Wystwood

36. Traitor to the fae

Ada woke to an apricot sun, not yet fully risen. Dozy clouds still spotted the sky, fleeced and bloated, stealing the early day's warmth. Shadows shifted from beneath the door cracks, and Raeph's voice was as low as the creaking floorboards. Her room had no lock, but he did not enter, waiting only in the corridor until he heard the stirring of blankets, and then ghosted away.

She dressed quickly, tying up her shirt strings and tugging on her boots. Solen's silver dagger had rested on the dresser for the night, its moon face staring blankly up at the ceiling. Sifting through the drawers, Ada found a worn belt circled with ragged straps. She pulled off a handful of them, then threaded the belt around her waist and fitted the knife to a strap swinging by her hip.

When she was done, Ada plucked up her cloak from the bedsheets and swept a final look around the room. It appeared just as barren as it had when she had first entered, and aside from the rumpled blankets, nothing suggested anyone was living there. Only the green ribbon, still tied around her bedpost, marked that Ada had ever set foot inside the room. It hollowed her chest to see her phantom existence, so airy she may well have been a passing breeze. Her eyes settled on the discarded belt straps, and she gathered them into her palm.

It only took five more minutes to weave her hair into braids, then she gathered them together at the nape of her neck and secured them into a bun. It was nowhere near as intricate as the plaited crown Ada had worn around her head for the Spring Equinox celebrations, and harder still to accomplish without a mirror to guide her hands. But she knew the patterns, taught year after year by her mother until she had been old enough to do it for herself, though never quite as skillfully.

Escaped tendrils of hair fluttered over her cheeks as she hurried down the staircase, lightened here and there into golden threads by the sunshine. Raeph's eyes seemed to follow their rippling as she entered the taproom, but he wrenched his gaze away as she stepped towards him and Lark. The skin beneath his eyes was indigo, as if he hadn't had a moment's sleep the night before.

It didn't surprise Ada, as Raeph had disappeared into the night as soon as the sky had turned from navy to black. He hadn't returned, not even after Solen excused herself to bed in a half-drunken stupor, and Lark sat by the hearth tuning his lute, watching the candle wax burn down into puddles.

Ada had avoided Armestrong for most of the evening, listening to Solen's disjointed babbling, and then Lark's slow lullabies. But the woman had sought her out, cornering her by the bookcases as the dust swirled thick from its neglected shelves. Lark had only just left for bed, and Ada wondered why she hadn't made her own exit earlier in the evening. There had been something that had kept her lingering; a desire to stay by the door, or away from the one upstairs that would promise a quickened coming of tomorrow.

"The Hound wasn't lying, was he?" Armestrong asked. "There was a flower that had been casted upon. Magic from Min."

She finished with a statement, not a question, and Ada didn't dare to deny it. 

"There was," she said. "But the Hound didn't follow Min. And she didn't take the flower with her when she swore to me she'd run back to the lyceum."

There was a long silence, and Ada could hear a pigeon coo into the night; the rustle of a nesting creature in the chimney. Eventually, Armestrong nodded. She scraped her fingers through the hair at her temples, strands of mottled grey, then walked back to lean across the bar as she slumped onto a stool.

Ada considered slipping up the staircase, but decided against it when the woman huffed a sigh. She balanced on a seat beside Armestrong, lacing her fingers together and waiting as the minutes drifted by. Not a word passed between them, but when her bones began to stiffen, Ada spoke again.