Rowan Switched's Arc

Chapter 23 of 25

Rowan tucked the closed deed inside their shirt and climbed down from the graveyard wall. The pale skin was warm against their ribs, but the warmth would not last. The crowned woman would come at dawn. If she reached the cottage first and found the deed on a shelf, in a drawer, under a floorboard, she could still tear it up and call the closing false. Rowan had two hours of dark left to hide it somewhere she could not open. The cottage waited at the bottom of the lane. Rowan had grown up inside those walls and knew every loose board. That was the problem. Anything Rowan knew, the crowned woman could pull from the air around the cottage like thread. Rowan needed a place that was not theirs. Elspeth Moonwhisper walked with them to the gate and stopped. "I cannot cross your threshold again tonight," she said. "I spent what I had at the wall." She pointed up the slope, toward the broken towers past the tree line. "Go to Gloamkeep. Ask the pool. She owes you nothing, but she keeps things." Rowan climbed the hill path with the deed against their skin. The ruins sat black against the sky, towers cracked open like eggs. In the flooded room at the base of the north tower, the pool held the moon on its surface. Rowan knelt and spoke the name Selene Nightshade had given them, low, three times. The water rose into a shape. Lady Moon stood barefoot on the stones, gray dress dragging in the shallows. "Keep this until sunrise," Rowan said, holding out the deed. "The crowned woman comes at dawn. She cannot find it on me or in my house." Lady Moon looked at the folded skin. "Price." "Name it." "A memory. The cottage. The room you were born in." Her voice cut off there. She lifted a slender bottle from the water, opalescent liquid moving inside it. A forgetful draught. "One swallow. You will not know the room. She cannot pull from you what you no longer hold." Rowan thought of the crib, the rocker, the low window. The old woman's hand on their hair. Then they thought of the deed with their true name on the back. They uncorked the bottle and drank. The taste was cold and clean. A door closed in their head, quiet, and behind the door a room they could no longer picture. Lady Moon took the deed. She set a round shield on the stones between them, pale metal marked with warding sigils. "Stand behind this when she comes. She cannot speak past it. Ask for your name. Do not answer her questions." The water folded over her and she was gone. Rowan lifted the shield. It was heavier than it looked. Dawn was one hour off, and the room where Rowan had been a child was already only a word.