The Five Daughters of the Moon

Chapter 9: Elise

The train squeals akin to a child of iron whose limbs are torn apart, like a daughter of ice about to receive a shattering blow, like a shadow of a maiden abandoned into a lightless cave, like a glorious figurehead crafted from silver that the journey will tarnish and that can never quite be polished back to her former shine.

I stir from the shallow sleep, the only kind of sleep I have known for weeks, as I bump against the cabin’s wall. I remain there, leaning against the lacquered panel that seeps coldness through my clothes onto my skin, then onward into my bones. This isn’t the first time the train screams nor the first it halts in the middle of the night.

Yet something is different, the stillness and slowness of time. I quickly get up, slip my feet into the sabots that have long since ceased to chafe me. Though the curtains of my cabin are drawn down, though the guards have told us not to look out, I swiftly part them.

We are in the middle of nowhere, where the vast expanse of snow stretches on forever, glittering regardless of the cost that such display of wealth might require. The sky is black and scattered with stars. My father’s gaze is kind, a golden halo against the velvet.

I know at once, this isn’t a planned stop.

For a moment, my heart throbs and my breathing comes in dizzying gasps. My fingers tremble as I slip out of my nightgown, into the simple woolen dress. Even though the buttons are big and on the front, I struggle to fasten them. If Lily were here, she’d hum one of her melancholy tunes. But she’s not, and I don’t know what became of my friend. She never revealed to me what her plan would be once the side we both supported triumphed. I thought her cautious, not wary of me, but perhaps I was wrong about that, too. Perhaps it’s better I don’t know what became of her, just as she’s blessed not to know what has and will eventually happen to me.

I lift my mattress’s edge and retrieve the stash of sequin necklaces. Celestia has a plan, but she hasn’t entrusted me with the details either. I loop the thin chains around my neck, around my wrists. This might be the night we are at last rescued, and in case it is, I want to be ready for every eventuality. For I’m partially at fault in my family’s demise.

I thought I could cease to be a Daughter of the Moon. I funded the insurgence. I gave away jewelry a thousand times more valuable than the sequins that pinch the back of my neck, that grow cool even as they press against my skin. Back when life was simpler, when we still lived in the palace and I sneaked out with the man who no longer remembers my name, I cherished the thought of absolute independence. I wanted to be a woman amongst others, nothing more. I naively thought the revolution would set me free. It didn’t.

I thought that I was so smart. I foresaw an exile of an undetermined length, not this bone-rattling journey to a destination yet unnamed. I knew to expect a wave of uncertainty, one that would pass soon after the people had accepted the new order. I thought my sisters and I could then return without our titles, to live a normal life. How foolish was I in my dreams!

Wait, are those approaching steps? I shuffle to the door and press my ear against the panel. Someone is running down the length of the corridor beyond. No doubt it’s the guard on the night watch. I don’t know if he’s the one who now ignores me, or one of the others that go by the nicknames my younger sisters have bestowed on them: Beard, Boy, Belly, Boots, and Tabard. While the nightly isolation is a source of comfort to me, for it gives me time to reflect, the thought that they may enter and leave as they please unsettles me. As it must unsettle both Celestia and Sibilia, though we never talk about it—how could we, without causing more distress to our younger sisters? Even though our guards rather pretend we don’t exist, isn’t it just a matter of time before someone less civil boards the train, someone who thinks that a captured Daughter of the Moon doesn’t need to be revered, but should instead be tarnished?

The train has fallen silent. I squeeze my ear against the panel so hard that it hurts. I can distinguish but faint cursing. For a long while, there’s nothing else. My sisters and I never make sounds during the nights. This is something Celestia forbade, and upon her insistence, we stick to the routine. She has a plan. She has thought through every eventuality, even the ones that the rest of us are too frightened to consider. That is how she is, rational beyond reason.

Even the cursing ceases. I pace the short length of my cabin. Five steps to the window. Five steps back to the door. Perhaps it was nothing. The train could have halted for many different reasons. Perhaps it hit a snow bank. Perhaps the coal shoveler fell asleep. Perhaps…

Then I hear it. Someone strides up the corridor. The rhythm, the footfall of hard heels, reveals haste. Could it be our potential rescuer, one of our seeds or a nobleman loyal to my family, Count Albusov or Marques Frususka, leading a platoon of soldiers in blue? Or is it someone who wishes us ill? How can I find out for sure?

I grab the gray blanket from my bed, but for a few surging heartbeats, I hesitate to pound the door. Why? For no good reason other than fear.

I bring the bottom of my right fist against the panel. Again. And again. If this is a rescue, there’s nothing to be ashamed of, apart from my disheveled state. If it’s one of the guards, I will have to come up with a very good excuse indeed.

The steps stagger to a halt before my door.

“In here!” I shout hoarsely, not daring to be too loud. For if it’s neither our rescuer nor one of the guards…

A lot is at stake here; not only what will become of me but also the well-being of my sisters. My throat tightens as I think of them. Are they sleeping through these moments? Or are they lying awake in their beds, too afraid to say a word? Do they think they are dreaming? Do they think this a nightmare?

A key turns in the lock. Would our rescuer have the key? How about those who despise us? Only one way to find out.

I push the door open, only to come face-to-face with the man whom I once loved.

“Yes?” His puzzled gaze seems darker than I remember, his moustache thicker, and his stubble has grown into a beard that covers his strong jaw and creeps up his cheeks.

No rescue then. No ill will either. Yet my heart sags, sinks into the bottom of the sea like a weighted sack. One excuse is as good as any, some more believable than others. At least the squeal in my voice is genuine. “What was the ruckus about? Why have we halted?”

He leans on the wall, his left hand resting looped against his blue winter coat’s leather belt. His gloves are red. A dusting of snow covers his shoulders. The strap of his rifle runs across his chest. When he speaks, his tone of voice is perfectly polite and formal. “We hit a frozen snow bank. It’s being cleared now.”

So that was it. I should be more disappointed. But for some reason I’m not. This is the first time we have spoken in private since the night we boarded the train, over four weeks ago. That night was the first I noticed the change in how he acted toward me. Was it from the shame of turning against my family? No, that’s not why it happened.

“You should go back to bed,” Captain Janlav says. Once I named him the captain of my heart. Now I can’t bring myself to address him by anything other than the rank he gained in my mother’s service. Curious thought, is he still entitled to that?

He shifts to push the door closed. I brace myself against it. “No.”

I do this because… Because I don’t want him to go. Because I want to see if anything remains of the man whose heart I once thought I knew inside out.

“No?” His mellow voice bears a hint of amusement. He still seems to revere my sisters and me. The other guards and servants treat us more like prisoners. It’s him who talks with us when the rest resort to silence.

“Please let me out, even if it’s only for a moment.” The pleading tone is genuine, and I hate myself for that. But it’s been over a week since we visited the witch, and though since then they have let us out at some of the smaller towns, it’s been only for enough time to stretch our legs. Celestia calls that a victory. No doubt her plan depends on these excursions growing longer and more frequent.

Captain Janlav shakes his head curtly. He still keeps his hair in a topknot, but he no longer shaves the sides of his head. One day he will sport an auburn mane much like a lion’s. Just as I’m changing, so is he. But whether he’s becoming a dangerous man or just a different man, that I can’t yet say. “So that when I’d look aside, you could wander off on your own. No, I don’t think so.”

I roll my eyes at him, a gesture better suited to Merile or dear Sibs. He makes it sound as if he’s concerned that I’d fall off a cliff or be captured by someone else. Then let’s play by his rules. “We are in the middle of nowhere. There’s no one around for miles. My father’s gaze is bright. No one can harm me tonight.”

His brows rise.

“I peeked through the window.”

He chuckles. “Now did you?”

“I did.”

He studies me for a while, the uncombed hair that falls tangled on my shoulders, the blanket I clutch against my chest. I know he finds me beautiful, though he no longer says it aloud. He gazes at me for so long that I’m sure he has noticed the looped necklace or bracelets that the thick fabric of my dress barely conceal, that he will push the door closed and lock it behind him. But at last, he says, “Come, then, but be forewarned, it’s freezing outside.”

Before he can change his mind, I hasten out of the cabin. When we were allotted our cabins, it was done in the order of age. Celestia’s cabin is closest to the day carriage, at the end of the corridor, to my left. As I walk toward the other end of the carriage, I pass Sib’s, Merile’s, and Alina’s cabins. I hear nothing that would indicate that any of them are awake. That guarantees nothing. Celestia suspects that Alina doesn’t sleep at nights. My little sister has lately talked more and more of the shadows, though as the youngest it’s not possible for her to glimpse into the world beyond this one. I suspect the decay that affects her mind has spread during this journey. I know for sure that we have run out of her medicine.

It’s horrifying to come to the conclusion that there’s nothing you can do for your sister. And since this is the case, and since this is one of the rare chances to breathe uncaptured air, I stride past little Alina’s cabin.

When we come to the heavy door that leads out of the train, Captain Janlav pulls a key ring from his belt. The dozen keys of brass and iron jingle with promises of freedom. He turns his back to me so that I can’t see which one he uses to open the door. It pains me that he doesn’t trust me. But if I were in his boots, would I trust me either?

Come to think of it, I did trust him with everything. That didn’t end too well for me or my sisters. Or our mother… Even if we have only Alina’s word of her demise, Celestia believes it true. Our mother is dead. Eventually, my sister will become the next empress.

Unless something were to happen to her. And something might well happen now that the battle lines have been drawn and the soldiers’ hands are bloody on both sides. A betrayal or murder most vile, poison slipped in tea or a knife thrust between the lowest ribs.

The door squeals as Captain Janlav pushes it open, an interruption most welcome. Immediately the winter exhales a snowy breath upon us. He glances at me, grinning. “Do you still want to go out?”

I wrap the gray blanket better around my shoulders and brush past him onto the covered platform, fleeing the ghastly thoughts. He closes the door behind us, but doesn’t lock it. Why would he? Where else would I return than back inside?

The night is very black. The rails stretch before us, the two lines of iron reaching toward each other, but never quite meeting. I used to think of the railroads as the veins of my mother’s empire. Now, looking at the grimness of iron against snow, I think of them as wounds that won’t ever heal.

A chiming click of metal breaches the silence. I turn to see Captain Janlav flicking open a silver cigarette case. It’s the one I gave him as a gift, before he told me of the cause, of the life beyond the palace walls. How curious for him to have kept it when all of us lead equally austere lives here on this train. Why didn’t he donate it to fund the cause?

“What?” He glances at me from under his brows before his attention drifts back to the cigarettes and the case itself, the delicate crescent clasp and the etched, straight lines representing rays of the Moon, master workmanship at its finest.

“It’s a beautiful case you have. How did you come by it?” Does he really remember nothing?

He shrugs as he lifts a cigarette to his lips. His moustache is unoiled. Whiskers curl against the rolled paper. “I really can’t say. Curious, though, isn’t it?”

I wrap the blanket tighter around myself. The chains of sequins weigh heavy against the vulnerable skin of my neck. He really, really doesn’t remember the moments we once cherished. That is a relief to me. There was a time I thought he had knowingly deceived me, that he had only acted to get into my favor, that the love we had shared hadn’t been true. It was only after Celestia told me of what Gagargi Prataslav had done to her that I understood he must have altered Captain Janlav, too.

As Captain Janlav blows smoky clouds into the night, I feel not only cold but also dizzy. I seek support from the rail, lean on my left hand. The metal bites my flesh with teeth of ice. My whole body jolts, yet I curl my fingers around the rail. I’m past caring about pain. Every single one of us was led astray, in one way or the other.

Celestia feared for the empire’s future and consulted Gagargi Prataslav for advice. He stole a part of her soul and used her as a puppet to advance his wayward plans. He… it’s too terrible to think of, but I owe my sister not to ignore it, not to pretend that what befell her could really be forgotten and hence hadn’t happened at all. The gagargi manipulated his way into her bed. He sowed his seed, and made her think she wanted it.

“Watch out or your fingers will freeze and you’ll never get them off that bar.” The voice belongs to the one who doesn’t remember who I became, only who I was before we first met. He touches my left hand, and even if I wanted to, I can’t move an inch. “Ah, too late.”

I stand so very still as he attempts to pry my fingers loose. To no avail. The metal pinches my skin possessively. I’m stuck to the rail. How embarrassing.

“May I?” he asks, bending his head close to my hand. What is he after? What have I got to lose?

“You may.”

He blows gently at my hand, moist clouds of salvation. On the third breath, I manage to free my hand. My fingertips, the inside of my palm, are raw red. My handprint remains on the rail, a dull, dark shape against the faint sheen of ice.

He moves as if to examine my hand, a crease of alarm on his forehead. I quickly hide my hand under the blanket, against my palpitating heart. “I’m not hurt.”

But Celestia was, still is. My sister confided in me when she didn’t bleed when she should have. I assured her that it was due to stress only. That happens often enough, I have heard. She didn’t say it out loud, and it would have been too early to know still, but she feared that the gagargi’s seed had taken root inside her.

The deal my sister made with the witch benefitted them both. But when trading with witches, the cost always runs deeper than one can anticipate. Even a week after swallowing the potion, Celestia continues to bleed. No longer as heavily, but… She must fear that the witch’s potion has left a permanent mark on her body, that… No, I won’t think of it. Our mother is dead. Celestia will be the empress, even if there hasn’t been and won’t be a ceremony in the near future, even if she hasn’t yet married the Moon. Her daughters, let there be many of them, will rule after her. Not mine.

“We should go back inside,” Captain Janlav says.

He’s right. My left hand aches. The fingertips hurt as though a heavy object had fallen on them. And yet… If the cost of freedom, even a momentary one, is pain, I would be a fool to not pay it.

“Not yet,” I reply, and without waiting for his answer, I climb down the steep, narrow ladder, onto the snow-veiled tracks.

His boots crunch against the snow as he jumps after me. He reaches out to grab my shoulder. I evade him. I stride farther away from the train. Perhaps I can’t flee, and I won’t, not without my sisters. But maintaining the illusion of freedom, for even a moment, is worth more than anything I have ever owned.

“Please…” The pain in his voice, it pierces my heart like a spear. “Please don’t try to run away from me. I’m only trying to keep you safe.”

I falter to a halt, for the crossties between the rails are slippery. I hear him stop behind me, the uneasy rhythm of his breath. The walls of snow around us are stained by coal smoke and stripes of blue paint from the carriages. This aisle, almost a tunnel, reminds me of a time gone past, of the times I followed him through other tunnels. Curious, how much has changed and yet so little.

“I know I shouldn’t say this…” A silvery click betrays his need for another cigarette. And then later, the wisp of malty smoke his hesitation.

“Then don’t,” I reply, tired of games. Though who am I to blame him—wasn’t this little escapade of mine a silly move on my part? For where would I go from here, in the middle of the night? Follow the trails to the village where we stopped for fuel earlier? Why tease myself with a prospect of freedom when I know all too well that our lives are not for us to live but are in the hands of others?

“But I want to, need to say it aloud.” His fingers come to rest against my shoulder, on the blanket, lightly like raindrops. He coaches me to turn around, and I can’t resist his plea. And yet, he lacks the courage to meet my gaze. He stares past me, into the distance. “Sometimes I feel like I’ve known you for much longer than for the duration of this journey.”

Just as the icy rail burned my hand earlier, his words scorch my heart and mind alike. A part of him does remember me. This thought warms me, though by now my eyelashes must be frozen, though my earlobes feel numb, though my cheeks ache when I smile.

“Is that a happy smile or one reserved for fools?” He knows me well indeed, even if he doesn’t realize it.

What do I have to lose if I tell him now? This information can’t possibly endanger whatever plan Celestia has in mind. “We have known each other since last autumn, since we danced at little Alina’s name day festivities.”

He laughs. His chuckles form white clouds that are cold by the time they reach me. “That’s impossible. I would remember that.”

“You courted me for months,” I say, slightly annoyed at him, at everything.

“Don’t be a cruel woman.” He fidgets with the cigarette, clearly tempted to toss it aside but aghast at wasting an almost untouched treat. My father decides for him—the cigarette slips from his gloved fingers. His sad sigh echoes a loss of immeasurable magnitude. “Not when I’ve made a fool of myself already.”

Every breath hurts, but not because of the low temperature. It hurts me that he thinks me cruel, that I’m jesting at his expense. Even worse, he might think that I’m trying to manipulate him, wrap him around my little finger so that my sisters and I could at last go free.

That’s of course an idea, one that I can only see failing, and besides, that isn’t what I want now. I want him to believe me. I want him to remember what we shared for those few blessed months. “You took me to workhouses and hospitals.”

“Stop it now.” He stomps his heel on the cigarette and crushes it against the frozen crosstie. “I should have… I should have known better. Oh, I’ve heard it said that the Daughters of the Moon are witches better to watch out for. Now I see what they meant by it. Don’t say a word more to me.”

I want to slap him so badly. Instead I force myself to simply take hold of his hand. I’m not sure where my actions will lead me, but any place is better than letting the distance between us grow, for letting him continue believing that he never loved me. For that hurts; it hurts more than I’m capable of admitting to myself. “You took me to an orphanage where we shared bread with the nameless children. You wanted to carry me over the puddles, but I didn’t let you. That would have gathered too much attention.”

His eyes narrow a fraction. His hand feels tense through the red leather of his glove. “I don’t recall such.”

“You also took me to a workhouse where sounds harsh and loud filled the night. The very air smelled of sticky tar and dry hemp. There, the poor worked in the smoke of the cheapest tallow candles. They squinted at the lengths of rope, fraying it to pick oakum. To me, they all looked the same. At first, I didn’t realize why. I wondered, was it the desperation writ all over their faces? The concentration of one desperate enough to give his life into the hands of others in exchange for something, anything to eat? But no, in the end I realized it was their faded gray uniforms, so worn that no two garments looked exactly the same, so valued that every single person in the room wore theirs with something that eerily resembled pride.”

“Please don’t.” Captain Janlav runs his free hand through his hair, scattering snowflakes. He lives in denial or then simply doesn’t remember, but he wonders. How could I possibly know these details? No one would tell such to a Daughter of the Moon. No one would write these ugly truths on paper, not even as their reflections about the scriptures. “I’m just a man, and I’m not sure of many things, but I’m sure that before I was tasked with the honor of escorting you and your sisters to safety, I had never seen you, only heard of you.” He winces as though struck by a sudden headache. “And even if I had, I would never have taken a girl like you to a workhouse.”

Can the gagargi’s spell be somehow undone? I glance up at the Moon. My father gazes back at me kindly. He helped Celestia to break the spell the gagargi had cast on her. Will he help me?

“You took me to a hospital,” I say, silently praying for my father to come to my aid. “We saw the halls crammed with beds. We walked through the long corridors. We heard the involuntary whimpers, the escaped sobs and sniffs. We greeted the men who had once been so proud, who had marched to war in their prime. They were that no more, but forgotten; out of sight, out of mind.”

“Stop it.” He tugs his hand—once, twice—as if yearning to be released. But I can’t let go of him now, can’t heed his plea. I can remember everything as if it had happened mere heartbeats earlier, not in another time and age.

“You led me down the aisle into a vast, white hall. There lay the ones who suffered the most. The fathers and sons, the uncles and cousins, every single one equal in their pain. Men that had faced cannons, who now missed a leg or an arm. Or more. Men with bandages wrapped around their heads, over their unseeing eyes and unhearing ears. Men with wounds that… stank of rot, their bandages dirty, unchanged. You took me to the very men who went to war because my mother so demanded, the very men she forgot once they were no longer of use to her.”

“No!” He yanks his hand back with such force that I lose him. I have gone too far, or perhaps then not far enough. And yet, I don’t dare to touch him again. What if he was even partially right? What if my father or even I do indeed possess a power to make people act as benefits us? If I were to take further advantage of that… I would be no better than the gagargi.

I wait patiently, dreading that he will never speak to me again. I don’t know how long we have been out already. I don’t know when the train will depart. Perhaps soon. But I can’t hurry him, not now, even though this may be the only opportunity we have for this conversation.

“You can’t know this.” His voice is hoarse, that of a frightened boy. “You can’t. How could you? You’ve lived a sheltered life of leisure, in the halls and hallways of the finest palaces. How could you have ever even wanted to know the truth?”

I tilt my chin up, a gesture Celestia resorts to when argued against. How infuriatingly can a man act? How can I still care for him this much? “Because you showed it to me.” He flinches, and I regret my harshness. It’s not his fault he doesn’t remember. I add out of remorse, “Silly.”

He reaches out for me, and I’m acutely aware of the silver pressing against my skin. I shift minutely, so that his fingers come to rest against my shoulder, not my neck. I meet his eyes with a questioning gaze. His eyes are the same as before, the brown of young pines. And yet, the gaze is different. But I think… Is there a flicker of recollection there?

His lips part, and I lean toward him. Because I miss him. I miss being with him.

“No,” he says, pulling his hand away. Again. “We must not. It would interfere with my duty.”

I feel like laughing and crying, both at the same time. My lips burn with the cold, not with his kiss. My voice trembles with what may be chagrin. “Your duty?”

“To see you safely to our destination.” It sounds as if he were repeating a mantra, something enforced in his mind by foul means. He crosses his hands behind his back and nods toward the carriage. He wants us to return. “If you must know, it isn’t exactly easy, to keep another human being contained for an extended period of time, even if it’s for their own safety and to ensure the future of the Crescent Empire.”

This lie… I want to laugh maniacally, I want to argue, but I bite my tongue. He sounds so serious, proud even. Perhaps it’s not a lie to him. Perhaps that’s why the other guards avoid us, so that they won’t have to remember why the doors are locked and curtains drawn, why one of them has to sit in the corridor ready to spring into action while the others play cards and smoke cigarettes.

“I never assumed it would be,” I reply at last. My father still gazes kindly at us. If he doesn’t feel anger, neither should I.

“It’s not only that,” he says, chin pressed against his chest, but not to keep himself warm. Something weighs heavy on his mind. It’s curious that I know him though he doesn’t know me.

It strikes me then. He’s a captain, the one in the lead. He has no one else to confide in than the very person he thinks he’s tasked to guard. “What is it, then?”

He glances over his shoulder, at the rails—no, onward—at the plains we have crossed, into the towns we have left behind. In his eyes lives regret, longing to change a decision made or perhaps an act done in haste. “When Alina fell ill, when we halted in that town…”

“Yes?” I prompt, dreading the answer, every slipping step that carries us closer to the carriage and silence. The witch, no matter that she helped us, frightens me. She saw things in our shadows, shapes she wouldn’t speak of, and the bargain she made with Celestia left my sister weak.

“You hate us already,” Captain Janlav says. “Don’t you?”

I don’t say a word. So that’s it, then. He has done something so despicable that he expects to be called a monster.

“You would hate us even more if you knew the lengths to which we have gone to protect you and your sisters.”

“Try me,” I reply more dryly than I had intended. The cold air has chafed my throat sore. I might catch my death because of this excursion, but I’m past caring about that.

“Perhaps I will.” He glances at the carriage, at the door he left unlocked, as if to measure how many words he has time to say before all talk must cease. “After you’d boarded the train, we argued about it long and hard. I didn’t want to do it, but what choice did we have? Even as blind as she was, what if she somehow recognized you? What if she’d tell someone? Not that she seemed the type. But what if those who wish to harm you caught her in their hands and interrogated her. People speak when they’re in pain. They’ll do anything to make the agony stop.”

I had practically betrayed my family to escape the darkness of my own mind. What he’s saying… As I shake my head, my blanket shifts. Cold gnaws at my throat, down my back, into my belly. “No…”

“I had to send Beardard back.”

He doesn’t need to tell me more. I can see the sad scene unfolding before my eyes. Beard wading through the snow banks, rifle swinging against his back. The small cottage at the end of the lane. The witch hearing the approaching sounds, the snow crunching under his boots. He wasn’t there to ask her to remain silent, but to unsling his rifle and make sure that she would take what she had seen and heard to her grave.

At that moment, I can’t imagine how I ever could have loved this ruthless man.

“The thing is,” Captain Janlav says when we are but ten steps away from the carriage, “when he came to the end of the lane, to the very spot where we’d smoked a pack of cigarettes mere hours earlier, he found nothing. Nothing at all.”

I glance at him from the corner of my eye. His serious gaze is riveted on the train. I can’t decipher if he’s lying to me in a futile attempt to soothe me. A part of me doesn’t even want to try.

“Our footprints led to an abandoned yard. But there was nothing there. No trace of the old woman. No trace of the wee cottage. Not even a shadow remained.”

He meets my gaze at last. His eyes gleam with… earnestness. Does he really believe he’s serving me, not the gagargi? Does he really speak the truth?

“Beardard returned, ashen-faced. We thought he’d been drinking. Or smoking dusk. I took two good men with me and retraced our earlier path. Only to find out that Beardard hadn’t been mistaken. Where I’d expected to find the witch, I found but a magpie staring accusingly at us.”

As he escorts me back to the train, I decide he isn’t lying, at least not consciously. But can I ever forgive this? The witch may have escaped, but that doesn’t change the fact that he ordered her silenced.

When we reach the steps leading to the platform, he offers me his hand, to help me climb the steep metal steps. But I’d rather scorch my hand again than accept his help, and that’s what I do. Once I’m up, I glance at him from over my shoulder. His expression is one of utter confusion, and I do feel as if I should be the one apologizing. “I…”

But we are saved from further awkwardness by a shrill hoot that pierces the night.

He stills. His posture tenses, and his gaze glazes over. When he looks up at me, he no longer sees me, but someone else. A Daughter of the Moon. Whatever I might have been tempted to say no longer matters.

“The guards are done with the snow.” He quickly climbs up after me. As if nothing had changed. And yet everything has. “Time to return inside.”

I brush past him, into the confinement that has become home for my sisters and me.