Snakeroot (14 page)

“I agree.” Tess nodded. “And I don’t think Anika is completely happy with this new strategy, but like I said, she’s been under a lot of pressure.”

“Holt and company?” Connor asked.

“Yes, Holt, but unfortunately there’s a growing emphasis on
company,
” Tess said. “While Anika is busy trying to hold everything together, Holt has all the time he wants to bring people to his way of thinking. Anika is conceding on this issue because she hopes it will keep him from interfering in other areas of the Academy.”

“So what does Holt want us to do?” Connor stood up, straightening his duster.

“He wants us to round up the Keepers.”

ADNE WAS AWAKE
for a long time before she opened her eyes. She stayed hidden behind the dark veil of her eyelids, afraid to face the world.

What am I going to tell them?

There were no good answers to the questions she would have to face. No explanations to justify her actions.

And just as she’d known they would be, a little crowd of worried Searchers huddled around Adne’s bed when she finally opened her eyes.

“There’s my girl.” Connor bent and kissed Adne’s cheek. “How are you feeling?”

“Okay.” Adne tried to smile at him, but her frantic pulse was distracting her.
He’ll want to know what happened. They all will. I don’t even know what really happened.
“How long have I been out?”

“A few hours,” Connor answered. “We think . . . no one is sure when exactly you lost consciousness . . .”

He watched Adne’s face, waiting for her to fill in the empty space, but Adne just nodded, unwilling to answer the questions Connor didn’t ask.

Her friends were polite, of course, expressing their concerns over Adne’s well-being before diving into the interrogation she knew was coming. Propped up in bed, Adne tried to answer each question truthfully, but vaguely, and soon she could see frustration registering on her friends’ faces.

I don’t have a choice. They would never understand.

Adne snuck a glance at her hand. Her skin was smooth, unblemished.

I remember thorns and blood and fire.

Closing her eyes, she too easily recalled the ripping of her skin, the burning of her flesh—but it had all been in her head. How could it have seemed so real?

Agony wasn’t all Adne remembered. She could still hear heavy footfalls in the snow. A voice with an entrancing low, rich timbre.

It wasn’t real. None of it was real.

Except the wolf.

When Adne had made it clear she’d said all she was going to about that strange night—which wasn’t much at all—Sabine had told her about finding wolf tracks beside the drag marks where her body had been hauled through the snow. But when Sabine had asked if Adne remembered a wolf in the garden, Adne had kept silent.

Days had passed, and life had returned to its usual rhythms, and Adne held the truth back.

I heard them howling.

• • •

“Adne?” Sabine’s voice pulled Adne from her thoughts. “Did you want to add anything?”

Adne wasn’t surprised to find the entire tour group staring at her, waiting for her answer. Sabine probably was equally unsurprised that Adne hadn’t been paying attention to the narrative as the tour progressed through Rowan Estate.

“No, thank you,” Adne answered, making sure to smile at the tourists.

It had to irk Sabine that she’d been assigned the worst apprentice ever. Adne couldn’t believe otherwise. But Sabine never showed irritation at Adne’s shiny new absentmindedness, and Adne presumed that Sabine’s kindness was a sign of concern.

Adne’s own lack of annoyance upon being reprimanded for her nighttime excursion to Rowan Estate and subsequent assignment to assist Sabine with the tours derived from her own fears. Though Adne sensed her punishment was intended to be of the “be careful what you wish for” variety, Adne didn’t mind the days confined to Rowan Estate and kept under Sabine’s guard. The night in the garden had frightened Adne enough that she welcomed Sabine’s vigilance . . . at least so far.

And at least enough that she felt guilty about being such a poor tour guide, more of a burden to Sabine than anything resembling helpful. Adne had a hard time keeping on task, whether it was during the actual tours or studying the history and anecdotes necessary to keep visitors entertained. Most days Adne could barely recall things about Rowan Estate that she should have known offhand. There didn’t seem to be room in her mind for any of it.

Since the incident (that was what Tess called it when doling out Adne’s punishment), there were only two things that Adne could concentrate on for sustained periods of time: the hazy memories of what transpired in the garden and the contents of the papers she’d found just before something or someone had beckoned her into the winter night.

Adne studied those papers when she was supposed to be memorizing the tour scripts. While other facts and stories slipped in and out of her mind, unable to find a resting place, Adne had no trouble committing what she’d discovered in those old pages to memory.

Perhaps the exception could be accounted for because of the unsettling information scrawled across the yellowed paper. Or maybe it was because Adne was certain that information had profound implications, but she wasn’t sure what those implications were.

I should tell someone.

That thought crossed Adne’s mind at least twice an hour, but it was always chased away by that low voice.

This is a secret. It’s our secret.

Adne repeatedly justified her silence about the pages by assuring herself that anything they might have once revealed was made obsolete by the Rift’s closing.

It didn’t matter that all Keepers were not created equal.

It didn’t matter that the Harbinger’s bond to this world had been manifested physically as well as magically.

It didn’t matter that the Searchers’ salvation, the long-awaited Scion, shared the same blood as the bringer of their doom.

All of that was past. What Adne knew would someday feature in the footnotes of a history book or as obscure trivia about the Witches’ War.

As she rationalized the keeping of these secrets, one crack in her resolve remained.

Logan, too, carried the blood of the Harbinger. And Logan had hired thieves to ransack Rowan Estate’s library.

Logan was hunting for something. And Adne couldn’t help but wonder if she’d found it. Even if she had, she didn’t know why Logan would risk exposing himself to the Searchers. He must believe there was something to gain by tapping into the origins of the Keepers.

But what?

The tour group began to move along the hall, and Adne tried to listen with interest as Sabine described the estate’s art collection. This part of the tour was utter fabrication given that Bosque’s paintings of captured Searchers in torment had been disposed of and replaced by greatest hits of the Dutch masters and landscapes by William Sonntag. But Adne only managed to focus for two paintings before something turned her head toward the far end of the hall.

The sound was so quiet, Adne considered for a moment that she’d simply imagined it. Only for the sake of curiosity, Adne took a couple of steps in the direction from which the noise that might not have been a noise came. She heard it again.

Muffled, but plaintive, with a keen edge that could not be silenced.

Adne glanced at Sabine, who was directing the herd of tourists into the next room. Determining that she could slip away for a few minutes without causing alarm, Adne stayed toward the back of the group, and when the last visitor had entered the conservatory, Adne quickly walked in the opposite direction.

Keeping her footsteps light, Adne followed the strange sound. It pulled her down the hall as if she held a string that someone on the other end was slowly winding up. The sound led her around a corner into a hallway whose rooms were hidden behind closed doors.

Still following the noise, Adne approached one of the doors and pressed her ear up against it.

A shaking breath. A choked-off sob.

Someone was inside. And they were crying.

Adne didn’t knock. Instead, she turned the doorknob and slowly pushed the door open.

The weeping stopped suddenly.

“Who’s there?” a woman’s tremulous voice called out.

Adne peeked her head into the room. Her throat closed up when she recognized the questioner.

Sarah Doran’s eyes were bloodshot, her face chalk white. She was kneeling on the floor beside an open steamer trunk, and her arms were wrapped around what appeared to be a baby’s blanket.

“Oh, Ariadne.” Sarah squinted at Adne, and some of the hostility left her voice. “I don’t mean to be rude, but is there a reason you’re here?”

Letting herself into the room, Adne approached Sarah cautiously. “I’m helping with the tours.”

“The tours.” Sarah’s face scrunched up. “How quickly they’ve forgotten this was someone’s home.”

Adne began to frown, but then she noticed the room’s features. Unlike the opulence of Rowan Estate’s other rooms, this bedroom was simply appointed. And it looked as though someone was still living in it. A hooded sweatshirt was casually thrown over the chair beside a desk that was piled with books. The closet door was open and Adne saw boys’ clothes hanging inside.

“This was Shay’s room.” Adne spoke aloud without intending to and instantly regretted her words.

“I take it you never visited him here.” Sarah’s reply had a cold edge to it.

Adne bristled, feeling she hadn’t earned a reproach from Shay’s mother. Of course she hadn’t visited Shay at Rowan Estate; she was a Searcher, not one of his classmates from Vail.

“No,” Adne answered slowly, reminding herself that Sarah wasn’t trying to give offense, she was grieving her son. “I never came to Rowan Estate while Shay lived here. I think only Calla did.”

“The wolf girl.”

Sarah’s words were so rough with anger that Adne could only nod.

“She had no right . . .” Sarah’s voice trailed off as her eyes closed. Tears ran unchecked down her cheeks.

Edging closer to Sarah, Adne whispered, “Had no right?”

“To take him.” Sarah broke down into a fresh round of sobs.

Adne wanted to defend Calla but wondered if that might make things worse. She didn’t know what to do. Had Sarah and Tristan requested that Shay’s room be left intact so they might have a chance to get to know their son through the artifacts of his life at Rowan Estate?

“I don’t understand,” Sarah continued raggedly. “No one does. I’ve spent hours with the Scribes, with Anika. No one can explain to me why my son is gone.”

“He’s not exactly gone.” No matter the circumstance, Adne didn’t want to just leave the poor woman. She had to offer Sarah some sort of hope. “He’s with the pack. And Calla loves him. I think they’ll be happy together.”

Apparently that was the wrong thing to say.

Sarah drew a hissing breath and glared at Adne. “I am his mother. Do you think some girl he’d known a few months could ever care for him as much as I do?”

“I just meant . . .”

“He was three years old.” Sarah’s voice was thick. “And I would have been able to accept those lost years if he were here now. We could have been a family again, but we had only moments before—”

Unable to continue, Sarah bowed her head. She didn’t make a sound, but her shoulders shook violently and somehow her silent weeping was much more terrible.

Sarah’s right. It shouldn’t have happened. It goes against everything we know about Guardians.
Shay’s mother had been human, a Searcher. Yet somehow Shay had willed himself to remain a wolf even after he’d closed the Rift, thereby returning Guardians to their natural state. According to those rules, Shay
should
have remained human. He hadn’t.

Adne thought of what she’d discovered about the Scion’s lineage. To have the power of the Nether coursing through his veins must have affected his ability to control the outcome of his transformation, even if subconsciously.

A murmur caught Adne’s attention. At first she thought it was simply a return of audible evidence of Sarah’s weeping, but then she realized Sarah was speaking.

“I’m sorry?” Adne took a step forward, daring to rest her hand on Sarah’s shoulder. She drew a quick breath of relief when Sarah looked up at her with pleading, not hateful, eyes.

Sarah grasped Adne’s fingers, crushing them in a desperate grip. “No one will listen to me. Not Anika. Not even Tristan. No one understands how wrong this is. I can’t bear it.”

Adne returned Sarah’s grip, hoping to provide some reassurance that someone was listening to her . . . even if grief had driven Sarah to ranting.

“I know how hard it is to lose family,” Adne said quietly. “I lost everyone. The war took my mother first. Then my father. And finally my brother.”

The image of Ren’s wolf lurking in the shadows of Rowan Estate flashed through Adne’s mind, but she quickly pushed it away. Her mind had proven untrustworthy of late, but a comforting idea formed in Adne’s thoughts. Maybe her nightmares and visions weren’t the corruption of insanity but merely a side effect of her grief.