Meadow Faeoria's Arc

Chapter 6 of 12

Meadow stayed on her knees after the carriage vanished. The road went quiet. The palace was miles off, and the sun was already low. She could not walk it. She could barely stand. Her wand's star still burned that strange green, and behind her ribs the second heartbeat kept its slow time. Cinder was riding toward a hall full of strangers with no way to know when the spell would break. Someone had to be at the palace at midnight to warn her. Meadow could not be that someone. She pressed her palm flat to the dirt and spoke into the wand. "Zagreus. I know you're there." The green in the star pulsed once. Her brother did not answer in words. He never had. What came back was a feeling in her chest, patient, waiting. He was listening the way he listened to souls at a crossing. "I need you to find her," Meadow said. "The girl in the blue gown. She'll be at the palace by dark. When the clock starts on midnight, tell her. Any way you can. A whisper, a shadow, whatever wearing-a-face thing you do. Just get her out before the gown goes." The wand went colder. She felt him consider it, the way their father considered a ledger. Then a pressure, like a hand set briefly over hers. Yes. "Thank you," she said. Her voice cracked. "I'll owe you." The pressure lifted. The green in the star dimmed by half, but did not go out. He was still there. He would be there until the job was done. Meadow pushed herself up. Her legs shook. She had to get off the road before the last of her disguise burned out and some village boy found an underworld girl in a dead woman's face. She limped toward the tree line and stopped. Under a willow at the field's edge sat two figures. One was a small blonde girl with a bottle in her lap, watching Meadow like Meadow was another door to try. The other was a woman crowned in roses, eyes closed, a staff across her knees. Vines moved on her arms when nothing else moved. "You spent your brother," the woman in roses said. She did not open her eyes. "That will cost more than you think." "He agreed." "He is bored. That is not the same." The blonde girl held up the bottle. "There's a burrow behind us. Stone rim. It goes down. I came up out of it an hour ago and I don't know how. If you drank this you'd fit." Meadow looked at the wand. Green, steady. Her brother at the palace. Her body here, useless, hunted by a dead spell. A hole in the ground that spat out lost girls. "I'm not going down," Meadow said. "I need to be awake when he comes back." The woman in roses finally smiled. "Then sit," she said. "You have until midnight to learn what you just sold."