.

The winter solstice wasn't just the shortest day of the year; it was the day the Fae took yet another thing from humans. A faith that yielded no rewards, prayers that met uncaring ears, a legendary history that had decayed into this disappointing reality… We gave the faeries our hopes, and for what? Silence and far-off lights that led nowhere.

And now the Fae—or at least our naïve belief in them—would steal the lives of four young women.

"You don't deserve any of it," I whispered to the drifting orb.

My mother would have chastised me for the blasphemous words. *Only the luckiest and most worthy humans are chosen to join the Fae,* she'd told me eighteen years ago as she unsnarled the tangles in my hair with a wooden comb. It had been another winter solstice morning—a sacrifice year, like this one—and I'd been just shy of turning seven. *Those women are favored above all other mortals, and they live out the rest of their lives in splendor in Mistei, the faeries' kingdom under the ground.*

There was longing in her voice whenever she told me that story. She hadn't been chosen for the Fae during the solstice ritual when she came of age. Life had pushed a different fate on her, and there I was as the result: a ragged child held in her equally threadbare embrace, my father long gone and rain dripping through the roof onto the packed earth floor of our hut. Still, she'd passed the fables on to me, as if through hearing them, maybe I'd one day be granted the blessings life had denied her.

I didn't believe in blessings anymore.

Another drop plinked into the bucket. I made a rude hand gesture at the distant will-o'-the-wisp, turned my back on it, and began my preparations for the day.

The washbasin still held leftover water from the previous night. I splashed it onto my face, gasping at the shock of cold. Then I scrubbed my teeth and changed my nightdress for a loose shirt and trousers. The day would be a busy one—it was not only a sacrifice year but the first time I'd be eligible—but I didn't want to miss my favorite morning ritual.

The one-room hut was dark, but I knew the layout by heart. I stepped around the small table and two mismatched chairs that served as a sitting area, making my way to the scarred wooden table by the hearth. Bundles of herbs hung overhead, along with a few withered onions. Anya had given me some cheese the last time we'd gone for a walk together, so I cut off a piece and shoved it in my mouth before grabbing my cloak and heading outside.

The rain had thankfully stopped, but the mossy ground was slick and rimed with overnight frost. The snows would come soon, but we were still in the first month of winter, with its glittering mornings and spats of icy rain. As I rounded the corner of the hut, the wind grabbed at my messy braid, trying to rip the brown curls loose.

The sky was purpling to the east, the blackness of night slipping away. The wood-and-stone buildings and thatched roofs of Tumbledown stood against the lightening sky like crooked teeth, and smoke began drifting from chimneys as the town woke.

The town wasn't my aim, though. My mornings were dedicated to the bog.

Enterra was curved like an hourglass with a longer and wider lower part, and the bog banded the country like a lady's belt, with Tumbledown its buckle. Just north of my hut, the shrubbed land merged into a vast, glassy wet expanse dotted with low mounds of earth and plant matter. Thick fog sprawled across it, obscuring the far side where the land became faerie territory. Dozens of will-o'-the-wisps drifted through that fog, the floating orbs fading as dawn grew closer.

I watched the lights dim and go out one by one, and a familiar sadness settled alongside my lingering anxiety. On solstice mornings, my mother's presence felt especially close. Her faith that she could become one of the Fae's favored ones had never faltered. Supposedly the Fae used to travel across the bog to trade with, seek entertainment from, or rain blessings down on humans—and occasionally abduct those they took a liking to—but now the eerie lights that drifted across the wetlands at night were the only sign they even existed.

Loving the Fae hadn't brought my mother any joy. Yet when she'd died eighteen months back, feverish and agonized, her last words had been for them: "Maybe now they will save me."

They hadn't, of course.

I filled my lungs with icy predawn air, willing my bitterness to wait a few hours. The morning was beautiful, and there were treasures to be found. When pink tinged the eastern sky, the last golden wisp disappeared, and I retrieved my net from a hollow log and wound my way out into the bog.

Most people were too afraid to come here. It was easy to get lost and drown; the ground between pools of water was deceptive, and more often than not what looked like solid earth was actually a pit of mud waiting to suck a traveler down. There were legends, too, of knuckers and other Nasties that lurked in the fens and wet places of the world, eager to rend the flesh of those who misstepped.

I'd spent my entire life at the edge of the bog, though, and I never misstepped—nor had I ever seen evidence of dragons under the water. It had been my haven for as long as I could remember, a place to be alone and free.

I took familiar twisting paths until a stretch of water blocked any further progress. Then I sat on a tussock of pale winter grass, my feet inches from a patch of clover that hid the edge of a pool, and dipped my net in.

"Fishing" was what my mother had called this odd habit of mine, though I privately thought of it as "collecting." My mother's stories had sparked my interest in the border between humans and the Fae, and the bog's secrets had been so tempting that I'd attached a net to a long wooden pole, determined to see what rested at the bottom.

As it turned out, any number of wonders were hidden in the muck and silt. Smooth skipping stones, carved talismans, even coins tossed in by lovers who braved the treacherous paths to prove their courage and commitment to each other. They wished on coppers, hoping the Fae would bless their union. The Fae didn't care, but I certainly blessed them for it. I'd even found what I thought were faerie artifacts before—pieces of faceted glass or strange twists of bright metal. I'd run my fingers over the objects, thinking about who might have crafted them in the distant past and what their purpose had been. Letting the wonder of my mother's stories slip back into me, if only for a few hours.

Something caught at my net, and I grunted as I jerked it free. The object that came up with the muck was brown and misshapen. "Please don't be something disgusting," I said under my breath as I tipped the blob out onto the grass. Artifacts weren't the only things hidden below; there were occasional bones, too, and in a thick, foul-smelling pool deep in the bog, I'd once found a shriveled hand still covered in leathery skin.

When the bog took, it was greedy.

I wiped away the slimy mud. Not a bone, thankfully. Just a rock. I threw it back in with a plunking splash and fished for more.

I was trying not to think about what awaited later that day, but the memory of that severed hand was making me fret about the solstice sacrifice again. The odds of being selected were minimal, but I wasn't the only one eligible this year—my best friend, Anya, was as well, and she was all I had left in the world. Supposedly the will-o'-the-wisps would lead the chosen women to Mistei, but I'd stopped believing that a long time ago. Probably the first morning I'd fished up a human bone.

I squeezed my eyes shut and focused on my breathing. "This is my place," I said softly. The Fae didn't get to taint everything, and there were still hours left before the ritual.

The rising sun spilled rosy golden light across the landscape, and the fog began to clear. I scooped another stone out of the water and tossed it back. Found a single copper and wiped it dry on my cloak before stuffing it in a pocket. My net didn't pull up anything but thick, slimy mud after that—much of which splattered over my already stained clothes—so I shifted to a different spot and tried again. This time I found a wooden doll the size of my index finger, its face carved with a carefree smile. It had tiny horns that signified it as an Underfae, a type of faerie that was lower in status than the Noble Fae who ruled Mistei.

"Look at you," I whispered, enchanted by the figurine in my palm. This was the sort of treasure I loved most—the kind that made me wonder and imagine. Who had it belonged to, and how had it been lost? It had probably been dropped on accident by an adventurous child from the village, the kind who—like me—had decided to test their mettle on the dangerous paths.

But maybe… maybe a Fae child had walked here, instead. Maybe this doll was a thousand years old, a well-preserved remnant of a time when our two species mingled freely and the paths across the bog were clear and well trod.

I tucked the doll into my pocket before I could start speculating about more tragic reasons it might be here. This was already a more productive morning than most, and I considered ending my collecting expedition on a triumphant note. But the low sun sparked off the water and the world felt free and empty in a rare way, so I slid the pole back in. One more try, and then I would pack up and return to the worries and responsibilities awaiting me.

My net met resistance in the thick mud at the bottom of the pond. When I pulled it free, I could tell I'd caught something substantial. I thought it was a rock at first, but when the net emerged from the water, it contained the most beautiful dagger I'd ever seen.

I gasped, pressing a hand to my mouth. The steel blade and wire-wrapped hilt gleamed in the dawn light, and the pommel was capped with a large crimson jewel. Its shine was unnatural: no mud clung to the weapon, and there wasn't a trace of rust on the blade.

My heart pounded as I pulled it from the net. It was heavy, yet the hilt fit my hand perfectly. Had it belonged to some wealthy lady, or even a faerie? The double-edged blade was wickedly sharp, and the scrollwork on the guard looked ancient and arcane. The blood-red stone capping the pommel was the strangest of all. I hadn't seen many jewels in my life, but the few I had seen had been star-bright and faceted. This was a perfectly smooth semicircle, and the dull orb seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it.

I glanced over my shoulder, suddenly afraid that someone had seen me find it, but I was still alone.

This dagger would fetch a fortune. A real fortune, not just the meager coins I earned selling peat and bog-trinkets at market. It would be a life-changing amount of money.

For a moment I let myself imagine a future where I was rich and free. I could leave Tumbledown and its small-minded judgments, find a new place to live where I wasn't known as the herbwoman's wild daughter. No more leaking roof, no more nights where my belly echoed with hunger. No more despair as I imagined my life unfolding just like this, day after day, until I eventually died impoverished and alone the way my mother had. I could become a trader, passing spices and handicrafts between Enterra and other countries, getting to hold and study artifacts that told stories of other legends and other ways of life. Maybe I'd even visit those places someday: cross the western mountains to icy Grimveld and forested Lindwic, then on to other countries I didn't know the names of yet.

Anya could come with me, too—she wouldn't have to marry just to ensure her future. She could take painting lessons, maybe even illuminate manuscripts the way she'd wanted to since she was a girl. We could be new people, unbeholden to anyone or anything but ourselves.

Dreams were nothing but air, though, and real change took more than just hope. Still, my hands trembled as I wrapped the dagger in the folds of my cloak.

I returned to the shore shortly afterwards, unable to focus on anything else.

My hut rose from the mist at the edge of the bog, looking like a boulder with its squat stone walls and inelegant structure. My parents had built the rough house by hand together when they'd first settled here. It wasn't beautiful, but it had stood for over twenty years. Stacks of peat brick—my meager source of income—leaned against the wall, waiting for the next time I could take a full barrow into town.

I paused, considering my options. This dagger was so obviously expensive that I couldn't risk anyone else seeing it. I needed to sell it quickly, and the solstice festival with its crowd of tourists was the perfect time.

I tore a long strip off the bottom of my shirt and wrapped the blade tightly. Then I slid the dagger inside the waistband of my trousers, strapping it to my thigh with the thin leather tie that had secured my braid. My curls sprang free, wild as ever.

There were other things I wanted to sell at market, so I hiked to my secret hiding place: a small cave in a rocky outcropping. The entrance was so short I had to crawl through. Once inside, the space was tall enough to stand in and several body lengths wide.

Every available surface was covered with treasure. Not gold or jewels, of course; if I'd found any, I would have sold them immediately. The objects here were more mundane: simple stone tools, useless household objects, a collection of unusually colored rocks. Each item had been collected from the bog, and each was precious to me. There was the wooden cup that had been one of my first finds. A rusty nail. A chunk of rose quartz. Each object told a story: of the morning when I'd found it, of the people or animals of the unknown past, of the bog and me.

I set the figurine down next to a battered metal cup, then moved to the corner that held things to sell at market. My basket contained a rabbit pelt from my last hunt and some faerie fruit I'd harvested the day before. The blue spheres would fetch a decent price, either from a visiting lady unfamiliar with their bitterness or from the vintner at the top of the hill who would turn them into hallucinatory faerie wine. I grabbed the basket, then headed back towards the entrance.

As I crouched to leave, there was a sharp pain at my right thigh. I yelped. "Damn!"

The dagger must have cut through the bindings. I hurriedly stripped my trousers off, exposed skin pebbling with gooseflesh, then unstrapped the dagger and examined the cut. Luckily, it was superficial: a bleeder, but one that would heal quickly.

The knife edge was clean.

I frowned, inspecting it more closely. Shouldn't there be a trace of blood on the blade? Instead, it shone bright and silver as the moon. I tested the edge gently on my thumb, gasping when it immediately sliced through the skin. My blood slid along the edge of the dagger. Then, as if drawn by some mystical force, it ran up from the edge towards a narrow groove in the center of the blade. It sank into the groove like rain into soil.

"How is that possible?" Surely I hadn't seen right. There was no way my blood had just… disappeared.

I cut another shallow slice in my thumb, wincing at the sting. Again the blood crawled up from the edge and pooled in the groove before vanishing.

Fae magic. It had to be. What else on this earth could do that?

I shivered.

It had been stupid to cut myself, but the blade looked clean and the wounds were already clotting, and I always kept a few lengths of bandage here just in case. I bandaged myself, then wrapped the dagger in the rough white fabric as well, adding far more layers than should have been necessary. I hesitated before tying it to my leg again. It might be impossibly sharp and potentially magical, but showing a dagger this valuable in my poor village would be more dangerous than keeping it strapped against my skin.

A little pain was worth what it would bring me, anyway. Money, possibilities… a future.

Tumbledown was fully awake by the time I reached town with my basket. Smoke curled from chimneys, women swept their doorsteps or clustered at the fences between houses to gossip, and children ran around shrieking solstice blessings at one another. Someone narrowly missed me with a bucket of slops they threw into the gutter, and when I dodged, I was nearly run over by the milkman's cart as it rattled over the cobblestones. He always worked at a frantic pace on the major holidays, since the true believers of the faerie faith liked to leave saucers of milk out for any unnatural creatures that might be wandering. Part offering of worship, part bribe to avoid mischief from the less benevolent types of faerie—and a waste of drink and money, to my thinking.

The street market next to the temple was full of visitors from across the country, men and women who peered at us and our rickety stone and wood homes like they were at a menagerie. Tumbledown was famous for being the closest village to Fae territory, so visitors always seemed surprised to realize we were poor. I found their astonishment amusing. We lived in a miserably wet northern clime next to an impassable bog the Fae never set foot across. Why would we be rich? The tourists who flocked to our faerie festivals made up the majority of our town's economy, though, so we let them gawk all they wanted.

I managed to sell the fruit within the first half hour. Visiting ladies went wild for the stuff, which was rumored to help you see faeries. Tonight they'd look with wonder at the will-o'-the-wisps across the bog, convinced the fruit had done its job, not realizing that the residents of Tumbledown saw those lights every night.

The rabbit pelt was harder to sell. I only found a buyer late that morning, and for a price I wouldn't have taken if I hadn't needed to purchase food. *Hunger is the most efficient way to lower one's standards,* my mother had quipped once, back when she'd still had the energy to make jokes.

Hopefully my standards wouldn't need to stay lowered for much longer. I kept an eye out for a buyer who looked wealthy enough to purchase the dagger, but this sale would need to be handled with care. Plenty of people would accuse me of thievery if they saw me holding a weapon that fine.

The crowd hummed with excitement and trepidation for the selection that would happen at noon, which marked the official start of the solstice celebrations. Even the poorest women I passed had taken the time to wash and press their outfits in honor of the holiday. I spared a glance for my grime-encrusted clothes. I should have changed into something nicer, but what did it matter? After the selection I could go home and change into my one decent dress before the main ceremony that night.

"Kenna!"

I grinned at the familiar voice and turned to see Anya rushing towards me, dimples flashing. She started to hold out her arms, then stopped a few feet away, eyeing my mud-stained clothes.

"No need for hugs," I said. "You'd just get dirty, and you look beautiful today."

Anya always looked beautiful, with her cascading golden-brown hair and large hazel eyes. She was tall and curvy, the kind of woman people couldn't help gawking at. In comparison, I was short, thin, and usually covered in mud. "A little wild" was what some of the kinder village women called me; "half feral" was more common. Why Anya had taken one look at me when we were children and decided we'd be best friends, I'd never know, but I was eternally grateful.

"I would normally say the same," she said, looking at my stained trousers judgmentally, "but you didn't make even the smallest effort today."

I stifled a laugh. Anya had called me beautiful plenty of times before, but she made no secret of her dismay over my grubby attire. "There's no need to make an effort. Putting on a dress isn't going to make people think any better of me." I raked my fingers through my tangled curls, wincing when I encountered a long strand of grass. I would definitely be the only woman with grass in her hair during the selection.

"I'm less worried about it being a dress and more worried about the mud splatters. Were you in the bog?"

"Yes. Doing some collecting." The bloodstain at my thigh was small and blended in with the dirt, so I wasn't going to mention it and worry her.

She made a face. "I don't know why you like it out there. What if you fall in and drown?"

"I know where I'm going." Up to a point, anyway. Years of rambling hadn't yet shown me a path all the way across. I nodded at her outfit. "Your dress is nice."

A shadow passed over her face. "I didn't exactly have other options. It is pretty, though." The garment under her cloak was thin yellow cotton, best suited for warmer weather, but it was one of the only dresses to survive the fire that had claimed her house and her parents' lives over the summer. She shook her head. "Maybe some rich man will fall madly in love with me today."

The words sounded sad. Anya was an idealist, believing fervently that a love match was possible and would improve her life, but the kind of husband she found out of financial necessity would likely not be worth having in any other sense.

The majority of women in Tumbledown were married by twenty-five, so both of us were nearing the limits of what was considered acceptable. I was unmarried because I was poor, strange, and undesirable—which was fine by me, since the life of a merchant appealed to me more than that of a housewife—but Anya had had no shortage of suitors over the years. She'd been dedicated to her parents, though. Neither had been in good health, and they'd needed strong young hands to help out around the house. Now that they were gone, she was staying with an aunt who had made it clear Anya would not be welcome forever.

We wound through the market together, looking at the stalls while I kept an eye out for anyone wealthy enough to afford the dagger. I didn't mention this quest to Anya, though—she was the dreamer of the two of us, and I didn't want to get her hopes up about the future until the coins were in my hand. The crowd surged, easily five times what we might expect from a normal holiday, and the mood was one of nervous excitement.

Anya kept up a running commentary at my side. She was smiling, as usual, but there was tension in her cheeks, and her anxiety was evident in the speed of her chattering. My own worry lay heavy in my belly, but of the two of us, I was more likely to stew in silence. When a horse-drawn cart clipped a vendor stand with a loud crack, Anya jumped.

"Hey," I said, pulling up short next to a booth full of woven textiles. "Are you all right?"

She pressed a hand to her stomach as she leaned back against a wooden post. "I'm nervous about the ritual. The thought of going to Mistei is…" She shook her head. "Amazing and terrifying all at once. It's not pious of me to say, but part of me hopes we don't get chosen."

Anya lacked my cynicism. Like my mother, she believed the faerie lights would actually guide women across the bog. Still, even if those legends were true and the chosen women lived out the rest of their days in luxury, anyone would be nervous about leaving behind everything they'd ever known.

Fear thickened in my throat at the thought of Anya heading into the bog at night, trusting her life and safety to a children's story. I knew the hidden paths better than anyone, and even I had never found my way to Mistei. I shook my head, dismissing the possibility. "We won't be chosen."

"You don't know that."

"There are hundreds of women here," I said, trying to soothe her. All unmarried women in Tumbledown between the ages of twenty and thirty were required to participate, but women came from all over northern Enterra, either because their hearts were full of naïve faith or because their families couldn't afford to keep them anymore and were desperate for a magical solution. "The odds are low. And if you do get picked, we can run away before the ritual starts."

Anya looked pensively towards the temple two blocks away. It was taller than any other building in town, formed of glittering gray stone that had supposedly been quarried from Mistei many centuries back. The Elder's acolytes were placing yew branches inside a large copper brazier at the top of the temple steps. "Maybe it would be a good thing to be chosen," she said softly. "Maybe that's the way out."

My entire heart rejected the idea, but I knew why she would say that. Being chosen by the faeries would be a way out of her new poverty, a way out of uncertainty, a way out of this reality where she needed to marry a man she didn't love in order to have a decent life.

I didn't believe the ritual brought a fresh start, though, not after the bones I'd found. Maybe the Fae had truly cared about humans once, but no one credible had even seen a faerie in centuries.

"No," I said fiercely. "There will be another way." One that didn't involve losing her to the bog or to some petty household tyrant who would control what she did and where she went and who she was allowed to befriend. Her parents had allowed her to run wild with a half-feral bog child; a husband wouldn't be so lenient.

Her smile was small, but her eyes had brightened. "If you say so," she said. Anya the dreamer, taking my word that the future would be happier.

I shoved the fear away. I might not be an idealist, but I was tenacious, and that tended to yield better results anyway. Once the dagger was sold, we'd both have more options.

We walked through the village, and considering the way Anya hovered by my side, I knew she wouldn't leave until after the selection happened. Selling the dagger in daylight might be risky anyway—better to wait until tonight, when the village would be drunk and raucous with celebration.

It was a relief, in a way. There was something comforting about carrying a weapon. Women weren't supposed to unless they were hunting. Was this how men felt? Bold and brave, like no one could hurt them?

We passed a group of tavern louts at the edge of the market, the kind with unsteady steps and wandering hands. One of them whistled as he noticed Anya. "Why don't you come over here? I have something to show you." He cupped himself lewdly through his trousers, and his friends laughed.

Anya's pale cheeks flushed, but she kept her eyes on the ground and walked faster. I stepped between her and the men, baring my teeth.

"Oh ho," one of them said. "The little guard bitch looks feral."

"I couldn't recognize her through the mud."

"At least she doesn't have to worry today—there's no way the Fae want that scrawny ass."

They burst into uproarious laughter. I scowled and kept moving—I was used to men talking like that—but Anya stopped.

"Shut your mouth," she snapped. Her hands curled into tight fists as they laughed louder.

"It's not worth it." I tugged on her arm, hoping she'd yield. This wasn't a fight worth picking, not when Anya was wearing her yellow dress, when she was nervous about what might happen.

She dug in her heels and kept glaring. This was one of Anya's most frustrating—and endearing—characteristics. She never fought for herself, but she always did on behalf of her loved ones.

Anya yielded to my tugs at last and we walked on, leaving the men laughing behind us. Her cheeks had reached fever brightness. "Pigs," she muttered.

"And what do pigs become?" I asked lightly.

Her lips twitched. "Bacon."

"Exactly."

Anya looked over her shoulder one more time, then faced forward again. "Where to?" she asked. "We have a few minutes before we need to gather at the temple."

I hesitated, eyeing the temple's bell tower. There was a fenced yard behind it filled with small stone markers. "She loved the solstice."

Anya understood instantly, as she always had. Her expression softened, and she tucked her arm into mine. "Let's pay our respects."

My mother's grave marker was a crooked flagstone set in an overgrown corner of the yard. Wildflowers would bloom around it in summer, but now it was as unadorned as her life had ended up being. I'd scratched her name into the stone myself, deepening it every few weeks: NEVE HERON.

I knelt in the dirt, placed my hands in my lap, and closed my eyes. I thought of her curling brown hair, the way her smile had flashed bright and quick as a fish in a sunlit stream. Of her laugh, which she always hid behind her hand, and how at night she tried to cry so I couldn't hear it. She'd smelled like earth and pungent herbs, and her fingertips had always been stained yellow and green from her work.

My jaw clenched as I remembered the way she'd pressed those tonic-stained hands to her breast each night as she begged the Fae for a blessing. *Please let me serve you,* she'd whispered. *Let me be worthy.*

An icy wind surged through the cemetery, sending dead leaves skittering across the gravestones. "She loved the Fae," I said, eyes still pressed shut. "And they gave her nothing."

Anya's hand came to rest on my shoulder. "They gave her hope," she said softly.

Hope hadn't gotten her much in the end. Maybe Anya was right, though. I found it hard to believe in a better future without the proof of it in my hands, but my mother had always been full of dreams. When she hadn't been dreaming of Mistei, she'd dreamed of love and a marriage that would leave her happy and comfortable. She'd nearly had it once. My father had been clever and charming, with a laugh like a thunderclap and eyes that sparkled with merriment. He was a traveling merchant who had come to Tumbledown for the Beltane festival. One look into her blue eyes and he'd been lost.

Or so she'd said. It was Beltane, after all, a holiday when people's passions ran away with them, and my mother loved her stories.

I was born less than a year later with the odd amber eyes of my father and the wild curls of my mother. I'd been born on a frozen, moonless night, screaming as if I were furious with the world. Perhaps I had every reason to be.

My father hadn't been as wealthy as he'd claimed, and when his business deals fell through, she'd ended up poor and hungry at the edge of the bog with a man whose charm could never quite make up for the rest of it, and whose patience for having a child and a disappointed wife ran out long before I was old enough to remember him.

I opened my eyes and pressed my fingertips to the cold, rough stone. "Happy solstice, mama," I whispered. "May your spirit find Mistei."

Bells began to toll in the temple tower, a rapid, melodic cadence that only rang out once every six years.

Anya's anxious eyes met mine. "It's time."